Civic Resources and the Future of the European Union

Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski, Viktoria Kaina, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski, Viktoria Kaina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136257339
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

This book shines new light on the political system of the European Union (EU) by focusing on civic resources as a keystone of the EU's ability to sustain. Less-tangible resources such as trust, solidarity, mutual recognition and citizens' social and political participation have been, until now, largely ignored in the research on European integration.

Due to the fundamental changes to the EU in recent years and the challenges ahead, European citizens have become increasingly critical of a long-lasting unification process in Europe. This volume theoretically and empirically examines how the European citizens themselves may contribute to the long-term effectiveness, legitimacy and endurance of the EU. This book aims to examine the issues associated with the utilization of civic resources by the EU, and the ability of European citizens to develop transnational civic resources. Expert contributors in the field develop a framework to understand and explore the potential of citizens in the uncertain future of the EU.

Civic Resources and the Future of the European Union will be of interest to students and scholars of European Politics and European Union Studies.

Part I
Trust, identity and support for the EU

1
Identification and trust – resources of support for the European Union?

Bettina Westle

Theoretical considerations

There is widespread consent among analysts that the development of the European Union (EU) towards a political system with increasing competences normatively and empirically needs the active consent of its citizens. Yet, unification steps taken in the last years show growing disagreement, as was seen in popular votes and as survey data sow (e.g. McLaren 2004; Scheuer 2005; Deutsch 2006; Westle 2007a; Isernia et al. 2010). Against this background the editors of this book ask for certain civic resources as a possible basis for an ongoing European integration. This chapter explores how far identification and trust as sub-dimensions of collective identity deliver a reservoir of diffuse support, working as a bulwark against system stress in case of deficits in effectiveness and democracy. After defining the question, the available indicators are discussed and their distributions are presented. In the next steps, the relationship between identification and trust is examined. To estimate the potential of identification and trust as resources for an EU in trouble, the links between identity and trust, on the one hand, and diverse aspects of support for the political regime of the EU, on the other hand, in total as well as for dissatisfied subgroups, are analysed and finally conclusions are drawn.

Collective identity and trust are concepts which have experienced an enormous revival in the scientific debate of recent years in different disciplines reaching from philosophy, social-psychology and sociology to political science. Especially in the context of the social identification theory (SIT), the research about social capital (SC), and debates about the EU identity and trust play important roles. Yet, this popularity partly comes at the price of reinventing the wheel and partly of growing heterogeneity of the meanings of these concepts. Therefore, the first step shall be to clarify how both concepts will be used in this chapter.

Leaning on social-psychological concepts, European identity as like national identities can be defined as a social, collective identification of individuals with large-scale reference objects. Such identities consist of a self-image based on the perception of certain commonalities with others. As part of the personal identity, collective identities contribute to individuals’ self-esteem and therefore can become relevant sources of behaviour, for example in order to defend or improve self-concept. According to SIT (Tajfel 1981; Turner et al. 1987), a social identity not only consists of cognitive and affective identification with an in-group, but also of distinction/discrimination against out-groups.

Different concepts of social trust have been developed within the SC approach. One concept, based on the rational choice frame, conceives of trust as a cognitive calculus, often arising in situations of common interests (e.g. Ripperger 1998; Hardin 2006). In contrast, another SC concept sees trust as a moral phenomenon, based on common cultural orientations, and often early socialization, so that trust forms a personality trait of the trusting, widely independent from the trusted objects (e.g. Fukuyama 1995; Uslaner 2002). In between these poles are a variety of different concepts of trust, referring to reciprocity, networks and information about trustworthiness as well as possibilities of sanctions or linked to friendship and feelings of closeness – but all presuppose some perceived knowledge about each other (e.g. Coleman 1988; Putnam 1994, 2000; Offe 1999; Gambetta 2001).

The social-psychological approach to collective identity and the latter concept of trust as a reciprocal relationship between a truster and trustworthiness/trusted are rather compatible with established, older concepts in political science, for example of Deutsch et al. (1957) or Easton (1975). Both describe collective identity as a sense of community, ‘we’ feeling, mutual trust, sympathy and loyalty, identification in terms of feelings of belonging, readiness to cooperate and, finally, as willingness to form or maintain a political community. In later research these broad concepts have often been reduced and systematized along two dimensions (e.g. Niedermayer and Westle 1995; Scheuer 2005): the vertical, which is the identification of the individual with the community, and the horizontal, which is the mutual trust that ties together people of a political community.

