indirect effects of eurosceptic messages on citizen attitudes toward domestic politics

Indirect Effects of Eurosceptic Messages on Citizen Attitudestoward Domestic Politics

AARON J. ABBARNO1 and GALINA M. ZAPRYANOVA2

1 University of Pittsburgh. 2 Mannheim Centre for European Social Research

AbstractDoes criticism of the European Union (EU) by elites cultivate support for democratic values amongordinary citizens? All Eurosceptic messages are critical of European integration; they do not allvilify similar aspects of the European Union. This article proposes a framing model of the effectsof Euroscepticism on citizens’ domestic political attitudes. EU critiques that are framed in terms of‘democratic deficit’ lead citizens to consider which political values are desirable in democraticsociety and may promote support for liberal democratic norms among citizens exposed to thesemessages. Eurosceptic rhetoric is built into framing experiments that vary the content ofEU-critical messages. Subjects in the United Kingdom and Bulgaria are randomly exposed to a‘cultural threat’ or ‘democratic deficit’ criticism of the EU. Both Eurosceptic frames reduce supportfor integration, but subjects exposed to the ‘deficit frame’ more strongly embrace liberal demo-cratic values. Under certain conditions, Euroscepticism may carry benefits for representativedemocracy.

Introduction

Public opinion now plays a prominent role in political contestation over the EuropeanUnion. The ‘permissive consensus’ (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970) that once allowedEuropean integration to proceed with tacit public approval has been replaced by a ‘con-straining dissensus’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2009) in the form of vocal public opposition tothe European Union (EU). Eurosceptic actors – media, parties and politicians that arehostile to the EU – stoke these passions for political gain, and it is widely accepted thatcriticism of the EU by elites cultivates opposition to European integration among ordinarycitizens (for example, Vliegenhart et al., 2008; De Vreese, 2004, 2005).

However, the consequences of how Eurosceptic actors criticize European integrationare not well understood. Anti-EU rhetoric is no longer only the hallmark of the politicalfringe. It is also transmitted by the political mainstream through a variety of messages. Onthe one hand, Euroscepticism is a major component of the ‘new politics’ (Hooghe et al.,2002) of Europe, where elites leverage issues of national identity, immigration andmulticulturalism to portray European integration as a threat to the nation-state and itscultural traditions. On the other hand, claims that the EU is undemocratic – its policy-makers unaccountable and its institutions remote – are increasingly common, as areconcerns that powerful Member States impose their favoured policies on weaker stateswithout deference to public opinion. All Eurosceptic messages are critical of Europeanintegration; they do not all vilify similar aspects of the European Union. It is important to

JCMS 2013 Volume 51. Number 4. pp. 581–597 DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12025

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© 2013 The Author(s) JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA

scrutinize more carefully the content of elite-generated messages about the EU and theirpotential consequences for European citizens.

This article introduces a framing model of indirect effects of elite Euroscepticism oncitizens’ political attitudes. We argue that the specific issues elites emphasize whendisparaging the EU lead citizens to think differently about those same aspects of domesticpolitics. Framing promotes specific interpretations of political issues and raises the impor-tance individuals attribute to particular considerations when forming their opinions. Effec-tive anti-EU message frames emphasize issues relevant to the national political context;they should not only directly suppress support for European integration, but also influenceattitudes toward the domestic policies and values they implicate. Claims that the EU posesa cultural threat to Member States may also shape what immigration policies citizensdesire at home. And Eurosceptic messages that frame the EU as anti-democratic mayaffect citizens’ support for liberal democratic norms and procedures in their domesticpolitical systems. By questioning the quality of EU-level democracy, these messages raisecitizens’ awareness of how to think about democracy and what kinds of institutionalnorms and political values are desirable for a healthy democratic society.

To evince these claims, we build Eurosceptic rhetoric into framing experiments thatvary the content of EU-critical messages. Subjects in the United Kingdom and Bulgariarandomly receive ‘cultural threat’ or ‘democratic deficit’ frames of the EU and theirpost-treatment support for European integration, democratic norms and procedures, andrestrictive immigration policies are measured. Both Eurosceptic frames reduce supportfor integration, but subjects more strongly oppose immigration only in the ‘threat con-dition’ and more strongly support democratic norms and procedures only in the ‘deficitcondition’.

Our findings contribute to the literature in two ways. First, the majority of research onmass–elite linkages in Europe focuses on the direct consequences of elite Euroscepticismfor citizen support for European integration, rather than its indirect consequences for valuesand attitudes that are not explicitly related to the EU. By focusing on the latter, weempirically assess the prevalent assumption that Euroscepticism is a negative phenomenonand demonstrate that, under certain conditions, Eurosceptic rhetoric may have positiveconsequences for representative democracy. Second, our study points to important newdirections for European public opinion research. The economic crisis has brought proposalsfor deeper European integration into greater tension with public concerns about thelegitimacy of supranational government and the European Union in general. Criticisms ofthe EU on grounds that it is insufficiently democratic are on the rise, and we expect this trendwill continue as European policy-makers consider deeper integration as the most viablesolution to the ongoing financial crisis. It is increasingly important to understand howEurosceptic elites disparage the EU and how their rhetorical choices matter.

