Convergent Policies, Divergent Interests:
Accounting for Cross National Differences in the Social Bases of Support for the European Union

By 
Leonard Ray

Department of Political Science
Binghamton University
Binghamton NY 13902-6000
lray@binghamton.edu

* Paper prepared for presentation at the conference on Contestation in the European Union at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill August 30-31 1999.

	Much research on public support for the European Union has explicitly or implicitly assumed that an individual's social characteristics shape her opinion about European integration in the same way regardless of the national context.  This assumption of uniform effects of social variables is built into the regression models commonly employed in the literature. (See Gabel and Palmer 1995, Gabel and Whitten 1997, Dutch and Taylor 1997).  By estimating a single equation for respondents from all EU member nations, cross-national variations in the regression parameters are obscured. 
	The assumption of uniform effects of social cleavages is not without some theoretical foundation.  Several theoretical approaches to the question of public support for European integration lead us to expect relatively similar effects of social characteristics across national contexts.  Ronald Inglehart has long argued that support for European Integration is associated with the general shift towards "post material" values in Western Europe. (Inglehart 1971)  If the nature of post material values is essentially similar across nations, then we should expect a uniform positive relationship between support for the EU and the post materialism scale.  Gabel and Palmer argue that the EU has had similar effects on the economic structures of member nations.  By eliminating controls on cross border migration between member states, the EU has increased competition in labor markets.  Individuals who posses higher 'human capital' (as indicated by educational attainment) can expect to compete better in this new environment than those with lower 'human capital'.  They make a corresponding argument about income, insisting that "EC citizens with higher income levels are also more likely to benefit from EC policies since they prefer low inflation, less public sector spending, and a larger and more open financial market." (Gabel and Palmer 1995:7)  In each case, the magnitude as well as the direction of the effects is assumed to be invariant across nations.
	However, there are strong theoretical reasons to expect cross national differences in the social basis of support for European integration.  The assumption of uniform effects may have led some authors to prematurely dismiss individual characteristics as unimportant (see Bosch and Newton 1995).  If retrospective and prospective processes are involved in citizens' evaluation of the European Union, then cross national diversity in the social basis of EU support is to be expected.  Prospective evaluations will lead to cross national diversity if similar social groups expect to be impacted differently by European integration according to their national location.  The impact of European Integration is expected to differ across member states of the EU because these states enter the process of integration from markedly different starting points.  Several observers and scholars argue that European Integration has led or is leading towards a convergence of policies and conditions in the member nations of the EU.  (see Montanari 1995)  This convergence will be viewed positively in some nations, and negatively in others.  Retrospective evaluations can also lead to divergent orientations of similar social groups if the policies of interest to these social groups have improved in some nations but degraded in others.
	This paper addresses three questions about the relationship between social cleavages and support for the European Union.  Firstly, it examines the extent to which the social cleavages which undergird much of domestic politics in Western Europe can account for variation in support for European integration.  Secondly, it demonstrates the degree to which the impact of social cleavages differs across national contexts.  Thirdly, it attempts to explain these cross national differences as the result of individuals' expectations of policy convergence or their reactions to past policy changes.  
 Social Cleavages in Western Europe
	There is a long tradition in this discipline of describing party systems as reflections of the underlying social cleavages which divide the societies in which they operate.  The system of social cleavages defines the major political issues and conflicts over which actors will struggle, and identifies which types of political parties one should expect to find representing these actors.  The most robust and widely cited classification of social cleavages is a four part typology established by Lipset and Rokkan (1967).  They argue that the party systems of Western Europe have been shaped by the four cleavages of center vs. periphery, church vs. state, urban vs. rural, and owner vs. worker.  The center/periphery cleavage is described by Lipset and Rokkan as a division between the state building core, defined territorially and culturally, and the assimilated periphery.  This cleavage gives rise to regionalist parties with an ethnic and linguistic base.  The church/state cleavage reflects a struggle between the church and secular authority for control over education and regulation of civil institutions such as marriage and divorce.  An urban/rural cleavage divides agricultural interests from those of the industrial urban areas.  Finally, the class cleavage separates the owners of industry from the working class.
	Two more potential fault lines should be added to complete this catalogue of social cleavages.  Many authors working with public opinion or with new social movements have identified a new cleavage alternately called the post-materialist or left-libertarian cleavage.  (Dalton and Kuchler 1990)  This cleavage emerged from the women's, environmentalist, and peace movements of the 1960's and 1970's.  The concern with novel substantive issues and open democratic procedures sets this group apart from the mainstream political forces.