Within Easton’s concept of political support and some closely related concepts, which will be used as a frame in the following, identification with a political community and trust between its members are two sub-dimensions of diffuse (value-based and/or affective, enduring) support of the political community. It is assumed that horizontal trust and identification are positively linked, albeit the causal direction between both is open.¹ The aim of this chapter is not to disentangle the determinants of and relationships between identification and trust. Rather, one can formulate the axiom that in an established community, there should be positive links between horizontal trust and identification, which in a process perspective well might reinforce (or erode) each other in both causal directions. Yet, the question whether identity or mutual trust can be a better resource for support of the EU only makes sense in the case that both are different concepts, but could substitute for each other in regard to their function.

Besides, a political community can also be supported in a specific mode, resting on considerations about costs and benefits of belonging to it. The same applies to the two other objects which Easton differentiates within a political system, namely the regime and the authorities. Both of them can be supported either because of their effectiveness (specific) or because of the values they ideally represent (diffuse) and, additionally, because of their performance in realizing these values (diffuse-specific support, see Westle 2007b).

Within Easton’s concept, the three object-levels are distinguished but not thought of as totally independent from each other. Rather diverse spillover effects are discussed. The ones which are of interest in the following are spillovers between the political community on the one hand and the regime and authorities/outputs on the other hand. Such effects again are possible in both directions.² In regard to trust these effects were already theoretically discussed in the context of SC. Thus it is argued that face-to-face contacts as a basis of mutual trust are sparse in large-scale societies. Instead the durability of institutions, which are based on shared values of the members of the community, guarantees the trustworthiness of the fellow citizens (e.g. Offe 1999: 59; Hartmann 2002: 88). This argument has been transferred to the EU, stating that its democratic content gives reason for the trustworthiness of the fellow citizens (Kaina 2006: 123). This argument forms a plausible basis to implement more democracy in the EU before a widespread and resilient European identity exists. Yet, trust in the people of other member countries does not necessarily arise out of face-to-face contacts or of European democratic institutions. Today, information about other countries is easily transported by mass media and thus can create certain feelings of similarity, familiarity and even commonalities with other countries. Thus, trust in the people of other countries can also rest on the knowledge that they support the same democratic values in their own countries as oneself does and have behaved in a peaceful way. Former empirical results about trust also hint to these factors. Thus, for example, Norway and Switzerland receive trust rates by the citizens of EU member countries as high or even higher than those ones of other EU peoples, whereas Eastern European countries in the transition period, countries with severe democratic defects such as Turkey and non-democratic countries such as China or Russia are much less trusted (Westle 2003b; Delhey 2004, 2007a, 2007b).

Thus, in the following the analysis will be restricted to the contrary causal arrow of possible spillover effects, namely the classical argument that collective identity delivers a reservoir of goodwill in cases of shortcomings of the political regime and the outputs of the authorities. If this is the case, one should find not only positive links between identification and horizontal trust but also evaluations of the political regime and outputs. Rather, identity should show its potential as a source of systems support, especially in cases of negative evaluation on the other levels.

Operationalization and structure of the indicators of collective identity

The survey data for the following analyses have been taken from representative samples of the voting population in 16 Western and Eastern European countries in 2007 (Table 1.1). These data deliver indicators of identification and trust as shown in Table 1.2.

The variable ‘European belonging’ comes close to what SIT states as a presupposition for identification, namely the knowledge of belonging to a certain group and its relevance for their own life. Yet this indicator might carry the problem that it says nothing about whether felt consequences are positive or negative. According to SIT, perceived positive consequences should promote identification and negative consequences should injure identification. Thus this indicator seems to carry ambivalent meanings in regard to identity as a dimension of support.

‘Feeling as European 1 and 2’ should catch the self-identification as European. This question has first been asked early in the questionnaire and again some time later in an experimental setting with threat scenarios. The first indicator was designed to catch the usual day-to-day context, the second to catch a situation of gravity.

‘Attachment to one’s own country’ and ‘attachment to Europe’ have already been asked in the Eurobarometer in order to measure the extent of identification with different territorial and political units. Aims were to allow for independent

Table 1.1 Representative samples of the voting population in 16 Western and Eastern European countries in 2007

Country	Country-specific weight (n)	Total weight (n)	Year of EU accession
Belgium	1,004	404	1951
France	1,007	2,295	1951
Germany	1,000	3,315	1951
Italy	1,012	2,303	1951
Denmark	1,000	207	1973
United K...