I. Eurosceptic Rhetoric and Citizen Attitudes toward European Integration

European public opinion research consistently finds that Eurosceptic messages depresscitizen support for deeper and wider European integration (for example, Vliegenhart et al.,2008; De Vreese, 2004, 2005). A top-down model of cue-taking from media and politicalelites is the main explanation for short-term changes in these attitudes (for example,Wessels, 1995; Ray, 2003; Hobolt, 2007). Eurosceptic messages cast the EU in a negative

582 Aaron J. Abbarno and Galina M. Zapryanova

© 2013 The Author(s) JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

light and raise the importance individuals attribute to factors known to drive Euroscepticpublic attitudes, such as the perceived costs associated with further integration and theerosion of national cultures due to loss of sovereignty and increased immigration.

Two elements of political and media elite messages about the EU matter for citizenattitudes toward European integration: message direction and message content. Europeanpublic opinion research primarily emphasizes the former. The majority of research onmass–elite linkages in Europe focuses on the direct consequences of elite ‘valence frames’for citizen support for European integration. Valence frames carry an evaluative aspectthat depicts integration in a positive or negative light (for example, De Vreese andBoomgaarden, 2003). In a well-documented environment of low public knowledge aboutspecific EU institutions and policies (Hobolt, 2007), valence frames provide simplisticdirectional cues that help citizens evaluate their preferences for European integration. Thebasic finding of two decades of research is that political communications that frameEuropean integration in terms of its benefits increase public support for European inte-gration, while messages that frame it in terms of costs, risks or cultural threats lowersupport for European integration (for example, Gabel and Scheve, 2007; Medrano, 2003;Schuck and De Vreese, 2006; De Vreese 2004, 2005).

Less is known about the effect of different types of negative frames on citizens’broader political beliefs. Yet there are important reasons to examine variation in Euro-sceptic message content. Euroscepticism is no longer a fringe position among Europeanpolitical elites. It has entered the mainstream in several ways, ranging from scapegoatingthe EU to fend challenges to failed policies (Pierson and Castles, 2007) and win votes bypoliticizing integration (Adam and Maier, 2011), to incorporating xenophobic and nation-alist rhetoric into policy platforms to compete with right-wing and populist parties innational elections (Bale et al., 2010). Indeed, Euroscepticism is a central element of the‘new politics’ dimension of European politics, which may affect the structure of politicalcompetition to an even greater extent than the traditional left–right dimension (Hoogheet al., 2002; Hooghe and Marks, 2009). Therefore, it is important to take stock of thecontent of Eurosceptic messages and assess whether, in addition to direct effects on publicattitudes toward European integration, Eurosceptic rhetoric carries indirect influence overpolitical beliefs that are not explicitly related to the EU.

II. Eurosceptic Message Frames and Their Indirect Effects

We identify three broad types of Eurosceptic frames utilized by political parties to fuelanti-EU sentiment and ask how two of these may be consequential for citizens’ broaderpolitical attitudes. The first, and increasingly common, Eurosceptic message portrays theEU as a threat to national culture. Cultural threat frames take many forms and differ intheir degree of hostility toward out-groups, but generally express explicit opposition tomulticulturalism. Such messages depict immigrants and/or national minorities as danger-ous to national identity and sovereignty and indict European integration for facilitatingthe erosion of the cultural and economic well-being of the host nation. Although culturalattacks on European integration are a staple in many populist and right-wing parties’repertoires (Szczerbiak and Taggart, 2008; De Vries and Edwards, 2009), they increas-ingly have entered the mainstream – albeit often in subtler forms – as Christian democraticand liberal parties attempt to attract voters toward the political centre (Kriesi, 2007).

Indirect effects of Eurosceptic messages 583


From the Front National in France, which first mobilized simmering anti-immigrantsentiment and incorporated it into the country’s political discourse, to the Dutch Party forFreedom (PVV), which recently set up a website soliciting complaints against immi-grants, cultural rightists have found a niche in all European party systems. Mainstreamparties hesitate to publicly condemn such strategies for fear of alienating voters; someeven borrow from the populists’ anti-immigrant discourse. Most mainstream parties metthe PVV’s anti-immigrant website with a ‘deafening silence’, but the Socialist Partyleader acknowledged that he ‘understood the sentiment’ expressed on the website (TheEconomist, 2012). Similarly, several European leaders made headlines by supportingGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2010 pronouncement that multiculturalism hasfailed and that too little has been required of immigrants in terms of assimilating intonational cultures (Siebold, 2010).

The second broad type of Eurosceptic message consists of a more procedural, institu-tional critique of how the EU functions as a political system. These democratic deficitframes warn that European integration undermines the quality of national democracies byforcing upon citizens policies in whose formulation they have had little input. Theintricate multi-level governance system in which supranational policy-makers interactwith national and local agents (Hooghe and Marks, 2001) provides Eurosceptic actorswith an opportunity to portray supranational elites as stripping decision-making powerfrom common citizens and granting it to an unelected, bureaucratic body such as theEuropean Commission. They often point to the lack of referendums, or their reluctant use,even on crucial EU legislation. Democratic deficit frames also cite low public knowledgeon EU issues to question the legitimacy of policies enacted with little popular input. Atbest, critiques of this type call for extensive reforms of EU structures and processes beforefurther integration can take place.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) exemplifies this strategy for framingEuropean integration while calling for complete withdrawal of the United Kingdom fromthe EU. A similar approach characterizes the Austrian Freedom Party, whose MEPdeclared in 2007 that the EU ‘has nothing in common with the conception of a Europe offree and sovereign states’ and derided the ‘Brussels syndicate’ for attempting to impose itsConstitution on the people of Europe (Mölzer, 2007). Italy’s Lega Nord, while taking amore moderate approach towards integration in general, has recently strengthened itsEurosceptic rhetoric and voiced concerns that EU institutions are not responsive tocommon citizens (Vasilopoulu, 2011). The Belgian Vlaams Belang similarly accuses theEU of being excessively bureaucratic.