	There is also evidence of a cleavage between individuals living on the margins of society, and those in the mainstream.  Several authors have linked this cleavage to the emergence of new far right parties in France, Germany and Belgium. (Esping-Andersen 1995, Kreisi 1995)  This cleavage is related to the '"core/periphery" distinction drawn by authors such as Galtung (1979) and Hechter (1975)  Their use of the concept of a core/ periphery division should be distinguished from the meaning Lipset and Rokkan attach to their more geographic or cultural concept.  Periphery is here understood in a social sense- as separating those who posses of political, economic, and cultural power from those who do not.  In this view gender, unemployment and spatial location combine with differentials in education, and opportunity to create to a sense of deprivation and exclusion on the part of individuals living at the margins of society whose interests are not protected by prevailing institutions.   I propose labeling this group "socially marginal" in order to clearly distinguish this concept from Lipset and Rokkan's "cultural periphery".
	In order to test the degree to which social cleavages structure attitudes towards the EU, an index of pro EU attitudes was regressed on indicators of these six social cleavages.    The index of support for European Integration was constructed from two questions on the fall 1991 Eurobarometer survey.  Other questions were used as indicators of each social cleavage.  Religiosity combined with religious denomination was used as an indicator for the church/state cleavage.  A measure of regionalism was constructed from two questions about a respondent's attachment to their region and their nation.  Employment in farming and fishing was used to measure the urban/rural split.  Employment in manual work and income levels were included to capture the effects of the class cleavage.  Unemployment, and education were used as indicators for social marginality.  Indicators of the "new politics" cleavage were gender, public sector employment, and postmaterialism. 
	The regression analysis indicates that social cleavages are systematically, though modestly, related to support for the EU.  Table 1 presents the results of 12 country specific regression equations.  This table demonstrates the extent of cross-national variation in the magnitude, and occasionally the direction, of regression parameters.  The overall impact of social cleavages varies greatly from nation to nation, as does the strength of each cleavage.  In Luxembourg, no social characteristic appears significantly related to support for the EU.  In France, Germany, Belgium, and the UK, indicators for four social cleavages are related to EU support.  The overall proportion of  (intra-country) variance explained ranges from 2 percent in Luxembourg to 11 percent in Denmark.  Specific characteristics have different impacts across nations.  Post materialism, for example, is negatively associated with support for the EU in Denmark and Greece, while positively associated with EU support in Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, and the UK.
	In order to determine the statistical significance of these cross national differences, the data were pooled  and the regressions were re-estimated as a single regression equation with dummy interaction terms included for each variable in each member nation (with one nation omitted as a reference nation).  The significance levels of these interaction terms indicate whether the regression parameter for that nation is significantly different from the parameter for the reference nation.  This process was repeated 11 times, each time with a different nation used as the reference group.  Of 732 possible cross national comparisons between regression parameters, 157 (21%) were significant at the .05 level or greater.  Had these differences been purely random, we would expect only 5 percent of them (37) to appear significant at or above the .05 level.  
	Not all social cleavages vary significantly in their impact on support for the EU.  As Table 2 presents a breakdown of cross-national differences by independent variable.  Post materialism varies widely in its relationship to EU support.  Over two thirds of the cross national differences in the impact of postmaterialism were statistically significant at the .05 level.  About one quarter of the cross national differences in the impacts of education, gender, regionalism, and employment in manual labor or farming were statistically significant.  Unemployment and Protestantism were far more consistent in their impact upon EU support.  Only 2 percent of the cross national differences in the impact of unemployment were significant at the .05 level, such a low proportion that these differences are very likely the result of random variation.  None of the differences in the impact of Protestantism were significant.
	These results are not dissimilar to those obtained by Agusti Bosch and Kenneth Newton.  However, these authors interpret the cross national differences as evidence of the weakness of the impact of social characteristics (which Bosch and Newton call "economic" factors.)  As Bosch and Newton put it, "So far as economic variables do appear to be associated with support or opposition to the EC and European unification, they seem to have different effects in different countries and in different years.  This makes it difficult to draw out any general conclusions." (Bosch and Newton 1995: 101).  However, the existence of cross national differences should not in itself be interpreted as evidence that social or economic factors are irrelevant.  Instead, these differences may indicate that individual's evaluations of the EU are more sophisticated than most researchers suppose.
