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Abstract.  This article examines why the electorate in German‐speaking Switzerland has consistently opposed joining the European Union. It first shows that the region scores highly on a range of general correlates of negative attitudes towards European integration. However, this is compounded by more idiosyncratic factors, above all by the German‐speaking Swiss' peculiar political and cultural position. On the one hand, as Swiss they belong to a state that lacks a single national culture, is defined in civic and institutional rather than cultural terms, and therefore appears more vulnerable in the face of the European Union's own civic and institutional ambitions. On the other hand, as Swiss‐Germans, they belong to a cultural and linguistic region whose cultural boundaries are relatively fragile and lack institutional backup and articulation. Caught in this identitive double bind, the Swiss‐German electorate has developed an underlying sense of vulnerability and a desire to limit exposure to the outside world.

This paper investigates whether EU redistributive policies improved the public attitude toward European integration, both in terms of public opinion and in terms of political preferences. We build a new dataset combining data from the European Social Survey, different data sources for political parties' stances and transfer records from EU institutions. We focus on the regional Cohesion Policy, within which the Convergence Objective program offers a quasi-experimental framework that allows us to single out these effects by means of a regression discontinuity approach. Results show that EU transfers have mitigated the rise of Eurosceptic attitudes and reduced the political consensus for anti-EU parties in long-time recipient regions. We estimate that increasing the regional per capita EU transfers by 1000€ over the 2000-2014 period reduces the share of Eurosceptic individuals by about 8 percentage points and voters' support for anti-EU parties by 10 percentage points. The effects are homogeneous across different socio-economic groups, including the most disadvantaged ones. Other attitudes that are often associated with Euroscepticism (i.e. anti-trade and anti-immigration stances) are not substantially affected by EU regional transfers.

In the last decade, support for European integration has declined and euroscepticism has risen. Using Easton's concept of political support, this paper studies the interrelationship between euroscepticism and European identity. Starting from the hypothesis that identity as a central element of political community serves as a buffer against system-threatening euroscepticism, I develop a hierarchical model of euroscepticism. My results demonstrate that there are three types of eurosceptics, two of which hold opposite implications for European integration - demand for improvement vs a halt to or even an abolishment of European integration. The difference between both types is that the first group has a European identity, while the other does not. I conclude that the large size of the eurosceptic camp challenges European integration. Adapted from the source document.

The project of European integration has undergone a succession of shocks, beginning with the Eurozone crisis, followed by reactions to the sudden growth of irregular migration, and, most recently, the Coronavirus pandemic. These shocks have politicised questions related to the governance of borders and markets that for decades had been beyond the realm of contestation. For some time, these questions have been spilling over into domestic and European electoral politics, with the rise of "populist" and Eurosceptic parties. Increasingly, however, the crises have begun to reshape the liberal narrative that have been central to the European project. This book charts the rise of contestation over the meaning of "Europe", particularly in light of the Coronavirus crisis and Brexit. Drawing together cutting edge, interdisciplinary scholarship from across the continent, it questions not merely the traditional conflict between European and nationalist politics, but the impact of contestation on the assumed "cosmopolitan" values of Europe