European Solidarity at a Crossroads? Citizens’ Attitudes and Political Behaviors in Europe

Abstract

Many observers have voiced their concerns that solidarity is at risk in Europe. Given this wider context, we are urgently in need of sound empirical analyses examining the various dimensions of solidarity in Europe. Public debates focus on solidarity in many respects but there is to date a lack of empirical evidence to draw upon to inform them. In this context, this special issue emerges from research conducted in the European Union–funded research project TransSOL devoted to the study of European solidarity (“European Paths to Transnational Solidarity in Times of Crisis”) running from 2015 to 2018. The project received funding under the Horizon 2020 program (Grant Agreement No. 649435). Christian Lahusen at the University of Siegen coordinated the overall project and Maria Grasso at the University of Sheffield coordinated the population survey for the project. The TransSOL survey includes approximately 2,000 respondents from each of the eight countries of the project (total N ~ 16,000): Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In the context of the project, the aim of the cross-national survey was to build a comparative dataset that would allow us to answer our theoretically relevant questions of interest on European solidarity such as those discussed in this introduction and in the other articles of this special issue. The articles in this special issue all analyze the data from this original survey dataset to shed systematic light into key theoretically-driven research questions on various aspects of European solidarity.