	The Case for Cross National Diversity
	The results of the pooled regression with country dummies and country interaction terms indicates marked cross national variation in the relationship between specific social cleavages and the European Union.  I hypothesize that these cross national differences can be understood in light of theories of prospective and retrospective evaluations.  
	Often retrospective and prospective evaluations are assumed to be identical because we assume that prospective evaluations are based upon retrospective judgments.  For the present research, these two psychological processes are theoretically distinct because of the assumption that prospective evaluations are based upon an expectation of future policy convergence irrespective of past shifts in policy levels.  Empirically, these two processes are only indistinguishable if individuals expect policy convergence and that convergence has already begun.  However if policy convergence is expected, but has not begun, the two theories yield quite different predictions.
	If Europeans are evaluating the EU on a prospective basis, then their orientations towards the EU will be a function of the expected effects of the EU on important policies or outcomes.  Europeans will have differing expectations about the future benefits of the EU because of the divergent effects of policy harmonization in different national contexts.  There are several reasons why integration can be expected to lead to greater similarity in policies and conditions across EU member states.  Montanari (1995) identifies the structural requirements of industrial societies, the impact of economic internationalization, and deliberate harmonization by the EU as mechanisms which may lead to policy convergence among EU member states.  European Integration can be expected to induce policy convergence both directly, through directives and decisions, and indirectly as a by-product of integration in other policy areas.
	The expectation of policy convergence does not inform us about the level at which such policy convergence should be expected to occur.  Several alternate hypotheses could be envisaged.  Under direct harmonization of policies by the EU, the outcome will be influenced by the decision rule in force.  Under a majority voting system, one would expect policy to reflect the preferences of the median state.  If policies are set through intergovernmental bargaining under a unanimity rule, policy may tend to reflect a least common denominator.  However, in some cases the "highest national standard" may be adopted, while in others the Commission has been able to obtain policies which exceed all existing national standards.  (Pierson 1996:153)
	The outcomes under indirect harmonization would also vary.  Interest rates would tend to converge on a median rate as capital leaves low interest areas and flows towards high interest areas.  Likewise, wages and unemployment rates may tend to converge to an EU mean rate.  Regime competition theory would suggest that social policies may tend to converge on a lowest common denominator as a result of "social devaluation".
	Fortunately, the level at which convergence is expected to occur is not relevant for the present analysis.  Simply put, individuals who perceive their national policies or situations to be superior to the EU average will be at best indifferent to integration, as they can expect no improvement from it.  At worst they will assume integration to imply a degradation of the status quo towards the EU mean, or even towards a least common denominator policy.  In these cases such individuals should oppose integration as a threat to the policies or situation to which they are attached.  The opposite should hold for individuals in nations where the policies or conditions are regarded as inferior to those in the rest of the EU.  These individuals will be indifferent to integration if they anticipate a least common denominator outcome, while they will be supportive if they expect convergence to an EU mean or even to the highest prevailing level on the policy or condition of interest to them.
	This model of prospective evaluations does make strong assumptions about the cognitive models and the information held by individuals.  Specifically, it assumes (1) that individuals do expect policy convergence to occur, and (2) that individuals are aware of the difference between the status quo in their nation and the status quo in other EU member nations.  (They must be aware that their nation is above or below the EU mean, etc.)  Of course, individuals may be receiving cues about the EU from sectoral or social organizations  which would be quite likely to have the information required by the prospective model. 
	One important caveat about the model of prospective evaluations employed here is that it explicitly assumes that Europeans expect a convergence of conditions across member nations.  This implies that the cross national differences may be temporally limited, appearing only while the process of integration and convergence is underway.  Once policies have converged, there can be no expectation of further harmonization, and any prospective evaluations would necessarily be based on factors other than expected policy convergence (i.e. retrospective extrapolation from past developments.)  This is already the case in some policy areas such as agriculture.
	Another process which would lead to cross national diversity in the effects of social characteristics is retrospective evaluation.  An individual's evaluation of the EU may be influenced by recent changes in policies or conditions of particular concern to her.  If policies or conditions are improving in some member states, while degrading in others, then individuals concerned with these particular policies and conditions will differ in their evaluation of the EU depending upon the changes they have witnessed in their own nation.  
	The model of retrospective evaluations is not dependent on an assumption of policy convergence.  If policies have in fact been converging, then individuals in nations with high levels on the policy will have witnessed declines, while individuals in nations with low levels will have experienced increases.  However, policies and conditions could be improving in some nations while degrading in others without any overall convergence in conditions across nations.  One could even witness increasing cross national disparities which would produce cross national differences in the retrospective evaluations of individuals.
