The Euro-indifference of ordinary citizens, another type of resistance to European integration? Empirical and Theoretical Contributions to the study of legitimacy in a multilevel polity

Abstract

Beginning with a brief overview of the literature on legitimacy, support and Euroscepticism(Section I) as point of departure and pointing to some of its shortcomings, this paper aims to reconsider the issue of legitimacy in the specific context of European integration by using as a microscope focus groups realized in Great-Britain, France and Belgium in the framework of the CITAE project4 to address empirically the issue of the deficit of EU legitimacy (Section II). The two major contributions taken out of our focus groups is the need to consider both the multilevel aspect of what is called 'European legitimacy' (Section III) and to focus analysis also on the Euroindifferent citizens who are more and more present in the post-Maastricht period (Section IV). The two last sections (V and VI) will propose to shed a new light on Eurobarometer data in order to get a better understanding of the ways in which the interplay of different political levels in the EU'smultilevel system impacts on Europeans' legitimacy assessments and of their evolution in the three countries studied