Differentiation, dominance and fairness in the European Union: Bringing in the citizens’ perspective

This article analyses whether and how fairness considerations affect citizens’ support of European Union (EU) policies and integration. While past literature has revealed that perceptions of procedural and substantive fairness impact on public opinion at the level of the nation state, we know less a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of political research 2024-11, Vol.63 (4), p.1622-1641
Main Authors: HEERMANN, MAX, LEUFFEN, DIRK, SCHUESSLER, JULIAN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accession
Autonomy
Citizens
Cooperation
differentiated integration
Differentiation
Dominance
European Union
Experiments
Fairness
International cooperation
Nation states
Political gridlock
Political integration
Procedural justice
Public opinion
Winners
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Summary:This article analyses whether and how fairness considerations affect citizens’ support of European Union (EU) policies and integration. While past literature has revealed that perceptions of procedural and substantive fairness impact on public opinion at the level of the nation state, we know less about the fairness‐support nexus when it comes to international cooperation. We here make use of the case of differentiated integration (DI) to experimentally dissect normative and utility‐oriented considerations in the evaluation of EU policies. DI as an instrument to overcome heterogeneity‐induced gridlock has been linked to both autonomy and dominance, and it can generate winners and losers in the EU. Our experiments reveal that citizens largely support DI. However, they are opposed to forms of DI which impose negative externalities on a subgroup of EU member states. This holds irrespective of the affectedness of citizens’ own member states. We take these findings as a first experimental confirmation that citizens, indeed, care about the fairness of the EU and its policies.
ISSN:0304-4130
1475-6765
DOI:10.1111/1475-6765.12672