	This retrospective model makes somewhat weaker assumptions about individual's information and cognitive modeling.  It assumes individuals are aware (1) of the direction of recent changes in the policy or outcome of interest in their own nation, and (2) project these changes into the future.  
	In order to test these theories of retrospective and prospective evaluations, we must identify specific policies or conditions which would be of particular concern to each social group.  For example, the working class should be interested in changes in wage rates, while public sector employees may be more concerned with levels of public spending.  The relationship between a social characteristic and support for the EU is then assumed to be a function of that policy or condition.  For the prospective model, we assume that individuals of the group in question in nations with more satisfactory policies in place will be less supportive of the EU than are individuals of the group in nations with an less satisfactory status quo.  (see Figure 1)  For the retrospective model we assume that individuals who have experienced a positive change in the policy in question will be more supportive of the EU than are individuals who have experienced a negative shift in the policy in question.  (see Figure 2.)

	Social Cleavages and EU Policies
	Both the retrospective and prospective models assume that individuals are rational and self interested and that they form attitudes based upon that self interest.  While the literature on public opinion has identified a number of non-rational influences on public opinion there is also strong evidence of the role played by self interest in shaping orientations towards public policies.  Sears and Funk (1991) find that self interest is an important component of public attitudes when the effects of a public policy are transparent and concentrated.  For example they find that self interest is relevant to the attitudes of public sector employees towards tax cuts, the attitudes of working women towards gender equity, the opinions of single mothers on public provision of child care, and of the elderly towards pensions.  This research paper attempts to relate the self interest of social groups to policies which are presumed to be of particular importance to them.  For the purposes of this analysis, only policies which could plausibly be linked to the European Union will be considered.  This does complicate the task somewhat for the older social cleavages- Church/State, and Center/Periphery.  The discussion of the policy concerns of social groups will begin with the more recent cleavages of "new politics" and "social marginality."
The New Politics cleavage
	There are a number of different accounts of the social base of the "new politics" cleavage.  Some authors identify women and public sector workers as major groups relevant to this new cleavage. (Dalton and Kuechler 1990;  Kreisi 1997)   Other authors have pointed to "cultural workers" or "symbol manipulators."  Given the variables available in the Eurobarometer surveys, the most plausible indicators of the "new politics" cleavage are gender, postmaterialism, and public sector employment.
	The EU orientations of individuals within the "new politics" groups will reflect these individuals' expectations of future developments in policy areas of special concern to these groups.  For each indicator, gender, post materialism, and public sector employment, specific policy areas can be identified which should be of interest to these groups.  
	One would expect public sector employees to be particularly occupied with the fate of the public sector in an integrating Europe.  European nations vary in the size and scope of their public sectors, and there is widespread concern that integration will produce a convergence of public sector size, generally through the shrinkage of large public sectors.
	Women could be impacted by European integration in a number of ways.  The most important of these involve women's dual roles as workers and as mothers.  As workers, women are affected by EU efforts to reduce gender inequality in the workplace.  The European Commission has been particularly active in promoting gender equality in the workplace through equal pay directives and efforts to reduce gender segregation in employment.(Mazey 1988)  Given the important role of the EU in this area, I would anticipate that women in nations with poor records on gender equality will be more pro European than are women in states where gender equality is already well advanced.  One commonly employed measure of overall gender equality in the workplace is female labor force participation.  For this analysis I use female participation in the labor force expressed as the percentage of the labor force which is female.   
	As mothers, women are also more dependent than are men on certain types of gender specific welfare benefits.  Perhaps the most obvious example of this is family allowances.  As the proportion of single mothers increases across Western Europe, family and child allowances becomes highly gender specific.  National differences in the orientations of women may thus be explicable in terms of the expect impact upon gender specific welfare benefits.  Any convergence of these benefits would probably be an indirect result from the fiscal pressure of regime competition.  Hantras (1995) argues that the EU has avoided any direct harmonization of family policies.  Nonetheless, women in nations with relatively high benefit levels should be more anxious about cuts to these benefits than women in states with lower benefit levels.  The measure of gender specific welfare benefits used in this analysis is the average family allowance per child as a percentage of per capita GDP.
