Joris Melman at the ECPR's virtual joint sessions

Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, this year's ECPR Joint Sessions was held virtually 14-17 April 2020. Joris Melman took part with a paper on public opinion on the euro and what it tells us about the EU's legitimacy.

About the ECPR Joint Sessions

The ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops were established in 1973, and remain one of the major highlights of the world's political science calendar. Each year, the event attracts more than 400 scholars from across the globe at all stages of their career. Consisting of around 30 Workshops, each with no more than 15 carefully selected participants, topics are precisely defined and discussed intensively for four full days. The result is a thorough and fruitful critique of research, which often results in the publication of acclaimed multi-authored books, and in the formation of new research groups.

This year's joint sessions, initially scheduled to happen at Sciences Po in Toulouse, took place remotely. For Joris Melman, whose paper was accepted for the workshop 'Whither Identity? National Identity and Political Behaviour', the exceptional circumstances allowed for written comments to be circulated and discussed among participants.

Beyond support: What public opinion on the euro tells us about the EU’s legitimacy

Joris Melman, PLATO PhD researcher (ESR9), ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo

Abstract

While the euro is argued to be more and more bound up with the future of European integration, it at the same time has come to be heavily contested at the level of national governments and in media debates. As such, the legitimacy of the euro has come under close scrutiny. However, it is less clear how tensions around the euro play out at the level of citizens. With a majority of empirical research focusing on levels of public support using targeted polls, much is unknown on the grounds for such attitudes, their intensity, how they fit into their larger political understanding, and hence their meaning in terms of legitimacy. In response, this paper proposes an approach focusing more on the content of attitudes. Following this argument, it present the results of a series of focus groups conducted in the Netherlands, France and Italy focusing on a particular element of European integration: the euro. A first, intuitive analysis of these results shows that despite a politicization of European politics at non-citizen levels, EU politics and the politics of the euro in particular are for citizens still too complex, distant and enmeshed in a general sphere of ‘abstract politics’ to form an active stance on. This nuances recent claims on the EU’s dependence on public attitudes.

When: 17-20 April 2020
Organiser: European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR)
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ECPR Joint Sessions 2020

Published May 27, 2020 7:06 PM - Last modified Sep. 16, 2020 3:10 PM