Integrating Indifference: A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of European Integration [Paperback]

Integrating Indifference explores the various faces of citizens indifference, from fatalism, to detachment, via sheer indecision.Have European citizens become increasingly Eurosceptic over the last two decades, turning their backs on European integration? Though many journalists, politicians and academics argue that they have, this book suggests that reactions to European integration cannot be reduced uniquely to a rise in Euroscepticism, but that indifference and ambivalence need also to be brought into the picture when studying EU legitimacy and its politicisation. Drawing on new evidence from survey data from eight founding member states, and focus groups conducted in francophone Belgium, France and Great Britain, Integrating Indifference explores the various faces of citizens indifference, from fatalism, to detachment, via sheer indecision. This book adopts a pioneering mixed-methods approach to analysing the middle-of-the-road attitudes of ordinary citizens who consider themselves neither Europhiles nor Eurosceptics. Complementing existing quantitative and qualitative literature in the field, it opens up new perspectives on attitudes towards European integration.ContentsList of Figures and Tables viiAcknowledgements xiIntroduction 1Chapter One: Contextual Analysis of Successive Approaches to EuropeanLegitimacy and to Citizens Attitudes 17Chapter Two: Revising the End of the Permissive Consensus 45Chapter Three: Focus Groups as a Microscope 81Chapter Four: Revisiting Framing Europe 107Chapter Five: Neither Eurosceptic nor Europhile: The Median European 151Chapter Six: Conclusion: Integrating Uncertainties 175Appendices 189Bibliography 217Index 231Virginie Van Ingelgom is a postdoctoral researcher F.R.S.  FNRS at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain-Europe (UCLouvain) and an associate research fellow of the Centre for European Studies (Sciences Po Paris). Her dissertation  from which this book has grown  was awarded the Theseus Award for Promisinlƒ¾