Overall, more than eight MPs out of ten believe that their countries have benefited from EU membership. However, in six countries masses appear to be more sceptical than elites about the benefits the EU has brought.
The survey was targeted on a sample of representatives in the national parliaments of seven European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Country samples were designed in order to be as most representatives as possible of the actual composition of the national parliaments in terms of partisan affiliation. The survey was conducted between March 2017 and May 2018 adopting the CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviews) method. The infographics show cross-country and cross-partisan distributions of frequencies of the political elites’ attitudes and make mass-elite comparisons that allow us to analyse similarities and differences between the opinions of the representatives and their electorate. It does so by comparing the results of this survey to those of a public opinion survey conducted by the REScEU project in the same seven countries in September-November 2016.
Photo credits Flickr CC: Keskkonnaministeerium / Ministry of Environment of Estonia
This infographic series presents the main results obtained from an elite survey conducted in the framework of the ERC funded REScEU project.
The aim of the survey was to understand MPs' attitudes towards policies and initiatives aimed at strengthening the social dimension of the EU and understand their views about the nature of the multifaceted European crisis.
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«The analysis of the network structure of the online discussion seems to confirm the presence of a double conflict between the different communities we detected, along with the “openness-closure” cleavage. The first divide would pit the Italian-speaking green and purple groups, while the second one would be between the French-speaking orange and yellow groups»