How European Citizens Understand the Economy

This book argues that the European public sphere functions to help citizens understand complex economic issues and discuss them meaningfully across borders. Through original research conducted on citizens perceptions of European economic issues, it explores a mechanism that allows people to make sense of such complex issues - national anchoring - and shows that the way issues are politicized today in a national public sphere will shape citizens' understandings of novel issues tomorrow. The book demonstrates that debates in the European public sphere spread knowledge to the population just as national debates do, thus allowing transnational deliberation to function in the EU and potentially advance a European identity. The book thus draws optimistic conclusions with regard to EU legitimacy, with the European public sphere functioning rather well and problems of complexity and compatibility seeming less pronounced than often expected in public opinion research and European studies. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of public opinion, European studies, political attitudes, austerity politics and more broadly to political science, sociology and social psychology.