What kind of EU do citizens want? Reform preferences and the conflict over Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACT How to reform the EU in times of fundamental conflict over the future of European integration? Although Europe’s future is fiercely debated, we still know little about what kind of EU citizens want and how their reform preferences relate to the emerging transnational cleavage. We argue that there are two kinds of reform trajectories. First, any changes that touch upon the vertical and horizontal balance of power should be highly contested, as people’s EU reform preferences depend on their position in the conflict between Eurosceptics and Europhiles. Second, reforms that do not activate this fundamental conflict, such as reshaping the EU’s input, output, and throughput legitimacy dimensions, should be favored by citizens across the board. Analyzing original data from conjoint survey experiments with 12,000 respondents in six EU member states largely corroborates our arguments. These findings carry important implications for the political debate about reforming the EU.