'All hands on deck' or separate lifeboats? Public support for European economic solidarity during the Covid-19 pandemic

What are the sources of public support for international aid in times of crises? This paper investigates the determinants of public support for the EU Covid-19 aid package ('NextGenerationEU', NGEU), the largest aid package in EU history. Using what is to the best of our knowledge the firs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of European public policy 2023-06, Vol.30 (6), p.1092-1118
Main Authors: Bauhr, Monika, Charron, Nicholas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Crises
Cues
Decision making
Elites
endorsement cues
European solidarity
European union
Foreign aid
Globaliseringsstudier
Globalization Studies
Governance
Pandemics
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)
Public Administration Studies
Public opinion
Redistribution
Short term
Sophistication
Statsvetenskap (exklusive studier av offentlig förvaltning och globaliseringsstudier)
Studier av offentlig förvaltning
Subsets
survey experiment
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Summary:What are the sources of public support for international aid in times of crises? This paper investigates the determinants of public support for the EU Covid-19 aid package ('NextGenerationEU', NGEU), the largest aid package in EU history. Using what is to the best of our knowledge the first EU-wide study of public opinion on the Covid-19 rescue package, we first establish that public support for within-EU redistribution is influenced by long-standing factors such as ideology and citizen identities, corroborating previous literature. Next, our vignette survey experiment shows that short-term shifts in support for the rescue package are driven mostly by elite endorsement cues rather than information about the precise terms of aid or amount. We also find that the role of elite endorsement cues varies across different subsets of the population depending on their level of political sophistication, national level attachment and country context. Conversely, the effects of policy details about the aid package are more mixed. Thus, in the face of multidimensional decision-making in times of crises, national institutions are a key catalyst of moving short-term support for policies of international solidarity. We discuss how our findings have implications for democratic governance and accountability in the EU.
ISSN:1350-1763
1466-4429
1466-4429
DOI:10.1080/13501763.2022.2077809