Opposition to Enlargement among “New” and “Old” Europeans: The Cases of Post-Communist EU Members and Candidates

Abstract

AbstractAs the European Union (eu) continues to expands “eastward,” we know relatively little about enlargement opinion in post-Communist member states and toward post-Communist candidates’ entries. This article develops comparative explanations of enlargement opinion and examines attitudes toward the entries of post-Communist candidates (as of 2006: Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, and Macedonia). Descriptive and multinomial logit analyses of Eurobarometer data reveal that opposition is less pronounced in post-Communist versus othereumember states and somewhat less pronounced in post-Communist countries that beganeuaccession negotiations earlier. Anti-immigrant sentiment is a consistently weaker predictor of oppositional attitudes in post-Communist versus othereumember states. These and other differences warrant theoretical and empirical attention ineuresearch.