	Postmaterialists differ markedly in their orientations towards the EU.  Here again we can identify EU policies which are of concern to postmaterialists.   Postmaterialism has been shown to be a strong predictor of support for environmental protection and for green parties.  This suggests that "post materialist" individuals should favor European integration in those nations where EU environmental policy is likely to improve national environmental standards.  In nations with high prevailing standards, direct harmonization of standards may be perceived as having little effect, while indirect harmonization through regime competition may be seen as a threat to national standards.  
	An ideal indicator would quantify all prevailing national environmental standards, and then compare these national standards with the EU mean.  The construction of such an indicator is beyond the scope of this paper, so a substitute indicator is used.  EU environmental standards do exist already in some domains.  The commission files complaints against member nations who fail to comply with these standards.  The number of environmental complaints against each member state indicates the degree to which national standards must be improved in order to meet the new EU standard.  

The Social Marginality Cleavage
	Scholars have begun to explore a new fault line in western societies which separates out individuals who have been able to benefit from change and internationalization from those who lack to skills to participate in the open post industrial economy.  (For an early discussion of this phenomenon in France, see Todd 1988)  This exclusion can result from a variety of factors such as low education, employment in a declining sector, long term unemployment, and residence in peripheral and declining regions.  (Esping-Anderson 1995)  These social characteristics have often been associated with the rise in xenophobia and support for anti immigrant political formations.  (Kriesi 1995 )  
	Economic integration can be expected to have two contradictory effects upon marginal populations.  To the extent that these individuals are dependent on government transfers, they are concerned with the preservation of the welfare state.  As integration puts pressure on expensive social security and unemployment insurance systems, marginal populations will feel threatened by integration.  Integration also involves the lowering of barriers to labor mobility.  The expected result of this development would be the harmonization of unemployment rates across Europe.  Unemployed individuals will view this as an opportunity in high unemployment nations, and as a threat in nations with lower levels of unemployment.
	The expectation is then that individuals with low educational levels, or who are unemployed will be more anti EU in those nations with higher levels of social protection spending.  Simultaneously, we expect the unemployed to be pro EU in nations with higher levels of unemployment, while in low unemployment nations the unemployed are anti EU.

The Classic Economic Cleavages, Class, and Urban/Rural
	These two classic social cleavages are based upon economic conflicts between workers and owners, and between producers and consumers of farm products.  Because of the economic nature of these conflicts, it is relatively easy to identify policies of concern to these groups.
The Class Cleavage:
	The class cleavage has traditionally meant the conflict between the working classes and the owners.  As one indicator of the class cleavage, I use respondent's status as a manual worker.  A broader interpretation of social class links the concept to general disparities in income levels.  As an auxiliary indicator of class divisions, I include a respondent's income level.  Two plausible explanations for the cross national differences in the impact of social class suggest themselves.  The first has to do with the anticipated effects of economic integration on the economic position of labor in the member nations of the EU.  A second explanation involves the possible convergence of social policies in Europe. 
	There are several ways to conceive of the economic impacts of integration on capital and labor.  One would be to model the EU as a free trade area, focusing on the free flow of goods between member nations.  The second is to consider the economic impact of integrated financial markets, which greatly increase the mobility of capital while the free movement of labor is still restricted by cultural and linguistic barriers.
	If we assume that European integration can be treated as a reciprocal process of dismantling national barriers to imports, then trade theories may also help to identify winners and losers from the process of integration.  The catch is to know which theories of trade to apply.  The two major contenders are the Stolper-Samuelson mobile factor model and the Ricardo-Viner-Cairnes immobile factor model.  (See Magee, Broc, and Young 1989)  The immobile factor model analyzes the impact of economic openness on different sectors of the economy.  Unfortunately, few sectoral classifications are available in the Eurobarometer.  This analysis will be restricted to the Stolper Samuelson theory.
	The Stolper-Samuelson model assumes that factor returns are a function of their scarcity.  Relatively abundant factors will earn lower returns than will relatively scarce ones.  According to this model, freeing trade increases returns to the abundant factor because goods produced with that factor will be more expensive on the world market than they were domestically.  This increased ability to export increases the domestic price for these goods as well.  Conversely, freer trade hurts the relatively scarce factor which sees its scarcity rent diminished by the increased competition from imports which are produced in areas where that factor is relatively abundant instead of scarce.  By assuming that capital and labor can be effortlessly redeployed from uncompetitive into competitive sectors the Stolper-Samuelson model predicts that increasing economic integration will erode national differences in factor returns as wages and interest rates in different nations converge. 
