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During the crisis, support for the EU has declined noticeably in many European Union member states. While previous research on European public opinion has mainly focused on the impact of domestic country- and individual-level factors on public attitudes towards the EU, this paper argues that developments in other EU member states can also have a significant impact on domestic euroscepticism. Specifically, deteriorating economic and fiscal conditions in other member states can lead to concerns in domestic publics about possible negative spillovers on the domestic economy and the ability of the EU to deliver positive economic outcomes. This in turn may lead to rising euroscepticism at the domestic level. The analysis of a panel data set for the EU as a whole and the euro area countries lends support to these arguments by showing that higher unemployment rates and government debt levels in other European countries are systematically related to lower levels of trust in the EU domestically.

International audience ; Élément-clé des traditions politiques et des modes de mobilisation outre-Manche, l'hostilité à l'Union européenne est l'un des enjeux majeurs du référendum organisé le 23 juin 2016. Réactivant une certaine idée de l'exception britannique, l'euroscepticisme offre aussi un prisme aux luttes d'influence que se livrent les différents partis politiques dans la conquête de leur électorat. Cet essai articule les aspects historiques, sociologiques et politiques de l'euroscepticisme made in Britain.

International audience ; Élément-clé des traditions politiques et des modes de mobilisation outre-Manche, l'hostilité à l'Union européenne est l'un des enjeux majeurs du référendum organisé le 23 juin 2016. Réactivant une certaine idée de l'exception britannique, l'euroscepticisme offre aussi un prisme aux luttes d'influence que se livrent les différents partis politiques dans la conquête de leur électorat. Cet essai articule les aspects historiques, sociologiques et politiques de l'euroscepticisme made in Britain.

International audience ; From a rational choice institutionalist perspective, Euroscepticism is little more than a set of preferences by citizens, parties and interest groups about institutional design in Europe. If actors' expect policy outcomes to move closer to their ideal positions as a result of European integration, they will be Euro-enthusiastic (as many centrists are). But, if they feel that policies will move further away from their ideal positions, they will be Eurosceptic (as many extremists are). This simple idea has broad historical and geographical relevance, relating to how actors view the design of multilevel polities, and how these institutional preferences change in response to policy outcomes of the central institutions.

From the candidate country in the EU's 2004 Enlargement with the lowest levels of support for EU membership, the situation in Malta has changed since accession so that all mainstream political parties now support membership. After presenting factors influencing attitudes to Europe, the article analyses party euroscepticism from Maltese independence in 1964 to the present, focusing on the Malta Labour Party. The examination of public opinion focuses on the period before and after the 2003 referendum on EU membership. The significant role of the eurosceptic media is also noted. ; peer-reviewed

This article explores the link between the financial crisis and Euroscepticism at the level of public opinion, building on and developing further the literature on the impact of economic, identity and institutional factors on Euroscepticism. It argues that the economic crisis did not substantially bring economic factors back in as an important source of Euroscepticism, even though the most pronounced increase in Euroscepticism has taken place in the countries most affected by the crisis. By contrast, national identity and political institutions play an increasingly important role in explaining public Euroscepticism.

A comparative analysis of Euroscepticism explores what it means in two nations and what is then articulated in specific newspapers. The theoretical terrain, Italy's and Britain's post-war relationships with the European Union, the countries' media structures and the specific context of Il Giornale (owned by Silvio Berlusconi's family) in Italy and The Times in the United Kingdom (owned by Rupert Murdoch) are mapped out. Some 21 interviews were conducted with relevant journalists and politicians (including reporters covering Europe for the aforementioned) offering further context. A critical discourse analysis of news stories and commentaries then spans the last decade. Although there is some Euroscepticism in Il Giornale , it has historically been localised, yet now seems to be growing in intensity. In The Times , however, the Euroscepticism conveyed is more pervasive and deeper. Its fact-based news can actually be very persuasive – ironically more akin to the commentary-laden news of Il Giornale – as the debate looms ahead of the planned 2017 UK referendum on European Union membership. ; Pre April 2016 so full text not required; file attached is published pdf which is not permitted so am passing metadata only. RVO 27/11/17

