Das Vertrauen in die Europ��ische Union - Determinanten und Dimensionen im Vergleich alter und neuer Mitgliedsstaaten

Diplomarbeit aus dem Jahr 2007 im Fachbereich Soziologie - Politik Majoritäten Minoritäten Note: 16 Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) (Frankfurter Institut für Transformationsstudien (FIT)) Sprache: Deutsch Abstract: Popular opinion of the European Union is becoming increasingly important for its legitimacy. This is due to the transfer of competencies from the member state to the European level resulting in politicization. The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate citizens' trust in the EU as a political entity. According to the theory of political support originally developed by David Easton trust is a central orientation toward a political system. While rather diffuse in nature it simultaneously depends considerably on specific attitudes. As for the research design the position of trust - diffuse or specific - will first be identified with the instrument of the principal components analysis using the 1999 wave of the European Values Survey and the Eurobarometer 62 (2004). Secondly twelve hypotheses on possible determinants of attitudes toward integration will be tested in a series of standardized multiple regressions run separately on fourteen countries. As the results show trust in the EU is not well internalized. In many countries it is impossible to clearly attribute it to one of the factors of political support. However in Western und Southern Europe the EU seems to be perceived as simply another regime institution hence a part of the domestic political system. In contrast in Britain and Eastern Europe a general European factor emerges showing that respondents separate the national political system from the foreign European sphere. Across Europe the three necessary factors shaping trust in the EU are as follows: trust in national parliament satisfaction with EU democracy and trust in the social security system. Support of the nation state and satisfaction with its systemic performance boost the respondents' tru