	Alternatively, the EU could be viewed as a common market instead of just as a free trade area.  The removal of legal restrictions on the mobility of persons and capital proves to be of limited use for labor, due to the cultural and linguistic barriers which continue to impede the free flow of labor.  Capital suffers far less from these informal barriers to mobility.  The result is a degradation in the bargaining position of labor, particularly highly organized labor.  Freiden (1991) assumes that financial integration serves to increase capital mobility.  He argues that this is in the long term interests of capital as it reduces the bargaining power of labor.  Once capital is free to shift investment or production to any location in the European Union, it can demand concessions from its workforce, and more successfully resist wage demands due to its more credible threat to exit the national labor market.  Given the difficulty involved in the creation of a unified European labor movement, this asymmetry would seem to harm labor across the European Union.  This impact is far from uniform because the losses are greatest in those nations were workers had won particularly high wage levels, and much smaller in nations where weak labor movements had been unable to obtain advantageous wage bargains.
	Both of these accounts of the impact of economic integration suggest that wage levels should be positively correlated to the relationship between social class and support for the EU.  In low wage nations where the lower classes will have less to lose from integration, and perhaps something to gain, class divisions should not be related to support for integration.  In higher wage countries where workers will expect downward pressure on their wage levels, a clear class divide over the EU is to be expected. 
	A second explanation for cross national differences in the impact of social class relies on expectations of a convergence of social policy in Europe.  A convergence of social policy could occur either through direct harmonization of social policies under the social charter, or indirectly through regime competition which forces nations to reduce the generosity of their social policies in order to maintain economic competitiveness.  In either case the correlation between working class status and support for the EU will be negative in nations with very generous social policies, as these nations will be under the most intense competitive pressures.  In nations with stingy social policies we would expect a weaker, or even positive relationship between working class status and support for the EU.  
The Urban Rural Cleavage
	As formulated by Lipset and Rokkan, the urban/rural cleavage reflects the tension between those individuals dependent on agricultural or other primary sector production, and those dependent on commerce and manufacturing.  Defined in this relatively narrow fashion, the cleavage evidently separates farmers and fishermen from individuals engaged in other types of economic activity.  Unfortunately, the Eurobarometer surveys do not distinguish between farmers and fishermen.  This analysis will focus on the impact of the EU on farmers given that they are the more numerous group.  However, the results of the analysis must be interpreted with caution as they may be somewhat unreliable due to the inclusion of fishermen in the sample.  
	The large cross national differences in the orientation of farmers are not easy to account for with the theory of expected policy convergence since policies in this sector have already been consolidated under the Common Agricultural Policy.  This is one of the few policy domains where the possibilities for policy convergence have been exhausted.  Given that agricultural policy is already standardized across Europe, any prospective judgments of farmers are more likely to be based upon retrospective judgments than upon expectations of future policy convergence.  The likely explanation for national differences in the attitudes of farmers is that not all farms have been equally profitable under the current CAP.  

The Old Cultural Cleavages, Center/Periphery, and Church/State
	At first blush, Lipset and Rokkan's center/periphery cleavage does not appear to have obvious implications for European integration.  If intergovernmental theorists are correct, then the EU is just another tool which can be used by the national governments to impose their will upon culturally or ethnically distinct provinces (Moravscik 1994).  This, coupled with a distrust of centralizing and homogenizing influences, would seem to lead cultural peripheries to oppose European integration.  An alternate argument assumes that the EU is developing towards a "multi-level" polity in which regional actors can use the EU as a source of resources and legitimacy independent of their national state.  (Marks et al 1996)  It has been argued that culturally peripheral areas such as Scotland, Catalonia, and Alsace are often more favorable to European Integration than are the nations in which they are embedded.  
	Whether the EU is expected to increase or decrease the autonomy of regions, regionalism should be most positively associated with support for the EU in regions which currently have low levels of autonomy, and negatively associated with support in regions with high autonomy.  If the EU is expected to increase regional autonomy in the most centralized states, then regionalists in these states will be pro EU while regionalists in more federal states are indifferent.  Conversely, if the EU is leading to greater centralization and diminished regional autonomy, then regionalists should be most opposed in federal states, while indifferent in centralized ones.  