A comparative analysis of Euroscepticism explores what it means in two nations and what is then articulated in specific newspapers. The theoretical terrain, Italy's and Britain's post-war relationships with the European Union, the countries' media structures and the specific context of Il Giornale (owned by Silvio Berlusconi's family) in Italy and The Times in the United Kingdom (owned by Rupert Murdoch) are mapped out. Some 21 interviews were conducted with relevant journalists and politicians (including reporters covering Europe for the aforementioned) offering further context. A critical discourse analysis of news stories and commentaries then spans the last decade. Although there is some Euroscepticism in Il Giornale, it has historically been localised, yet now seems to be growing in intensity. In The Times, however, the Euroscepticism conveyed is more pervasive and deeper. Its fact-based news can actually be very persuasive – ironically more akin to the commentary-laden news of Il Giornale – as the debate looms ahead of the planned 2017 UK referendum on European Union membership.

With the Treaty of Lisbon, national Parliaments obtained a direct role in the legislative process of the European Union (EU). When the Commission releases a legislative proposal, each national Parliament has eight weeks to issue a Reasoned Opinion stating that the draft violates the EU principle of subsidiarity if they wish to do so. This article provides context on this so‐called Early Warning System (EWS), and then studies empirically when national Parliaments issue Reasoned Opinions under the EWS. A within‐between panel regression covering all 28 EU countries for 2010–16 leads to novel findings on the issuance of Reasoned Opinions. In particular, there is no robust statistical evidence that variations in public attitudinal euroscepticism in a country affect the number of Reasoned Opinions issued by its Parliament. In contrast, electoral euroscepticism as measured by the election of eurosceptic Parliaments is found to have a strongly significant across‐country effect on the number of Reasoned Opinions.

This study explores the relationship between historical resistance and their relationship to modern-day Euroscepticism. It can be seen that within the European Union, the political orientation of Eurosceptic parties differs, with some political orientations being more popular in some parts of the continent compared to others—Eastern European states tend to have right-wing parties, while many Southern European states having left-wing parties. The author suggests that this is a result of the orientation of the resistance movements to the state's historic authoritarian regime. Case studies were conducted on Spain and Poland—two EU with similar sized area, population, and economies—looking at their respective resistance movements to authorization and their connection to their respective dominate Eurosceptic parties, PiS and Podemos. The author observed clear links and similarities between the tactics, ethos, and rhetoric between these parties and their respective national resistance movements to authoritarianism.

The aim of the chapter is to discuss the idea that the growing of Eurosceptic, or Euro-critical, feelings can even be a sign of vitality in the construction of the European project, although it remains difficult to ignore the risks, as the United Kingdom's recent decision to withdraw from the European Union demonstrates.

The representation of EU debates in the mass media has received comparatively little attention in studies on Euroscepticism, despite criticism on the EU having become mainstream since the early 1990s in particular. Recently, a number of salient crises have brought European politics to the fore like never before. This article presents an analysis of different types of criticism on and opposition towards the EU as present in media at the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2012. Using a four-fold typology, it looks at views about the EU and its policies as present in coverage by quality newspapers in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands. An analysis of 1,085 claims from 454 articles shows that, rather than rejecting integration or EU involvement in certain policies, criticism was predominantly aimed at existing policies and on presenting different policy options.

