Our findings suggest that public preferences regarding European unification do reflect policy, though only as the salience of the domain has increased over time.
The Responsive Public: Issue Salience,
Policy Change,
and
Preferences for European Unification
by
Mark N. Franklin and Christopher Wlezien (University of Houston)
Journal of Theoretical Politics (9) 347-63.
The authors would like to thank Christopher Anderson and Edward Page for data, comments, and suggestions; Daniel Twiggs for help with initial data analysis; and Vanessa Baird and Robert Erikson for helpful comments.
Abstract
One little-noted requirement for the proper functioning of democratic institutions is public responsiveness to policy. A responsive public would adjust its preference for "more" or "less" policy in reaction to what policymakers do. In this paper we set out a theoretical model of how the salience of the issue domain conditions the feedback between policy outputs and public preferences, and we then show how this model can be applied in the European case. In assessing the model we employ data from all Eurobarometer surveys conducted in the 24-year period between 1971 and 1994 together with policy data from the Official Record of the EC/EU. Our findings suggest that public preferences regarding European unification do reflect policy, though only as the salience of the domain has increased over time.
2
One little-noted requirement for the proper functioning of democratic institutions is public responsiveness to policy. There is, after all, little reason to expect politicians to pay attention to what the public wants if the public does not pay attention to what politicians do. A responsive public would adjust its preference for "more" or "less" policy in reaction to policy itself, much like a thermostat (cf. Wlezien 1995). Of course, responsiveness of this kind is to be expected in policy domains that have achieved some degree of popular salience, ones that people consider important. So changes in the salience of issues over time also can be expected to structure the public's responsiveness to policy. But this expectation is hard to test empirically, for while it may be easy to identify policy domains that are or are not salient, it is more difficult to find a policy area in which changes in salience are to be expected on theoretical grounds. European unification, it seems, represents an ideal case, for it began as a foreign policy issue and has evolved into one that has important domestic consequences.
Superficially at least, the interactions we would expect to find between salience and responsiveness seem present in the European policy domain. In the early years attitudes towards Europe were characterized as manifesting a 'permissive consensus' (Inglehart, 1970; Slater 1982; Stavridis, 1992) to integration policies. More recently they have been characterized as demonstrating a 'crisis of legitimacy' (Dinan, 1994; Hayward, 1995; van der Eijk and Franklin, 1996). It seems plausible to assume that the early permissiveness accompanied a generally low level of interest in European affairs, whereas the possible existence of a 'crisis' certainly implies a matter of much greater interest and, indeed, concern. So the European policy arena seems well-suited as a laboratory for assessing the interaction between the salience of a policy domain and public responsiveness to policy outputs in that domain.
In this paper we will propose a theoretical model of 3
how the salience of issue
domains conditions the feedback of policy outputs on public preferences, and then show how this model can be applied in the European case. In assessing the model we employ data from all Eurobarometer surveys conducted in the 24-year period between 1971 and 1994 together with policy data from the Official Record of the EC/EU. Our findings suggest that the model works quite well.
Issue Salience, Policy Change, and Public Preferences
For expository purposes, the public can be conceived of as a collection of individuals distributed along a dimension of preference for policy, say European unification, as in Figure 1. This characterization is not meant to imply that individuals have specific preferred levels of policy in mind, which is difficult to imagine in most policy domains.[1] Rather, the characterization is intended to reflect the fact that individuals differ in terms of, say, the level of unification they prefer, where some want more than others. Let the public preference be represented by the median (P*t) along the dimension, which, in the case at hand, implies a certain "ideal" level of unification.
Now, if the the level of policy (Pt) differs from the level the public prefers, the public will favor a corresponding change in policy, more or less. If P*t is greater than Pt, the public favors more policy than is currently in place.
If policymakers
respond, and provide more -- but not too much more -- policy, e.g., Pt+1 in Figure 1, then the new policy position would more closely correspond to the preferred level. Most importantly, if the public is informed about and responsive to what policymakers do, then the public would not favor as much activity toward Europe in year t+1. In effect, following Wlezien (1995, 1996), the public would behave much like a thermostat, where a departure from the preferred policy temperature produces a signal to adjust policy, and, once sufficiently adjusted, the signal stops.[2]
4
Figure 1. A hypothetical distribution of public preferences for unification Percentage of public
Low
Pt
P*t
Pt+1
High
Level of unification
Such a mechanical conception of the European public may seem far too stylized, especially given the traditional conception of public opinion (Campbell, et al,1960; Converse, 1964; Kinder, 1983). Yet, public opinion has been shown to operate in this fashion in certain policy domains in the United States, such as spending on defence and social programs (Wlezien, 1995).[3] The public, however, does not respond to policy in other domains, including spending on foreign aid and space exploration. Quite simply, the thermostat sometimes is not switched on, and salience may play an important structuring role. For the public to be responsive to policy, after all, people must acquire and process reasonably accurate information about what policymakers do, and this is most likely in policy domains that people consider important. Let us consider how salience may tutor public responsiveness.
