Christian Lahusen - The political attitudes of divided European citizens : public opinion and social inequalities in comparative and relational perspective

The Political Attitudes of Divided European Citizens

This book unveils the significant impact of the European integration process on the political thinking of European citizens. With close attention to the interrelation between social and political divisions, it shows that an integrated Europe promotes consensus but also propagates growing dissent among its citizens, with both objective inequalities and the subjective perception of these inequalities fuelling political dissent. Based on original data sets developed from two EU-funded projects across eight and nine European countries, the volume demonstrates the important role played by the social structure of European social space in conditioning political attitudes and preferences. It shows, in particular, that Europeans are highly sensitive to unequal living conditions between European countries, thus affecting their political support of national politics and the European Union. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in Europe and the European Union, European integration and political sociology.

Christian Lahusen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Siegen, Germany. His research interests include the sociology of European societies and European integration, social problems and social exclusion, social theory, political sociology, in particular movements, political conflicts and transformations of the state.

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The Political Attitudes of Divided European Citizens
Public Opinion and Social Inequalities in Comparative and Relational Perspective
Christian Lahusen

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/RSPS

The Political Attitudes of Divided European Citizens

Public Opinion and Social Inequalities in Comparative and Relational Perspective

Christian Lahusen

First published 2021
by Routledge
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2021 Christian Lahusen

The right of Christian Lahusen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book draws upon material originally published in German in Das gespaltene Europa: Eine politische Soziologie der Europischen Union, Campus Verlag, 2019. Translated and published with permission.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lahusen, Christian, author.
Title: The political attitudes of divided European citizens: public opinion and social inequalities in comparative and relational perspective / Christian Lahusen.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge studies in political sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020032296 (print) | LCCN 2020032297 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367495671 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003046653 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Public opinionEuropean Union countries. | Social stratificationEuropean Union countries. | Political sociologyEuropean Union countries.
Classification: LCC HM1236 .L34 2020 (print) | LCC HM1236 (ebook) | DDC 306.2094dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032296
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032297

ISBN: 9780367495671 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781003046653 (ebk)

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The European integration process introduced many changes that were intended to bring peace, prosperity and freedom of movement to a growing number of member states and their inhabitants. The Schengen Agreement led to the abolition of border controls, the internal market stimulated the trade of goods within Europe and the single currency unified and simplified capital and payments for businesses and individuals, both within and between countries. Touted as blessings of the European Union, these changes have increasingly become the subject of massive public criticism in the wake of the European economic and financial crisis and the high level of flight migration in the course of the 2010s. The Schengen Area is blamed for problems of uncontrolled immigration and public security, the internal market and the euro for cut-throat competition at the expense of weaker economies, for rising national debt and for reforms leading to social cutbacks. Now more than ever there is a dispute about the future shape of the EU because parties and groups critical of Europe are mobilising very successfully against the EU and against pro-European governments in the various member states.

This book is devoted to an analysis of this increased contentiousness. It wishes to add insights to the debate about the constant politicisation of the European citizenry (Hooghe and Marks 2009; de Wilde and Zrn 2012; Kriesi 2016b). Its main aim is to engage in a systematic analysis of the relationship between social inequalities and political attitudes, making use of datasets from 2015 to 2016 that mirror the aftermath of the economic and financial crisis. The objective is to take European integration seriously by highlighting that this process is not only affecting the political opinions citizens have about the European Union but also the way they perceive and assess the social and political reality in their own country. The focus is on social inequalities within and between countries, which are known to be a driver of political contentions about the EU, but also about national politics. In fact, research has already provided insights into the gradual politicisation of the EU, which nurtures political cleavages between pro-Europeans and a growing share of Eurosceptics (e.g., Krouwel and Abts 2007; Lubbers and Scheepers 2005; Treib 2014; Hernndez and Kriesi 2016; Baute, Abts and Meuleman 2019). Many studies have shown, in particular, that social inequalities both within and between countries matter when understanding pro-European and Eurosceptic attitudes (e.g., Kuhn, van Elsas, Hakhverdian and van der Brug 2016; Ritzen, Wehner and Zimmermann 2016; Kriesi and Pappas 2015; Dotti Sani and Magistro 2016; Schaff 2019; Lauterbach and de Vries 2020). Additionally, scholars tend to converge in the conviction that the various crises and the growing divisions between privileged and non-privileged countries and citizens are contributing to the emergence of a new political cleavage that runs across the EUs member states, even though this cleavage might not be the only one with which the EU is confronted (Kriesi 2016b; Hooghe and Marks 2018; Zeitlin, Nicoli and Laffan 2019). Findings, however, are incomplete and inconclusive and do not take into account the Europe-wide disparities and related perceptions among the citizenry that have a direct bearing on the degree of support for national government politics.