Abstract
How does the public form preferences about differentiated integration (DI)? The literature on mass-elite linkages offers two perspectives: top-down, political elites cue the public, or bottom-up, political elites react to public preferences. This paper presents novel data on the DI preferences of governments, political parties, and citizens to empirically substantiate that - at least up to now - DI preference formation is largely a top-down process. DI is generally of low salience for governments, political parties, and citizens, but is crucially shaped by important moments of collective bargaining at the EU level that force governments to take DI positions. We suggest that due to the pressure to achieve bargaining outcomes in moments of crisis, governments are forced to adopt more pragmatic positions on DI than opposition parties. These positions then serve as important cues for their respective voters. Our results have important implications for the study of EU preference formation.
Co-authored with Stefan Telle, European University Institute, Lisanne de Blok, Utrecht University, and Lorenzo Cicchi, European University Institute.
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