Cultural threat and democratic deficit criticisms of the EU are equivalent as Euroscep-tic ‘valence frames’ insofar as they both cite European integration as a source of a MemberState’s social and political ills. However, they differ considerably as ‘emphasis frames’because they promote different definitions, constructions and interpretations of Europeanintegration (Gamson, 1992). Emphasis frames stress the relative importance of particularconcepts to judging attitudes and beliefs towards an issue or idea; they modify the salienceof particular beliefs when individuals formulate opinions toward a particular attitudeobject (Nelson and Oxley, 1999). Hence, whereas Eurosceptic messages that frameEuropean integration as a cultural threat should lead individuals to privilege beliefs aboutimmigration and/or national minorities when developing opinions about the EU, demo-cratic deficit frames should lead individuals to attribute greater importance to liberal



democratic norms and procedures when adjudicating whether they favour or opposegreater European integration.

Owing to their negative message direction, cultural threat and democratic deficitEurosceptic messages should both increase opposition to European integration. However,they should exert differential effects on peripheral issues implicated by their messagecontent. Insofar as cultural threat frames increase the salience of immigration and nationalcultural erosion, they may also affect public support for cultural policies vis-à-vis immi-grants and national minorities. Similarly, by virtue of their emphasis on democratic normsand procedures, democratic deficit frames may influence support for domestic democraticinstitutions (for example, parliament and legal system), procedures (for example, com-petitive elections) and norms (for example, dissent from the majority), for which the EUis portrayed as harmful. By questioning the quality of EU-level democracy, democraticdeficit frames raise citizens’ awareness of what kinds of institutional norms and pro-cedures are desirable for a healthy democratic system. Indeed, Milner (2000) introducesthe notion that there may be some benefits of Euroscepticism in terms of increasingdemocratic awareness and the ‘critical capacity of citizens’, yet this possibility has notbeen sufficiently elaborated or subjected to empirical testing.

We hypothesize that citizens who are exposed to either type of Eurosceptic message,regardless of its content, will express greater opposition to European integration thancitizens exposed to value-free messages about the EU (European integration hypothesis).This ‘direct effect’ results from the negative valence frame that both Eurosceptic messagesprovide. However, we expect to observe distinct, indirect effects of Eurosceptic messageson the specific issues they emphasize. First, citizens exposed to messages that criticize theEU as a threat to national culture will express greater opposition to immigration andminority rights than citizens exposed to value-free messages about the EU (culturalinclusion hypothesis). Second, citizens exposed to messages that criticize the EU as achallenge to democratic legitimacy will express greater support for domestic democraticvalues and procedures than citizens exposed to value-free messages about the EU (demo-cratic norms hypothesis).

A more nuanced possibility needs to be considered with respect to the democraticdeficit frame. Hypotheses based on framing theory necessarily require individual-levelanalysis. Still, previous literature identifies an important role for the country-level contextin shaping attitudes toward the EU, which may also predict unique indirect effects ofEurosceptic rhetoric. Research on attitudes toward the EU provides strong evidence thatcitizens may use the domestic political context as a proxy for evaluating the EU itself (forexample, Blondel et al., 1998; Petersen, 1998). Rohrschneider (2002) reports that citizensare more likely to view the EU as perilous to democratic quality independently of politicalcommunication if they reside in rooted democratic systems and believe that domesticpolitical institutions represent their interests well. By contrast, citizens from new democ-racies with weaker institutions may be more likely to support the EU on grounds that itssupranational institutions offer representational benefits.

Taking this linkage into consideration suggests non-obvious expectations about theindirect effects of democratic deficit frames. Representative quality of domestic institu-tions should carry a mediating effect on Eurosceptic frames’ influence over support fordemocratic procedures at the national level. Citizens in Member States with low-qualityrepresentative institutions may take solace in messages that frame representation in the



EU as no better. And they may positively re-evaluate their domestic political institutionsand procedures in light of criticism of the EU and the alternatives it offers. By contrast,citizens in Member States with high-quality representative institutions may negativelyre-evaluate their domestic political system in light of democratic deficit critiques of theEU. Citizens exposed to claims that the EU undermines domestic democracy may be morelikely in these contexts to indict domestic political actors as complicit in this process.Hence, we expect Eurosceptic messages that emphasize democratic deficit concerns tocarry ‘healthy’ side effects for democratic norms and procedures only in EU MemberStates with weak democratic institutions (democratic context caveat).