The Church State Cleavage:
	Issues of European integration also do not seem to map clearly and cleanly onto the church/state cleavage.  Catholic thought has always been strongly internationalist if not universalistic.  There should therefore be no necessary conflict between Catholicism and European unification, particularly as the EU has little to do with morally charged issues.  (The Irish abortion debate may be an exceptional case.)  Some observers of the French referendum have discerned a difference of opinion between the Christian democratic right and the nationalist/secular right with the religious right being pro European.  (Duhamel, 1992)  The opposite pattern seemed to obtain in Norway during the referendum of 1994, with the more religious right being less enthusiastic towards integration. (Listhaug 1995)  This suggests that religiosity may be less important than religious denomination.
	The pattern of relationships between religiosity and support for the EU is not easily explicable, and no attempt will be made to construct such an explanation.  Catholicism is generally positively related to support for the EU, but this relationship is quite weak in most countries.  The exceptions are the UK and Greece.  In the UK, the Catholic/Protestant split is largely a reflection of the divisions in Northern Ireland over European Integration.  Catholic republicans are generally pro EU. 

Testing Prospective and Retrospective theories:
	The argument of this paper hinges upon cross-national differences in policies of concern to each social group.  There is substantial cross national variation in some of these policies, and more uniformity in others.  The coefficient of variation and standard deviation of each of the nine policy variables is reported in Table 3.  The coefficient of variation (the standard deviation divided by the mean) allows for a rough comparison of the extent of cross national variation across variables.  The greatest cross national variation is for regional autonomy and environmental policy with coefficients of variation of 147 and 106 percent.  Variation is lowest for the female percentage of the labor force (12 percent.)  
	The evidence in Table 3 also indicates the degree of convergence which has occurred in each of these areas.  This is indicated by the change in the standard deviation over time.  Of the nine policies under consideration, only unemployment rates and social protection spending demonstrate any policy convergence (as indicated by a decrease greater than 5 percent in standard deviations.)  Family allowances and farm revenues demonstrate marked policy divergence, with policies becoming less similar across the 12 member nations.
	Cross-national differences in the impact of social characteristics were revealed in the pooled regression analysis reported above.  Social characteristics are allowed to have different impacts across national contexts by modeling them as interaction terms with national dummy variables.  The models of prospective and retrospective evaluations suggest that the magnitude of these national dummy interaction terms will be systematically related to cross national differences in policies.  In order to test these models, I repeat the pooled regressions run earlier, but replace the national dummy interaction terms with the interaction between a social characteristic and a policy variable.  The significance of this interaction term indicates whether the cross national differences are a linear function of the policy variable.
	For the prospective model, this relationship between the orientation of a social group and the prevailing policy is modeled statistically by replacing the national dummy interactions for that social variable in a pooled regression with an interaction between the social variable and the current national level on the policy.  For the retrospective model, the analysis is carried out with recent changes in the policy variable (over the last 4 years) interacted with the social cleavage.
	Table 4 presents the results of the test of prospective evaluations of the EU.  Four of the ten interactions are statistically significant.  Cross-national differences in the orientation of manual workers do seem to be a linear function of cross-national differences in wage levels, and in social protection.  In both cases, workers who enjoy a more advantageous status quo are less supportive of European integration.  Public sector employees are also least supportive of the EU in states with relatively high levels of government consumption, suggesting they fear a convergence of government consumption towards lower levels of spending.  In line with our expectations about postmaterialists, it is in those nations most affected by EU environmental directives that postmaterialists are most pro European.  These findings all support the prospective model of individual evaluations of the EU.
	In no case do the results contradict the prospective evaluation hypothesis, although six interactions are too weak to have a statistically significant effect.  An insignificant result was actually expected in the case of farm revenues.  The high degree of Europeanization of agricultural policy makes the thesis of expected policy convergence implausible.  If prospective evaluations are being made by farmers, they must base their evaluations on some other heuristic.  For the other interaction effects, the weak results could be due to a number of factors.  The prospective model assumes that Europeans anticipate a convergence of national policies in each domain under consideration.  The expectation of policy convergence may only apply to some policy areas.  It is also possible that some social groups are more likely to evaluate the EU prospectively than are others.
	If some Europeans are not evaluating the EU prospectively, they may be evaluating it retrospectively.  Table 5. suggests that the retrospective model, despite lower demands on respondents cognitive processes, has less support from this data.  Only one interaction is statistically significant.  This interaction is between farming and change in farm revenue.  As suggested by the retrospective hypothesis, farmers in nations where farm revenue is rising are more supportive of the EU than are farmers in nations where farm revenue is declining.  While this supports the retrospective hypothesis, it also could be interpreted in support of the prospective hypothesis because, as indicated above, farmers are unlikely to anticipate policy convergence given the current Common Agricultural Policy.  As a result, any prospective evaluations of farmers are most likely to be based upon retrospective evaluations. 
