The structure of citizen attitudes and the European political space

A common concern regarding the viability of institutional reform of the EU is whether European citizens constitute a political community that facilitates democratic governance. One important aspect of this concern is whether public perceptions are structured so as to ease or impede political discourse across Europe. To investigate this question, the authors examine whether the EU mass public organizes its attitudes toward EU policy issues in systematic and meaningful ways. Specifically, they examine whether EU citizens' attitudes across a broad range of policies decided at the EU level are structured consistently with several prominent models of the EU policy space. Using Eurobarometer data, the authors show that citizens' policy positions on EU issues are systematically organized along a single dimension that is different from domestic Left-Right.