Cultural threat and democratic deficit critiques do not exhaust the list of Euroscepticstrategies for framing European integration; economic criticisms are also now widespread.There is solid evidence that beliefs about costs and benefits of integration influence publicsentiments toward the EU (for example, Eichenberg and Dalton, 1993; Gabel, 1998;McLaren, 2007), and these ‘utilitarian explanations’ of EU support merit special attentionduring the current crisis. However, we exclude them from our present analysis fortheoretical and operational reasons.

Utilitarian messages are straightforward valence frames that depict ‘winners’ and‘losers’ from European integration. As emphasis frames, they are more complex. Eco-nomic message content depends upon each Member State’s economic strength relative toothers, and on economic values and policy preferences that vary with the source of thosemessages. For instance, EU-driven austerity policies can be condemned at once as tooharsh in economically unstable countries and too generous in donor states. Moreover,right-wing Eurosceptics may criticize excessive EU regulation and meddling in thenational economy, while left-wing Eurosceptics may attack the EU for undermining thewelfare state.

On the one hand, this heterogeneity makes it difficult to separate the effects of messagedirection from effects of message content. The secondary effects of economic Euroscepticrhetoric for public opinion are not clear-cut. Even if Eurosceptics universally attributehigh unemployment and high prices to EU policies, most citizens already favour lowunemployment and low inflation at home. Eurosceptic rhetoric is perhaps less likely tochange opinion on issues that enjoy such broad consensus. On the other hand, variation ineconomic message content by party family raises the possibility that these criticisms willcross-cut questions of cultural integrity and democratic legitimacy at the core of culturalthreat and democratic deficit frames. Economic and cultural threat are often tied togetherclosely in citizens’ minds (for example, Sniderman et al., 2004), while the spectre of onecountry’s leadership foisting economic policy onto another without public consent is anexample of democratic deficit. Such overlap means that economic Eurosceptic rhetoricmay not be orthogonal to the cultural and democratic deficit messages we identify above.For these reasons, we plan to address economic Euroscepticism separately in our futureresearch.

III. Case Selection, Data and Design

We designed and implemented original online survey experiments in which subjects wererandomly assigned to different types of Eurosceptic messages. We recruited participantsfrom representative samples of citizens in the United Kingdom and Bulgaria; a total of 651



adults participated in the study (265 in Bulgaria and 386 in the United Kingdom).1 Ourprimary concerns are whether and how individuals relate negative messages about the EUto their national political values and policies. Including wide variation in national contexttherefore permits a difficult first test of peripheral effects of Eurosceptic rhetoric. This is,moreover, a cautious strategy: we bias against evincing such effects in one of our cases.

Bulgaria, in particular, is a difficult case. Despite factors that foment Euroscepticism inBulgaria – for example, the lowest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the EU(Eurostat, 2012), widespread concern with unemployment and the national economy(European Commission, 2012), a proportional system that assists fringe party entry intoparliament – Bulgarians remain among the most positively disposed publics towardEuropean integration in the entire EU (European Commission, 2012) and Euroscepticrhetoric is largely the domain of the political fringe. By contrast, factors that stimulateEuroscepticism in Britain – for example, a mainstream, Eurosceptic governing party anda highly visible UKIP leader in the European Parliament, public disquiet regarding theeconomy (European Commission, 2012) and a thoroughly Eurosceptic print media(Bonneau, 2011) – correspond to the most Eurosceptic public in the EU.

The United Kingdom and Bulgaria also differ in length of EU membership and level ofinvolvement with the EU. Bulgaria is one of the newest Member States and has one of thehighest levels of monitoring and involvement by EU authorities in their domestic politicsthrough the so-called ‘co-operation and verification mechanism’. The United Kingdom hasopted out of several EU initiatives, including the most recent fiscal compact treaty. Thesedifferences suggest that ordinary Bulgarians are more adept than their British counterpartsat tuning out elite Euroscepticism.2 Bulgaria constitutes a difficult case for establishing anyinfluence – direct or indirect – of Eurosceptic rhetoric on public opinion. Moreover, GreatBritain enjoys a longer tradition of liberal democratic government and objectively strongerand deeper rooted institutions of representative government than post-communist Bulgaria.And, on balance, British citizens are more trustful of their domestic institutions relative toEU institutions, while Bulgarians express more confidence in the EU than in their ownpolitical processes and institutions (European Commission, 2012). While these factorsfavour our main hypotheses in Britain and work against them in Bulgaria, they also permita basic test of the democratic context caveat.

IV. Survey Instrument and Experimental Procedures

After completing a brief pre-test survey, participants in each sample were randomlyassigned to view one of three criticisms of the EU – a democratic deficit frame, a culturalframe or a control frame. We based our manipulations on both theoretical considerationsand examination of archetypical rhetoric of well-known Eurosceptics, such as UKIP’sNigel Farage and Geert Wilders of the Dutch PVV. Verbatim quotes and real Euroscepticmedia stories were avoided to ensure that respondents had not already been exposed tothe specific message and that variation is confined only to the manipulation (De Vreese,2004). The full text of each frame is presented in Table OA-1 of the online appendix.

1 In the United Kingdom, we ordered a random sample of the population through the ‘audience request’ feature availablein the Survey Monkey web-software. In Bulgaria, we hired Vitosha Research – a leading market research agency.2 A 2012 poll conducted by the Open Society Institute found that 77 per cent of Bulgarians approve of the co-operation andverification mechanism and want it to continue.



