The Resilience of Political Criteria in Assessing the Quality of EU Democracy

The influence of the national political and economic setting on public support for the EU is well-established within the public opinion literature (Sanchez-Cuenca 2000, Rohrschneider 2002). In better-performing economies, individuals tend to assess the EU based on political criteria and the perceived democracy deficit at the European level; in struggling economies, the public instead focuses on the EU’s perceived influence on economic conditions (Rohrschneider and Loveless 2010). However, it remains unclear whether these relationships endure over time and how the public’s criteria are affected by transformative political and economic events. Through analyses of different Eurobarometer surveys conducted between 2005 and 2013, this paper examines whether the dynamic relationship between national institutions and EU attitudes have been influenced by the changing political and economic context in Europe.