Exposure to European Union Policies and Support for Membership in the Candidate Countries

Abstract

This article examines the relative merits of competing explanations of public support for European Union membership in thirteen Central and Eastern European candidate countries. While noneconomic factors—attitudes toward domestic politics and feelings of social identity—have a consistently strong effect, the impact of human capital is contingent on exposure to the distributive consequences of European integration. The results of an ordered logit analysis of Candidate Country Eurobarometer data are consistent with these predictions. These results suggest a revision of theories of EU support to account for the role of exposure to the consequences of integration in shaping utilitarian judgments.