Subjects were invited to provide their opinions on issues currently facing their country.The lead-in to each frame reads: ‘Politicians in [country] have different opinions about theEuropean Union. Recently, one MP posted the following statement to the “Europe Today”discussion forum he holds on his website’. Subjects assigned to receive the democraticdeficit frame learned that the ‘European Union is a dangerous development for democ-racy’ because its leaders are largely unelected, its laws are rarely put to referendums andmany citizens had not even heard of the EU institutions. The cultural threat frame arguesthat the ‘European Union is a dangerous development for culture’ because immigrants cansettle anywhere they wish, even without good chances of ‘fitting in’ smoothly withnational culture, and minorities are given excessive protection by the EU. Finally, subjectsassigned to the control group learned that the ‘European Union is a dangerous develop-ment for historians’ because it is still too soon to tell whether it will have had a lastinginfluence on global affairs.

Following exposure to the frames, participants answered questions that served as ourdependent measures. We randomized the order of these questions to avoid testing effectswith respect to proximity to the manipulation. To capture the direct effect of Euroscepticframes, we asked participants about their support for European integration: ‘Somesay European integration should be pushed further; others say it has already gone toofar. What is your opinion?’ – with higher values coded to express greater opposition tointegration.

To examine the effect of the Eurosceptic frames on domestic cultural issues, we askedrespondents the extent to which they support increasing the number of immigrants in theircountry.3 In Bulgaria, where immigration levels are objectively much lower than in theUnited Kingdom and immigration is a much less salient issue for the public, we askedparticipants instead whether national minorities should be granted the same rights asethnic Bulgarians. While the targets of these negative attitudes may not be equivalent (thatis, immigrants versus national minorities), there is reasonable evidence that these negativeattitudes are equivalent in content and intensity. Nationalist and populist discourse, whenemployed by parties such as the far-right Ataka, assails ethnic minorities rather thanimmigrants (Naxidou, 2012). A 2009 Open Society Institute report on ethnic stereotypingin Bulgaria finds similar stereotypes and intolerance toward Bulgaria’s largest ethnicminority groups and potential immigrant communities from outside the EU (Pamporov,2009). However, since our frames are designed to mirror real statements by politicians,incorporating only immigrant discourse would not be a verisimilar representation ofBulgarian party politics on cultural issues. Given the low levels of immigration to Bulgariaand the politicization of ethnic minorities as the ‘significant other’ for the majoritypopulation (Hajdinjak and Kosseva, 2012), selecting immigration attitudes in the UnitedKingdom and attitudes toward minorities in Bulgaria as dependent variables gives a morecomparable estimate of underlying opinion trends toward multiculturalism in its respec-tive manifestations.

‘Support for democratic norms and procedures’ is a multidimensional concept thatrepresents, among other things, support for individual freedoms; for regular, competitiveelections; and diffuse support for domestic political institutions. Our dependent measureis an index of several indicators of these dimensions. To tap support for multipartism,

3 On these scales, higher values denote greater opposition to immigration and minority rights.



we asked respondents the extent to which they agreed that ‘democracy cannot functionwithout political parties’ and ‘democracy would benefit if a single political party ruledthe country’. To assess attitudes toward individual freedoms, subjects reportedtheir level of support for freedom of dissent through protest and freedom of speechfor all political organizations. Finally, respondents rated the extent to which they per-sonally trust political parties, the parliament and the legal system. We averaged theseresponses into an index of overall support for democratic norms and procedures(a = 0.73).

Well-known personality, attitudinal and demographic traits undergird beliefs about theEU, immigration and democracy. We control for these factors through several items, towhich subjects responded in a brief pre-test survey.4 First, psychological closed-mindedness has been tied to hostility toward immigrants and out-groups (for example,Stenner, 2005) and generally depresses support for liberal democratic values (for example,Sniderman, 1975). We operationalize closed-mindedness as dogmatic thinking – thepropensity to interpret political issues and contexts in rigid, ‘black versus white’ terms(Rokeach, 1960). Respondents indicated their level of agreement that: (1) ‘An insult toyour honour should never be forgotten’; (2) ‘There are two kinds of people in this world:good and bad’; (3) ‘A group cannot exist long if it puts up with many different opinionsamong its own members’; and (4) ‘Compromise is dangerous because it usually leads tothe betrayal of your own position’. We created a dogmatism index (a = 0.68) where highervalues indicate greater closed-mindedness.

Second, we controlled for several dimensions of subjects’ pre-existing attitudes towardthe EU. We combined respondents’ average confidence in the European Commission andEuropean Court of Justice with their perception that EU membership provides ‘egocen-tric’ benefits to them as individuals into an index of EU support (a = 0.84), with highervalues representing greater overt support for the EU. We captured implicitly favourableEU attitudes with a vote intention measure to assess whether respondents support knownEurosceptic political parties and a separate measure of the degree to which respondentsself-identify as European. We also controlled for respondents’ self-reported knowledgeabout EU institutions and politics.