The logic behind a recent strain of Euroscepticism advocated by Brexiteers presents an empirical puzzle: how can voters from different economic positions publicly demand compliance with rules for fair market competition (Schmidt & Thatcher, 2014)—a key principle of neoliberal ideology—yet use nationalism to socially delegitimate the EU—whose market competition policy became increasingly neoliberal (Buch-Hansen & Wigger, 2010)? This puzzle is especially relevant given the power of nationalist and neoliberal rhetoric to mobilize popular opposition to the EU leading up Brexit (Andreouli & Nicholson, 2018). We dub this form of Euroscepticism 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE) and investigate it empirically. Research on Brexit builds on the Euroscepticism literature that traditionally measures opposition to the EU as an attitude at the individual level (for a summary see Hobolt and de Vries 2016; also Hobolt and Wratil 2015; de Vries 2018). For instance, Hobolt found that support for Brexit "was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism (2016, p. 1259), while others found that ethnic, economic, and regional differences structured attitudinal support for the EU (e.g. Bonikowski 2017; Flemmen and Savage 2017; Gidron and Hall 2017; Laurence et al. 2019)(Carreras, Carreras, and Bowler 2019). However, both the Euroscepticism literature and these recent works investigate Euroscepticism from the perspective of individual citizens' privately held attitudes or voting behavior rather than by empirically analyzing the socially acceptable forms of Euroscepticism citizens encounter, use, and respond to in everyday life. In this article, we investigate socially acceptable—and thus normative—Euroscepticism. Responding to the aforementioned empirical puzzle, we analyze normative 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE). To do so, we must shift our focus from individual British citizens' surveyed pre-Brexit attitudes to social norms that are shared across economic divisions. In our analysis, we investigate this Euroscepticism as it manifests in a 'moral economy'— or popular consensus about moral principles of economic exchange that forms a normative basis of economic action, attitudes, and legitimacy (Thompson 1971; Mau 2003; Svallfors 2006; Sachweh 2012; Koos and Sachweh 2017; Taylor-Gooby et al. 2018). To conduct this analysis, we respond to an important gap in the contemporary literature concerning moral economy in terms of the evolution of normatively based popular outrage against market action. This type of analysis was central to foundational work on moral economy—which stressed the temporal element of moral economies as normative (see, Scott, 1977; Thompson, 1971). Returning to this diachronic comparative approach to moral economy, we study 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' longitudinally as a form of normative market outrage as it developed over time. Our investigation into whether the Euroscepticism of UK citizens can be explained because of the EU's infringement of the nationalist and neoliberal norms at the basis of British citizens' moral economy proceeds in three steps. First, using semi-structured interview data collected right after Brexit (2016 Qualitative Election Study of Britain) we identify popular outrage against the EU as nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism by analyzing how Brexit supporters and opponents socially legitimated their vote. Second, relying on focus group data that predates Brexit by a decade (2005-6 CITAE) we show how the deligitimation of the EU in 2016 can be traced back to shared 3 popular norms regarding EU market action that constitute a moral economy of nationalist neoliberal Euroscepticism. Third, based on our analysis of Celine Belot's semi-structured interview data (1995-6) collected just after the Maastricht Treaty, we identify the beginning stages of this normative anti-EU popular outrage. This final step does not find evidence of a nationalist neo-liberal moral economy, but instead finds what appears to be building blocks of such a moral economy. This three-step analysis then sets the stage for an investigation into this nationalist neo-liberal moral economy as 'normative policy feedback' (Rothstein 1998; Svallfors 2006; Koos and Sachweh 2017)—a perspective that sees moral economy as structured by institutionalized norms of economic exchange. Future work can then investigate this moral economy as a form of policy feedback in order to supplement work on Euroscepticism as structured by socio-economic or ethnic divisions. This paper falls into six sections dealing with the theoretical framework on moral economies, nationalism and neo-liberalism, methodology and data, the three-step analysis and discussion and conclusions.

