Public attitudes towards European integration in the Czech Republic

• Název práce v češtině: Postoje veřejnosti k evropské integraci v České republice
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Public attitudes towards European integration in the Czech Republic
• Klíčová slova: Evropská integrace, postfunkcionální teorie, postoje veřejnosti, difuzní podpora, Česká republika
• Klíčová slova anglicky: European integration, postfunctionalist theory, public attitudes, diffuse support, Czech Republic
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2021/2022
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra sociologie (23-KS)
• Vedoucí / školitel: prof. PhDr. Ing. Ondřej Císař, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 19.09.2022
• Datum zadání: 19.09.2022
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 18.09.2023 09:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Areál Jinonice, B216, 216, seminární místnost ISS
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 01.08.2023
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 18.09.2023
• Oponenti: PhDr. Ing. Petr Soukup, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

This analysis will utilize data concerned with topics related to EU, which are provided namely by the Eurobarometer survey. Eurobarometer gathers information about the state of public opinion and other political or social attitudes consistently over time and provides access to long-term data (Eurobarometer 2022). The analytical part of the thesis will be working with regression analysis, which is a type of analysis where is predicted the level of dependent variable – outcome, from the level of independent variable – predictor. We can distinguish several models within the regression analysis, for example linear models and logistic models, that are generally estimating parameters of the model based on the data. Linear models are modelling linear relationships using continuous variable as dependent and continuous or binary variables as independent. Logistic models are modelling probability of an event using categorical variable as dependent and continuous or binary variables as independent. There is a debate about the best way to operationalize the support for EU (Guinaudeau, Schnatterer 2019), which will be taken into account for the further analysis and the choice of the most suitable statistical elaboration.

Seznam odborné literatury

1. Akaliyski, P., Welzel, C., & Hien, J. (2022). A community of shared values? Dimensions and dynamics of cultural integration in the European Union. Journal of European Integration, 44(4), 569-590.
2. Bakker, R., Jolly, S., & Polk, J. (2012). Complexity in the European party space: Exploring dimensionality with experts. European Union Politics, 13(2), 219-245.
3. Boomgaarden, H. G., Schuck, A. R., Elenbaas, M., & De Vreese, C. H. (2011). Mapping EU attitudes: Conceptual and empirical dimensions of Euroscepticism and EU support. European Union Politics, 12(2), 241-266.
4. Garry, J., & Tilley, J. (2009). Attitudes to European integration: investigating east–west heterogeneity. European Integration, 31(5), 537-549.
5. Grande, Edgar a Swen Hutter. 2016. “Introduction. European Integration and the Challenge of Politicisation.” In: Hutter, S., Grande, E. and Kriesi, H. (eds). Politicising Europe: Integration and Mass Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Guinaudeau, I., & Schnatterer, T. (2019). Measuring public support for European integration across time and countries: the ‘European mood’indicator. British Journal of Political Science, 49(3), 1187-1197.
7. Hloušek, V. (2007). Koncept konfl iktních linií a problematika evropské integrace. Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 43(02), 361-378.
8. Hobolt, S. B., & De Vries, C. E. (2016). Public support for European integration. Annual Review of Political Science, 19(1), 413-432.
9. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2009). A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British journal of political science, 39(1), 1-23.
10. Hutter, S., & Kriesi, H. (2019). Politicizing Europe in times of crisis. Journal of European public policy, 26(7), 996-1017.
11. Jackson, D., & Jolly, S. (2021). A new divide? Assessing the transnational-nationalist dimension among political parties and the public across the EU. European Union Politics, 22(2), 316-339.
12. Kutiyski, Y., Krouwel, A., & van Prooijen, J. W. (2021). Political extremism and distrust: Does radical political orientation predict political distrust and negative attitudes towards European integration?. The Social Science Journal, 58(1), 1-16.
13. Toshkov, D., & Krouwel, A. (2022). Beyond the U-curve: Citizen preferences on European integration in multidimensional political space. European Union Politics, 14651165221080316.
14. Van Elsas, E., & Van Der Brug, W. (2015). The changing relationship between left–right ideology and euroscepticism, 1973–2010. European Union Politics, 16(2), 194-215.
15. Vobruba, G., & Skovajsa, M. (2002). Evropská unie v krizi z rozšíření Meze dialektiky evropské integrace a expanze/The Enlargement Crisis of the European Union Limits of the Dialectics of Integration and Expansion. Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 535-552.

Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce

The topic of European integration is an important topic in social sciences, and for sociology is becoming relevant ever more. The project of European integration formally culminated by the Maastricht Treaty that established the European Union (EU) in the nineties of the last century. The integration process still continues and strengthens the mutual economic, political, social and cultural connection of most of the European continent. From its beginning after the Second World War, its main purpose was to ensure political stability and economic prosperity of its members, and the project was originally handled mainly by the political elites (Vobruba 2002). But especially after the creation of EU, although the roots can be found even earlier, the topic of European integration is becoming increasingly politicised. It means that the political elites can no longer rely on “permissive consensus” of the citizens (Hooghe, Marks 2009). It is becoming a salient issue for various political actors; citizens express their public opinion both by support and by protest, and political parties can utilize the topic for the mobilization of their voters (Grande, Hutter 2016). Consequently, the European integration became a new issue with the power to structure political conflict, similarly to classical dimensions of socioeconomic and sociocultural left and right (Bakker, Jolly, Polk 2012). Although the EU, or more precisely the preceding projects of European integration, were primarily political and economic in nature, the EU is intensifying its focus on being also a community of shared values such as freedom, democracy, tolerance or equality, which are reflected in the values of the citizens of the member states, although to a various degree (Akaliyski, Welzel, Hien 2022).

When it comes to the research of this topic, the focus is usually on the positions of political parties, but increasing attention is given to the citizen attitudes towards European integration, as the European integration project is increasingly influenced by the public support (Hobolt, de Vries 2016). There is growing research on the factors influencing attitudes towards European integration and also on its connection towards other political attitudes and values. One of the commonly examined relationships is to left-right ideology. It has been argued that we can see a pattern where the support for EU is linked with the economic left and liberal attitudes, and Euroscepticism with the economic right and conservative attitudes. However, there are several specifics to this generalization. It has been pointed out that in relation to the left-right scale, the support for EU generally declines on both ends of the political spectrum, with more extremist parties and voters having more distrustful and Eurosceptic attitudes than those closer to the centre (Kutiyski, Krouwel, van Prooijen 2021), but other evidence suggests that the inverted-U-shaped support is not straightforward and varies across countries (Toshkov, Krouwel 2022). According to other researchers, the relationship also changes over time, where for the Western countries, the Euroscepticism began to be related with the political right only after the Maastricht Treaty, and before that the right was associated with the support for European integration (van Elsas and van der Brug 2015). It was distinguished that this relationship is valid mostly for North-western European countries, but in the Southern Europe, the support for European integration is associated more with the economic right, and in the case of Central and Eastern European countries, the attitudes toward European integration have similar pattern as in North-western Europe, but the opposite pole to the support for European integration has different connotations to it (Hutter, Kriesi 2019). Some researchers also present evidence that more useful than left-right scale are transnational-nationalist attitudes, that help to predict voting in European parliament elections better than both economic and cultural left and right (Jackson, Jolly 2021). This evidence further confirms that the attitudes towards European integration are becoming an issue in itself, not easily inserted into existing brackets, and it is meaningful to explore them further. When it comes to operationalization of the attitudes towards European integration, it is possible to measure either the support for EU or Euroscepticism, which are often considered as the same phenomena, only oppositely oriented. However, some studies suggest that the attitudes towards EU are rather not a simple one-dimensional concept, but we can distinguish several dimensions which are reflected in the overall attitude, such as the affection or the identification with the EU, and also the evaluation of its performance, competencies, or benefits (Boomgarden et al. 2011). The aim of this thesis will be to describe and explore the attitudes towards European integration specifically in the Czech Republic and their development in the last three decades. It will seek to extend the body of sociological literature on the attitudes toward European integration, guided by previous research when constructing a model for the Czech Republic.