Third, we measured several attitudes that could directly influence responses to ourimmigration and democratic norms dependent variables. We controlled for respondents’national political context evaluations with the question, ‘On average, how satisfied are youwith the way democracy works in [country]?’ and employed two items to measure pre-testsupport for multipartism and individual freedoms, respectively: the extent to whichrespondents agree that competition between the political parties strengthens democracy;and that ‘it is better to live in an orderly society than to allow people so much freedom thatthey become disruptive’. To control for attitudes toward cultural pluralism, respondentsindicated the extent to which they believe ethnic diversity weakens a society. Finally, wecontrolled for respondents’ gender, age, education and frequency of political discussion.

4 Subjects completed all questionnaires in a single sitting. To mitigate testing effects, we split the pre- and post-testquestionnaires into separate studies with unique introductions, instruction sets and debriefing details. This strategy helps tocredibly divorce pre- and post-test content and reduces the degree to which subjects might infer the experiment’s intent fromits basic structure. For full details on experimental procedure, question wording and frame texts, please refer to the onlineappendices.



V. Democratic Deficit, Cultural Threat and the Consequences ofElite Euroscepticism

We first hypothesize that Eurosceptic messages, regardless of whether they emphasizethreat posed by the EU to national democracy or national culture, will increase oppositionto European integration. The first two columns of Table 1 show that both cultural threatand democratic deficit criticisms of the EU increase opposition to European integrationrelative to the control group, with differences significant at the 0.05 level. These resultscomport with a large body of European public opinion literature, which reports thatnegative valence frames tend to suppress support for further European integration. Thissuppressive effect holds in two very different country contexts with respect to aggregateEurosceptic patterns, suggesting that elite rhetoric is consequential regardless of pre-existing individual-level and aggregate trends in Euroscepticism. Importantly, our findingsalso suggest that the content of Eurosceptic messages does not necessarily determinewhether they are noxious for public attitudes toward the EU – additional analysis ofvariance reveals that differences in opposition to integration across treatment groups arenot significant at the 0.10 level (results not shown).

By contrast, we expect disparities in Eurosceptic message content to influence indi-viduals’ attitudes toward the issues and policies emphasized by different types of Euro-sceptic rhetoric. The issues Eurosceptic messages emphasize to sway attitudes towardEuropean integration will increase the importance that individuals attribute to thesefactors when formulating their preferences. Since two of the most common issues high-lighted in Eurosceptic messages – cultural integrity and democratic quality – are alsoprominent political issues in their own right, we expect EU-critical rhetoric to exertindirect influence over public beliefs about these issues.

Our second hypothesis is that citizens exposed to cultural threat Eurosceptic messageswill exhibit greater opposition to immigration or, in the case of Bulgaria, national minorityrights, following exposure to these frames. The middle two columns of Table 1 reveal thatthis is indeed the case in both countries. Differences across treatment and control groupsreach significance at the 0.10 level in both samples, although the effect is substantivelymuch larger in Bulgaria. For cultural threat messages, this pattern is robust to the intro-duction of several control variables – including subjects’ underlying belief that ethnicdiversity tends to weaken their societies, national as opposed to European identification,right-wing political party affiliation and psychological dogmatism. Importantly, however,no significant differences between control subjects and democratic deficit treatment sub-jects emerge. In Bulgaria, exposure to cultural threat Eurosceptic messages increasesopposition to national minority rights (b = 0.241, SE = 0.144), while democratic deficitframes have no effect (b = 0.096; SE = 0.141), while only British subjects who receivedthe cultural threat Eurosceptic frame oppose immigration to a greater degree (b = 0.063,SE = 0.036) than the control group.

Evidence for our third, democratic norms hypothesis is less straightforward. Weposited that Eurosceptic messages that emphasize concerns over ‘democratic deficit’ – inparticular, that the EU is unrepresentative, its leaders unaccountable and its institutionsremote – would increase the importance that individuals attribute to democratic qualitywhen evaluating prospects for further integration and, in turn, lead citizens to re-evaluatedemocratic quality in their own countries. However, while exposure to democratic deficit



Tabl

e1:

Dir

ect

and

Indi

rect

Eff

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ofE

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ure

toD

emoc

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Defi

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and

Cul

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ames

Opp

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tion

Supp

ort

for

dem

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tic

norm

s†

Uni

ted

Kin

gdom

Bul

gari

aU

nite

dK

ingd

omB

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ria

Uni

ted

Kin

gdom

Bul

gari

a

Trea

tmen

tef

fect

sD

emoc

ratic

defic

itfr

ame

0.30

1(0

.152

)0.

272

(0.1

47)

0.03

1(0

.038

)0.

096

(0.1

41)

-0.1

97(0

.111

)0.

130

(0.0

67)

Cul

tura

lth

reat

fram

e0.

392

(0.1

59)

0.54

2(0

.144

)0.

063

(0.0

36)

0.24

1(0

.144

)-0

.089

(0.1

12)

0.09

0(0

.066

)E

Uat

titu

des

EU

supp

ort

-0.7

26(0

.069

)-0

.253

(0.0

78)

0.00

0(0

.018

)-0

.239

(0.0

83)

0.03

9(0

.055

)0.

121

(0.0

30)

EU

know

ledg

e-0

.062

(0.0

54)

-0.0

23(0

.067

)-0

.034

(0.0

14)

-0.0

22(0

.060

)0.