To begin with, recall that the thermostatic model implies that the public's 5
preference for more (less) policy -- its relative preference (Rt) -- represents the difference between the public's preferred level of policy (P*t) and policy (Pt) itself. The general model can thus be summarized as follows:
Rt = P*t - Pt.
(1)
Turning to specific policy contexts, the general model implies that for each policy domain j:
Rjt = aj0 + ß1j P*jt + ß2j Pjt + ejt,
(2)
where e
jt
represents the error term. Note that we use beta coefficients in the
equation to take account of variation in coefficients that merely reflect differences in the metric of the variables, both within and across policy domains, which are common in practice (see Wlezien, 1995). Of course, as was suggested above, we expect that the betas themselves vary across domains; in particular, given our interests, we expect that the coefficient for policy, ß2j, varies. And, we expect that this variation reflects the salience of policy domains themselves.
In its simplest sense, salient issues are politically important. People care about these issues and hold opinions about them. Moreover, these opinions are likely to structure party support and voting behavior (see, e.g., Miller, Miller, Raine and Browne, 1976; Abramowitz, 1994; van der Eijk and Franklin, 1996) and form the subject of political debate (Erikson and Tedin, 1994). It follows that, in these issue domains, people are more likely to pay attention to politicians' behavior, as reflected in news media reporting (see, e.g., Brody, 1991) or communicated in other ways (Ferejohn and Kuklinski, 1990). In issue domains that are not salient, conversely, people are not likely to pay attention to politicians' behavior.
The implications for our analysis are fairly straightforward. In salient domains, a 6
relatively large number of people are expected to respond to policy by adjusting their relative preferences downward (upward) when policy increases (decreases). This is not to say that all individuals behave in this way, for, even in those domains that we normally consider to be salient, many people may not respond to policy at all. In non-salient domains, few, if any, people are expected to respond to policy change. These effects sum up and find expression in the coefficient B2j in equation (2): in non-salient domains, where few people respond to policy, the coefficient tends to toward 0; in high salient domains, where most people respond, the coefficient tends toward –1. In theory, therefore, public responsiveness to policy is dependent on the level of salience.
We thus can directly incorporate salience (Sjt) into our equation 2, as follows:
(3)
R
jt
= a
*
+ B
j0
1j
P
jt
+ B
2j
S
jt
P
jt
+ e
,
jt
where Sjt ranges from 0 to 1. Notice that this equation not only implies variation in responsiveness across domains; it also implies variation in responsiveness within domains over time, as salience evolves. When an issue is new and not very salient to the public, B2j is expected to equal zero; as salience increases, however, the coefficient is expected to become increasingly negative.[4] These expectations are clear. Let us now see how the model works in the European case.
The Case of Europe
Applying the model to Europe is easy in principle but harder in practice. We start with the principle, which leads us to imagine that, in the early years of European integration, European publics were largely uninvolved in the process. The basis of the European Economic Community was, after all, a treaty (the Treaty of Rome, 1957) and thus a matter of foreign policy. Parliamentary regimes commonly give 7
considerable freedom to their executives in such matters, and there is evidence that at least until the early 1970s, when the first enlargement of the EEC through the addition of Britain, Ireland and Denmark brought a flurry of publicity, the process of unification continued largely behind the backs of the public (and largely behind closed doors in the European Commission and Council of Ministers). So much was this the case that, writing in 1970, Ronald Inglehart was able to speak of a 'permissive consensus' underlying steps towards European unity (see Slater, 1982:160-167 fo a more detailed analysis).
How long this permissive consensus will have continued is hard to tell a priori, but it seems clear to us that by the time of the Maastricht Treaty it had already come to an end. Conventional wisdom (cf. Urwin, 1995) posits a period of stagnation in European affairs during the late 1970s and early 1980s as Britain held the community to ransom while insisting on a renegotiation of its terms of entry. After 1982, however, when Mrs. Thatcher 'got her money back,' conventional wisdom sees a resumption in progress towards European unity, and an increase in the salience of European affairs leading up to the Single European Market Acts (which were passed in different countries at different times, but which all came into force in June 1987) and continuing until the completion of the SEM in December 1992 (though arguably with a peak of activity in December 1991, at the time of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty).[4a]
Thus, even though we cannot directly measure the salience of European unification over time, there is good reason to suppose that it was quite low in the 1970's and increased markedly through the 1980's. Whether the issue now is more or less salient to Europeans than other issues that drive politics within countries remains unclear, though this is not our primary concern. What matters to us is whether and how the apparent increase in salience has structured public responsiveness to European policy. In order to address these issues, we first need to identify a measure of the public's relative preference for unification and an indicator of the 8
public's preferred level of unification over time.
