A Too Complicated Europe? Lack of Information and Parties' Cues in Citizens' Europeanism. A Heuristic Process

The paper describes the conditions under which citizens’ Europeanism is influenced by parties’ stances on the European integration process. Under which conditions, therefore, are political elites more likely to play a leading role in shaping the attitudes of public opinion towards the EU? The focus is on a heuristic process: the European Union is a political system that people can perceive as distant, compared with the national one, because of its complex functioning and of the less direct influence that citizens have on it; therefore, it is likely that people lack the relevant information for autonomously constructing their own idea of the integration process and, because of this, they rely on their preferred party’s stance on EU.

The paper tests the above statements through different steps: first, it assesses the public’s need for cognitive shortcut comparing the influence that the parties have on different dimensions of its attitudes towards the EU. Following Easton, the comparison is between a more affective and general (and therefore less cognitive demanding) support for the EU, and a support directed towards specific European policies that requires a higher cognitive effort. Secondly, given that the need for heuristics is related to a general lack of political information, the paper analyzes the relation between the strength of parties’ cues and citizens’ knowledge about the European Union.