114

(0.0

42)

0.03

0(0

.025

)A

nti-

EU

part

yID

0.16

2(0

.107

)-0

.193

(0.1

38)

0.01

3(0

.028

)0.

127

(0.1

22)

-0.0

33(0

.080

)0.

141

(0.0

52)

Nat

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frames increases opposition to integration in both countries, the effect of these emphasisframes on support for democratic norms and procedures, in the last two columns ofTable 1, differs considerably across contexts. Bulgarian treatment subjects exposed todemocratic deficit frames express significantly greater support for democratic norms andprocedures than control subjects. By contrast, the relationship between democratic deficitcriticisms of the EU and support for democratic norms and procedures in the UnitedKingdom is negative and significant at the 0.05 level. Among both country samples, theresults are robust to a bevy of controls, including respondents’ dogmatism, pre-testsupport for multiparty competition and pre-test preference for individual freedom oversocial order – three major correlates of democratic norms support.

This pattern largely reflects our democratic context caveat: the indirect effect ofdemocratic deficit Eurosceptic frames is mediated by the strength of domestic politicalinstitutions. In Bulgaria, where democracy continues to develop, where corruptionremains problematic (for example, Noutcheva, 2008) and where the public generallysupports the European Union, exposure to Eurosceptic rhetoric may lead individuals topositively re-evaluate their national political norms and institutions against an EU alter-native that Eurosceptics portray as ‘equally poor’. In the United Kingdom, by contrast,where democracy is deeply rooted, institutions are broadly representative and the EU isscarcely embraced by the public, elite messages suggesting the EU harms these tradi-tions may lead individuals to negatively re-evaluate their political norms and institutions– as complicit in creating the conditions that erode democratic quality, or as damaged asa result.

VI. A ‘Healthy’ Euroscepticism?

On the face of it, it would seem that Eurosceptic rhetoric can cultivate support fordemocratic norms and procedures in embattled political contexts that need them the most.Scholars widely agree that democratic institutions cannot operate effectively or longendure without broad public support for democratic norms and procedures (Sullivan andTransue, 1999). Recent authoritarian backslides in Hungary and Romania clarify just howfragile democracy in post-communist Europe can be. If Euroscepticism can help concre-tize the attitudinal foundation upon which fledgling democracies develop, then it does notdamage the EU without at least serving some good.

Is this effect truly salutary? Increasing support for democratic institutions and pro-cedures in countries where they are dysfunctional or otherwise inadequate may not be anet-positive outcome. At a minimum, we ought to know whether the individuals who aremoved by democratic deficit frames support previously supported or lamented theirdomestic system. If citizens who are previously unsatisfied with the low quality ofdomestic democratic system express greater support for its institutions, norms and pro-cedures following exposure to Eurosceptic messages, then perhaps democratic deficitframes of European integration bolster subjective favour for objectively deficient domesticdemocratic systems. This would not be a healthy side-effect.

To assess this possibility empirically we examine in Table 2 the moderating effect ofsatisfaction with democracy on deficit frames’ influence on support for democratic normsand procedures. The results are somewhat heartening. In Bulgaria, the main treatmenteffect is negative, but insignificant at conventional levels. This suggests that individuals



who are previously critical of how democracy operates in Bulgaria are not necessarilymore likely to support problematic institutions after exposure to Eurosceptic messagesthat frame the EU as a poor alternative source of democratic representation – that is,democratic deficit frames do not have a mobilizing effect. They do, however, exert agalvanizing effect on individuals who carried positive evaluations of democracy inBulgaria into our experiment. Among these individuals, the positive and significantinteraction term indicates that democratic deficit criticisms of the EU increase supportfor democratic norms and procedures at the domestic level.

A different pattern once again characterizes respondents in the United Kingdom.Among those subjects, democratic deficit frames promote two mobilizing effects. Asrepresented by the main treatment effect, exposure to this sort of Eurosceptic messageincreases support for institutions and multiparty competition among individuals who werepreviously dissatisfied with the quality of democracy in the United Kingdom. However, italso decreases support for democratic norms of institutional trust and procedural norms ofmultiparty competition among individuals who expressed satisfaction with British democ-racy prior to the experiment.

On balance, Eurosceptic messages framed in terms of the EU’s deficient democracyhave mixed indirect effects. They increase subjective support for objectively well-functioning institutions among citizens in long-standing Member States who previouslyheld reservations about the way democracy works at home. However, this positive effectof Eurosceptic messages emerges only where it is least needed. Diffuse system support inthe United Kingdom is high; few among those who are least satisfied with how theirdemocracy works would wish to do away with its institutions. Yet in new Member States

Table 2: Moderating Effect of Democratic Satisfaction on Democratic Deficit EuroscepticMessage Frames’ Effect on Democratic Norms and Procedures

United Kingdom Bulgaria

Treatment 0.333 (0.163) 0.353 (0.305)Treatment ¥ democratic satisfaction -0.113 (0.047) 0.187 (0.093)Democratic satisfaction 0.170 (0.037) -0.011 (0.176)Individual liberties support 0.214 (0.028) -0.083 (0.054)Multipartism support 0.125 (0.025) 0.102 (0.058)EU support 0.156 (0.027) 0.187 (0.081)Anti-EU party ID 0.096 (0.045) 0.118 (0.124)Closed-mindedness -0.017 (0.036) -0.088 (0.067)EU knowledge 0.039 (0.023) 0.019 (0.053)Political discussion 0.061 (0.025) 0.029 (0.063)Education 0.059 (0.029) 0.267 (0.119)Gender -0.044 (0.042) -0.124 (0.128)Age 0.023 (0.009) 0.023 (0.045)Constant 0.660 (0.238) 1.087 (0.741)