Public Preferences for European Unification There is a large amount of data on public opinion toward Europe, collected by the Commission of the European Communities (Inglehart and Rabier, 1971-1986; Inglehart and Reif, 1986-1989; Reif and Melich, 1989-1994). At first glance these data might not appear well-suited to our purposes. First, and quite curiously, there is only a very partial series of questions that ask about whether the public wants "more" or "less" than the present level of unification. Specifically, respondents were asked whether the rate of unification should be "speeded up" or "slowed down" in only seven years scattered over the period between 1973 and 1987.
These data, thus, are
of little use for our purposes, though they are informative about public responsiveness, as we discuss below. Second, and more understandably, there are no survey questions that ask what level of European integration people prefer.
What we do have, for most of the period between 1971 and 1994, are responses to two different survey items. One of the items asks about support for unification: "In general, are you for or against efforts being made to unify Western Europe?" The other item asks about support for membership in the EC/EU: "Generally speaking, do you think that (your country's) membership in the Common Market/EC/EU is a good thing?" Although researchers commonly treat these items as essentially the same, the questions are quite different. Moreover, the questions appear to capture different things empirically, as we will see.
Our measure of support "for unification" represents the percentage of people who favor efforts to unify Western Europe, and includes those who are both "somewhat" and "very much" in favor. Our measure of support "for membership" represents the percentage of people who think membership is not a bad thing, and includes those who think membership is a "good thing" and those who think membership is "neither good nor bad."[5] The percentages for each country have been averaged across all member 9
countries, weighted by the populations of each country. The two measures are depicted in Figure 2. Figure 2. Trends in support for unification and support for their country's membership in the EC/EU, 1971-1994 Percent 92.5 For membership
90.0
87.5
85.0
For unification
82.5
80.0 71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
Year
Notice first that support for both membership and unification is quite high throughout the series, and variation over time is confined to a fairly narrow range. The two series also do tend to vary together, at least through the mid-1980's. Thereafter, they start to diverge, with the percentage of the public that supports efforts toward unification leveling off while support for membership continues to drift upward. Both series drop off sharply through the 1990's, though the gap between them continues to widen. The extent to which they move together suggests that there is a common component to the two series as well as one that causes them to progressively diverge. 10
94
It has been pointed out by other scholars that one of these series -- the membership series -- seems to move pretty much in concert with the rise and fall of economic well-being (Handley, 1981; Dalton and Eichenberg, 1991; Anderson, 1995), especially unemployment and inflation (Anderson and Kaltenhaler, 1996). It is as though the public perceives European unification as a luxury that can be afforded when economic times are good and not afforded, or afforded to a lesser extent, when economic times are bad. The pattern is fairly clear in Figure 3, which plots support for membership along with the inverse of a so-called 'misery index,' the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates in the EU member countries, also averaged across countries and weighted by population. The index is inverted so that it appears on the same scale as the membership series; thus, high values correspond with low levels of misery.
Figure 3. Trends in an inverted misery index and support for membership in the EC/EU, 1971-1994 90
For membership
85
80
100 - Misery index 75
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
Year
11
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Our measure of support "for unification" represents the percentage of people who favor efforts to unify Western Europe, and includes those who are both "somewhat" and "very much" in favor. Our measure of support "for membership" represents the percentage of people who think membership is not a bad thing, and includes those who think membership is a "good thing" and those who think membership is "neither good nor bad."[5] The percentages for each country have been averaged across all member countries, weighted by the populations of each country. The two measures are depicted in Figure 2.
Notice first that support for both membership and unification is quite high throughout the series, and variation over time is confined to a fairly narrow range. The two series also do tend to vary together, at least through the mid1980's. Thereafter, they start to diverge, with the percentage of the public that supports efforts toward unification leveling off while support for membership continues to drift upward. Both series drop off sharply through the 1990's, though the gap between them continues to widen. The extent to which they move together suggests that there is a common component to the two series as well as one that causes them to progressively diverge.
As can be seen in Figure 3, from about 1977 onwards the two series move more-orless in step, with a correlation in our data of 0.92. Beforehand, however, the correspondence is less and, if anything, reversed. This disjunction may reflect the accessions to membership occurring during the period, which have a strong influence on public support for Europe (Anderson and Kaltenhaler, 1996). The disjunction, and the increasing correspondence between economic well-being and support for membership, also is what one might expect in a policy domain that is in transition from low to high salience.[6]
In tracking, after 1977, changes in economic well-being, the membership series 12
behaves very much like measures of preferred policy levels in such domains as social welfare, as established in other research (Wlezien, 1995). In that research it was shown that economic upturns are associated with a willingness to afford a higher level of public expenditure whereas economic downturns are associated with the desire for a lower level. In the same way, the European membership measure may tap movements in the desired level of European unification, giving us a possible surrogate for the preferred level of policy, P*. Indeed, the membership series may reflect movements in P* better than do changes in the economy. As we have argued elsewhere (Franklin, Marsh and Wlezien, 1994), not just economic well-being, but general government approval itself likely conditions support for European integration; and it may be that our membership series captures this and other factors better than would economic variables taken alone.