The logic behind a recent strain of Euroscepticism advocated by Brexiteers presents an empirical puzzle: how can voters from different economic positions publicly demand compliance with rules for fair market competition (Schmidt & Thatcher, 2014)—a key principle of neoliberal ideology—yet use nationalism to socially delegitimate the EU—whose market competition policy became increasingly neoliberal (Buch-Hansen & Wigger, 2010)? This puzzle is especially relevant given the power of nationalist and neoliberal rhetoric to mobilize popular opposition to the EU leading up Brexit (Andreouli & Nicholson, 2018). We dub this form of Euroscepticism 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE) and investigate it empirically. Research on Brexit builds on the Euroscepticism literature that traditionally measures opposition to the EU as an attitude at the individual level (for a summary see Hobolt and de Vries 2016; also Hobolt and Wratil 2015; de Vries 2018). For instance, Hobolt found that support for Brexit "was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism (2016, p. 1259), while others found that ethnic, economic, and regional differences structured attitudinal support for the EU (e.g. Bonikowski 2017; Flemmen and Savage 2017; Gidron and Hall 2017; Laurence et al. 2019)(Carreras, Carreras, and Bowler 2019). However, both the Euroscepticism literature and these recent works investigate Euroscepticism from the perspective of individual citizens' privately held attitudes or voting behavior rather than by empirically analyzing the socially acceptable forms of Euroscepticism citizens encounter, use, and respond to in everyday life. In this article, we investigate socially acceptable—and thus normative—Euroscepticism. Responding to the aforementioned empirical puzzle, we analyze normative 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE). To do so, we must shift our focus from individual British citizens' surveyed pre-Brexit attitudes to social norms that are shared across economic divisions. In our analysis, we investigate this Euroscepticism as it manifests in a 'moral economy'— or popular consensus about moral principles of economic exchange that forms a normative basis of economic action, attitudes, and legitimacy (Thompson 1971; Mau 2003; Svallfors 2006; Sachweh 2012; Koos and Sachweh 2017; Taylor-Gooby et al. 2018). To conduct this analysis, we respond to an important gap in the contemporary literature concerning moral economy in terms of the evolution of normatively based popular outrage against market action. This type of analysis was central to foundational work on moral economy—which stressed the temporal element of moral economies as normative (see, Scott, 1977; Thompson, 1971). Returning to this diachronic comparative approach to moral economy, we study 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' longitudinally as a form of normative market outrage as it developed over time. Our investigation into whether the Euroscepticism of UK citizens can be explained because of the EU's infringement of the nationalist and neoliberal norms at the basis of British citizens' moral economy proceeds in three steps. First, using semi-structured interview data collected right after Brexit (2016 Qualitative Election Study of Britain) we identify popular outrage against the EU as nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism by analyzing how Brexit supporters and opponents socially legitimated their vote. Second, relying on focus group data that predates Brexit by a decade (2005-6 CITAE) we show how the deligitimation of the EU in 2016 can be traced back to shared 3 popular norms regarding EU market action that constitute a moral economy of nationalist neoliberal Euroscepticism. Third, based on our analysis of Celine Belot's semi-structured interview data (1995-6) collected just after the Maastricht Treaty, we identify the beginning stages of this normative anti-EU popular outrage. This final step does not find evidence of a nationalist neo-liberal moral economy, but instead finds what appears to be building blocks of such a moral economy. This three-step analysis then sets the stage for an investigation into this nationalist neo-liberal moral economy as 'normative policy feedback' (Rothstein 1998; Svallfors 2006; Koos and Sachweh 2017)—a perspective that sees moral economy as structured by institutionalized norms of economic exchange. Future work can then investigate this moral economy as a form of policy feedback in order to supplement work on Euroscepticism as structured by socio-economic or ethnic divisions. This paper falls into six sections dealing with the theoretical framework on moral economies, nationalism and neo-liberalism, methodology and data, the three-step analysis and discussion and conclusions.

There is an established connection between neoliberal British austerity welfare reforms that began in 2010 and British citizens' dissatisfaction with the EU leading up to Brexit. However, scholars have yet to analyze how British citizens delegitimated the EU in the context of Brexit or if these delegitimations were linked to neoliberal EU integration policy. Using abduction, we responded to these two gaps through a longitudinal qualitative investigation of Euroscepticism in the UK from 2005 until the months following Brexit in 2016. We discovered the existence of a moral economy of Euroscepticism that was a hybrid of neoliberal and nationalist ideology. Our study provides evidence that British citizens' delegitimations of the EU—both pre-and post-Brexit—stemmed from this hybrid moral economy. Furthermore, building on the "normative policy feedback" literature, we found that the illegitimacy of the EU–and the legitimacy of Brexit–among British citizens stemmed partially from neoliberal policy reforms.