Rage Against the System or its Measures? : Polity and Policy related Euroscepticism in Times of Economic Crisis

Abstract: This master’s thesis offers a descriptive investigation of how public Euroscepticism has changed during the economic crisis. By regarding Eurosceptic opinions as positions on a scale as well as differentiating between opposition towards policy (concrete decisions and measures) and polity (the EU as a political system), the results show that overall, European citizens have not only become negative towards how the EU handled the crisis in terms of policy output. Policy opposition also tends to spill over into the polity area, entailing increasing preferences for reducing EU competences and for leaving the union all together. The policy-polity distinction is a perspective on Euroscepticism as opposition, that has largely been set aside in previous research. Furthermore, the paper describes how support for the EU polity and its policies has changed in different member states through a cross country analysis. The results show that there is great and unexpected variation between countries that would be assumed to display a similar development in the light of previous research. In addition, there are similarities between countries that were expected to develop differently. This indicates a limited understanding in this research field of how national factors influence public attitudes towards the European Union. A topic that needs to be investigated further.