More importantly, there is reason to suppose that the other measure, the unification series, reflects the public's relative preference for unification, at least to some extent. First, the survey question itself asks about support for "efforts to unify Europe," which, seemingly, relates to the direction of unification policy. Efforts to unify Europe, after all, are either moving forward, moving backward, or not moving at all, and we expect that responses to the question should reflect support for the direction (and magnitude) of policy change. Second, the series behaves much as we would expect of a measure of relative preference for unification. As is clear in Figure 2, support for unification tends to follow support for membership and yet begins to diverge at the point at which the various Single European Market Acts inaugurated the policy push that came to be associated with 'project 1992.' This is exactly what we would expect if the measure captured the public's relative preference; indeed, the measure seems to reflect the effects of policy itself, though we stop short of drawing this specific conclusion, at least for the time being. Of course, the measure surely does not perfectly tap the public's relative preference; it probably represents something in between a measure of relative preference for unification and a measure of the preferred level of 13
unification.[7]
To a large extent the question of whether the measures are adequate can be answered with reference to our findings. If they move in the expected directions relative to each other at times that we would expect relative to policy outputs, we will validate our assumptions about the variables at the same time as we validate our expectations about public responsiveness.
Policy Outputs and Public Preferences
Though much has been written about the evolution of European unification, few attempts have been made to quantify policy outputs over time. We rely on the Official Journal of the EC/EU to produce a very basic measure, which represents the sum of the number of lines in the Journal devoted to Regulations and Directives in each year (CELEX, 1995).[8] We omit Decisions since these are clearly devoted to the implementation of existing laws (Thompson 1989:18). This measure of policy outputs is depicted in Figure 4, superimposed on a plot of the difference between the two opinion measures discussed above.
Notice, to begin with, that the measure of policy seems to fit with conventional wisdom (cf. Urwin, 1995). The measure increases during the mid-1970's but levels off later in that decade and remains fairly steady until the mid-1980s, though there is some variation from year to year. The measure jumps sharply thereafter, at the time of the Single European Market Acts of 1987, and remains fairly high through to the end of the series. Thus, while the measure of policy outputs may not be perfect, it does appear to capture general tendencies in European unification over time.
The juxtaposition in Figure 4 of policy outputs with the difference between our two 14
measures of opinion reveals an interesting pattern -- one that fits nicely with our theoretical expectations. Our model implies, it will be recalled, that the public's relative preference reflects the public's preferred level of policy and policy itself, and that the effect of policy varies with salience. By implication, as salience increases the difference between the relative preference and the preferred level of policy increasingly represents policy itself. Thus we expect that our difference series (unification - membership) should be increasingly negatively correlated with the policy series. This pattern is evident in Figure 4. Figure 4. The difference between support for unification and support for membership in the EC/EU plotted with policy outputs,* 1971-1994 Percent 2 Tens of thousands 0
21
Lines of legislation 18
-2
Unification - Membership -4
15
-6
12 Unification - Membership
9
Lines of legislation 71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
Year •
Estimated before 1978.
15
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Through the early 1980s there seems to be little connection between the two series; if anything they appear to move together, though missing data make it difficult to be sure.[9] By the mid-1980s, the two series have begun to move in opposite directions, whereby increases (decreases) in policy correspond with decreases (increases) in the relative support for unification (R=-0.79 after 1982, N=12). This pattern fits perfectly with our theory. The findings are impressionistic, however; to address our expectations more rigorous analyses are required.
Analyzing Public Responsiveness
Recall again that the model described in equation 3 supposes that the public's relative preference for European unification is a function of the public's preferred level of unification and policy itself. The model also supposes that the effect of policy varies, and is dependent on salience. To begin with, however, let us assume that salience is perfect and remains unchanged over time -- that is, the variable St in equation 3 takes the value 1. Accordingly we
Table 1. Support for unification regressions, 1971-1994 Variable Model A Model B Model C --------------------------------------------------------------Constant 18.16 4.15 1.75 (17.44) (14.91) (12.00) Membershipt
0.82*** (0.21)
0.96*** (0.17)
0.98*** (0.14)
Policyt
-0.26* (0.15)
---
---
Policyt*Trend
---
-0.27*** (.07)
---
Policyt*Trend2
---
---
-0.29*** (-0.05)
R-squared Adjusted R-squared
0.47 0.41
0.65 0.61
0.77 0.74
SEE Durbin-Watson
2.13 0.62
1.73 1.16
1.41 1.94
N =20, ***p
