EUROPEANS AND THE EUROPEAN-COMMUNITY - THE DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC SUPPORTFOR EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

Europeans evaluate the European Community (EC) according to its econom ic performance, political salience, and role in international relation s. During the last two decades their measured attitudes toward Europea n integration warmed especially when inflation rates fell, as the EC s hare of the country's trade expanded, when EC elections and referenda increased attention to the community, and to some extend during period s when East-West relations were relaxed. Europeans did not vary their support according to their countries' shares of the Brussels budget. T hus, notwithstanding Denmark's 1992 rejection of the Maastricht treaty and the end of the cold war, recent EC reforms that increase monetary stability. intra-European trade and political attention arc all likel y to maintain or increase citizen support for the EC. These findings r esult from a model that blends comparative political economy with inte rnational relations in one of the first applications of pooled cross-s ectional and time-series analysis to the comparative study of public o pinion.