Abstract
This chapter examines trust in the European Union. The chapter firstly sets out some the some of the key historical developments to which public opinion has been sensitive, arguing that long-term scepticism of EU institutions pre-dated the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties and was beginning to emerge as Helmut Kohl became Chancellor. The scepticism is not wholesale, however, but is more targeted on its political institutions. Institutional evolution and processes of political and economic harmonisation reinforced that scepticism. Multivariate modelling reveals that low trust in the EU bears the imprint of social structure. In contrast to the findings of previous chapters, age and gender have important effects and reduce trust. This contributes to explaining why trust in the EU has been enduringly low. Given elite commitments to integration, the findings present a formidable challenge to the German government—the challenge of governing without consensus.
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Notes
- 1.
Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, ‘The Alternative für Deutschland in the Electorate: Between Single-Issue and Right-Wing Populist Party’, German Politics, 26/1 (2017), pp. 124–148.
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Simon Bulmer and William E. Paterson, The Federal Republic of Germany and the European Community (London: Allen & Unwin), p. 7.
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See, for example, Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice, German Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
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Kenneth Dyson, ‘The Europeanization of German Governance’ in Stephen Padgett, William E. Paterson and Gordon Smith (eds.) Developments in German Politics 3 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 161–183.
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See, for example, Fritz W. Scharpf, ‘Legitimacy Intermediation in the Multilevel European Polity and Its Collapse in the Euro Crisis’. Discussion Paper 12/6 (Cologne: Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, 2012).
- 9.
See, for example, Gerhard Loewenberg, ‘The Influence of Parliamentary Behavior on Regime Stability: Some Conceptual Clarifications’, Comparative Politics, 3/2 (1971), pp. 177–200.
- 10.
Vivian A. Schmidt, ‘Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and Throughput’. Paper prepared for delivery to the European Union Studies Association’s biannual meetings, Boston, MA, March, 2010.
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Anthony Giddens, Turbulent and Mighty Continent: What Future for Europe? (London: Polity, 2014).
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Simon Bulmer, ‘Germany and the Eurozone Crisis: Between Hegemony and Domestic Politics’. West European Politics, 37/6 (2014), pp. 1244–1263.
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William E. Paterson, ‘The Reluctant Hegemon? Germany Moves Centre Stage in the European Union’. Journal of Common Market Studies, 49/1 (2011), pp. 57–75.
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William Wallace, ‘Germany at the Centre of Europe’ in Eva Kolinsky (ed.) The Federal Republic of Germany (Oxford: Berg, 1991), pp. 167–173.
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Simon Bulmer, ‘The European Dimension’ in Gordon Smith, William E. Paterson, Peter H. Merkl (eds.) Developments in West German Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 211–228.
- 16.
William E. Paterson, ‘Germany and Europe’ in Stephen Padgett, William E. Paterson and Gordon Smith (eds.) Developments in German Politics 3 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 206–226.
- 17.
Peter Katzenstein, ‘United Germany in an Integrating Europe’ in Peter Katzenstein (ed.) Tamed Power: Germany and Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), p. 33.
- 18.
Ulrich Beck, German Europe (London: Polity, 2012).
- 19.
Emil J. Kirchner, ‘The European Community: Seeds of Ambivalence’ in Gordon Smith, William E. Paterson, Peter H. Merkl and Stephen Padgett (eds.) Developments in German Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 172–184.
- 20.
Simon Bulmer, Charlie Jeffery and Stephen Padgett, ‘Democracy and Diplomacy: Germany and Europe’ in Simon Bulmer, Charlie Jeffery and Stephen Padgett (eds.) Rethinking Germany and Europe: Democracy and Diplomacy in a Semi-Sovereign State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 1–21.
- 21.
The Constitutional Court’s ruling on the Lisbon Treaty is a case in point. Whilst there was no constitutional objection to integration, it laid out a number of core state functions that could not, save in restrictive circumstances, be transferred to the European Union.
- 22.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Edgar Piel, Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 1978–1983 (Munich: K.G. Saur), p. 598.
- 23.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Renate Köcher, Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 1993–1997 (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1997), p. 1157.
- 24.
Ibid, p. 1158.
- 25.
Ibid, p. 1151.
- 26.
Renate Köcher, Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 2003–2009 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), p. 285.
- 27.
Ibid, p. 288.
- 28.
Ibid, p. 298.
- 29.
Douglas Webber, for example, distinguishes between vertical and horizontal integration. See, Douglas Webber, European Disintegration? The Politics of Crisis in the European Union (London: Macmillan, 2019), p. 14.
- 30.
It is important to point out that these predate the ‘migrant crisis’; i.e., the movement of large numbers of people following the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, some evidence has emerged suggesting that whilst concerns about the scale of the influx remain, there remains broad adherence to the underlying humanitarian goals and positive experiences of migrants.
- 31.
Ibid, p. 296.
- 32.
Ibid, pp. 292–293.
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Campbell, R. (2019). Trust in the EU and Governing Without Consensus. In: Popular Support for Democracy in Unified Germany. New Perspectives in German Political Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03792-5_8
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