Adjusted R2 0.689 0.353Observations 202 117

Source: Authors’ own calculations.Notes: Entries are OLS regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. Boldfaced coefficients significant atp � 0.10.



whose institutions may lack quality and where attitudinal prerequisites to democracymay not be fulfilled, Eurosceptic messages may galvanize support for inadequate systemswithout simultaneously mobilizing calls for improvement.

Conclusions

Previous research finds that negative framing of European integration by elites directlysuppresses public support for the EU. This article demonstrates that two common typesof Eurosceptic messages also carry tangible consequences for citizens’ attitudes towardsdomestic politics. First, our results confirm that Eurosceptic rhetoric – regardless of itscontent – exerts a direct, dampening effect on support for European integration. Thateither Eurosceptic message suppresses support for the EU poses problems for Europeanintegration. As mainstream political parties strategically adopt some Eurosceptic rhetoricto win contested elections, Eurosceptic notions will reach more people and may serve toincrease public opposition to the EU and hinder integration prospects in the short run.Where public information about supranational policies is low, elite frames do matter,regardless of whether they oppose integration on matters of cultural or democratic norms.Second, the analysis reveals important indirect effects of different Eurosceptic messages.Cultural Eurosceptic frames decrease support for multiculturalism as manifested in atti-tudes toward immigration and minority rights. And Eurosceptic message frames thatbemoan democratic deficiency at the EU level also carry consequences for the legitimacyof national democracies.

Whether these indirect effects are salutary or noxious depends in part on countrycontext and on individuals’ prior attachments to democracy. Exposure to democraticdeficit critiques of European integration has a systematic effect on subjects’ attitudestowards domestic institutions and democratic procedures, but this effect is not symmetricacross countries. In the United Kingdom, democratic deficit criticisms of the EU leadcitizens to question key democratic norms and procedures, such as support for individualfreedom over social order and the virtues of multiparty competition, while in Bulgariathey generate greater confidence in these norms and procedures. However, the suppressiveeffect of democratic deficit rhetoric on support for democratic norms and procedures inthe United Kingdom is evident only among individuals who hold positive evaluations ofdemocracy prior to treatment; those individuals who were least satisfied with democracyin Britain were most prepared to embrace it after learning that the EU offers an inadequatealternative. Given the global trend of declining trust in political systems (for example,Dalton, 2004), Eurosceptic actors in the United Kingdom may unintentionally exacerbateor alleviate this trend, depending on the distribution of democratic satisfaction and thereach of democratic deficit messages about the EU.

The opposite pattern characterizes Bulgarian subjects, whose satisfaction with democ-racy at home is galvanized by elite messages that criticize democracy at the EU level.While it is indeed reassuring to see robust positive effects of democratic deficit frames oncitizens’ support for democratic procedures and representative institutions in recentdemocracies, the normative implications may not be so straightforward. Does Euroscep-ticism in new democracies boost system support and hence create the much neededattitudinal environment for good democratic governance, or does it hinder the develop-ment of critical attitudes that could promote reforms of weak institutions? Further



research is no doubt required to answer this question and refine our theoretical frameworkfor understanding the domestic consequences of Eurosceptic messages.

While this article presents new evidence that different types of Euroscepticism exertsystematic effects on people’s attitudes towards domestic democracy and cultural policies,it also raises many new questions. The contextual differences we found between Bulgariaand the United Kingdom need to be examined in a broader comparative manner. Wetheorized that the unequal strength of democratic institutions leads publics in new and oldMember States to perceive the relationship between domestic and EU-level governancedifferently. However, it is not possible to isolate a country-level causal effect using a sampleof only two cases. Therefore, a larger comparative study could illuminate contextual-levelcausal mechanisms that may condition the individual-level patterns we uncover here.Moreover, an important caveat to our findings is that we still know little about the peripheraleffects of economic-based criticisms of the EU. Such messages likely also reflect concernsabout both cultural threat and democratic deficit, and message content may depend heavilyon partisan sources. This raises important questions about how European integration isassailed and which parties can successfully move public opinion on issues directly andindirectly tied to the EU. Further research in a broader, cross-national context wouldprovide a more thorough picture of the relationship between elite Euroscepticism andpublic opinion. This article provides only the first step toward a framework for understand-ing the broader consequences of elite Euroscepticism. Europe’s multi-level governancesystem carries multi-level consequences for democratic legitimacy. We urge that scholarsmore carefully scrutinize how individual, national and EU-level factors interact in ways thatshape support both for domestic democracies and for European integration.

Correspondence:Aaron J. AbbarnoDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Pittsburgh4600 Wesley W. Posvar HallPittsburgh, PA 15260, USAemail: [email protected]

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Supporting Information

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indirect effects of eurosceptic messages on citizen attitudes toward domestic politics

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