Conclusions and Implications
	The results demonstrate that social cleavages do have a significant impact upon individual's attitudes towards European integration.  Given the high consensus on the issue, as well as the low salience of the EU in 1991, the impact of social cleavages, while moderate, can not be ignored.  The impacts of specific social characteristics are shown to vary significantly across member nations, and these variations are not simply random.  Instead, variation in the social basis of EU support is in part a result of individuals prospective evaluations of the impact European integration may have for policies of direct concern to their social group.
	Observers have long decried the lack of popular participation in the functioning of the European Union.  These concerns have intensified as the scope of EC/EU policymaking has increased.  (Boyce 1993)  The "democratic deficit" has often been blamed on the institutional structure of the European Union.  Until 1979 none of the institutions of the EU were popularly elected.  Many observers expected the direct election of the European Parliament to dramatically increase popular participation in the process of European Integration.  (Pridham and Pridham 1979)  Nonetheless, these direct elections have not altered substantially the democratic deficit.  While the continuing weakness of the European Parliament is cited by some as an explanation for the continued democratic deficit, it must be noted that political parties have repeatedly forgone the opportunity to use European parliamentary elections as a vehicle for a public debate on issues of European Integration.  
	One explanation for the continued democratic deficit of the European Union lies with the social cleavages which undergird most Western European party systems.  Social cleavages will aid in the construction of an overarching European political system only if they are relevant to public opinion about European integration, and if they structure opinion in a similar fashion across all of the member states of the EU.  Conversely, if social cleavages are unrelated to opinions about the EU, then they cannot be a source of common political dialogue, and if they orient similar individuals in different directions, then they may actually impede the formation of coherent transnational political forces.  
	The analysis presented here does not bode well for the creation of a coherent European level party system in the near term.  Instead, the politics of European integration will involve the assembly of heterogeneous coalitions involving different social groups, and thus political formations, from each of the member states.  However, once the process of integration has proceeded to the point where policies are harmonized across Europe, the political dynamic of EU level politics should change.  Once policy convergence has occurred, transnational cooperation by social groups can be expected to emerge, and similar social groups will now have common, as opposed to conflicting interests across the 15 member nations of the EU.

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Table 1.  Support for European Integration Regressed on Social Characteristics.

Results for 1991	Belgium	Denmark	Germany	Greece	Spain	France	
Church/State							
      Protestant	-	.042	.105*	-	-	-	
      Catholic	.057*	.170	.074	.332***	.041	.027	
Urban/Rural							
      Farmer/Fisher	-.060	.084	-.474***	-.061	-.083	-.251***	
Class							
      Worker	-.077*	-.180***	-.100**	-.025	-.022	-.111**	
Marginality							
      Income	.027	.077***	.036*	.030	.036*	-.008	
      Education	.013*	.034***	.005	.013*	.010	.029***	
      Unemployed	-.104*	-.132	-.142	-.055	-.063	-.088	
"New Politics"							
      Post Material	.086***	-.199***	.000	-.077***	.048*	.072**	
      Female	-.010	-.109**	-.002	-.119***	-.025	.003	
      Public Sector	.027	-.128**	.035	-.118	-.007	-.049	
Center/Periphery							
      Regionalism	.012	.010	.001	-.032	-.108***	-.024	
Intercept	.237***	.450***	.357***	.386***	.411***	.276***	
Adjusted R Square	.06	.11	.03	.05	.05	.08	
N	963	961	1032	995	996	887	

	Ireland	Italy	Luxembourg	Netherlands	Portugal	U.K.	
Church/State							
      Protestant	-	-	-	.066	-	.036	
      Catholic	.066	.053	.000	.093**	.006	.166**	
Urban/Rural							
      Farmer/Fisher	-.104*	-.234***	.039	-.242	-.024	-.142	
Class							
     Manual Worker	-.058	-.017	.023	-.053	.008	-.124***	
Marginality							
      Income	.024	.033*	.033	.035*	.051***	.026	
      Education	.025***	.021***	.015	.012*	.006	.033***	
      Unemployed	.026	.035	-.493	-.024	-.051	-.018	
"New Politics"							
      Post Material	.028	.045*	.005	.021	-.013	.053*	
      Female	-.053	-.018	-.005	-.095***	-.071**	-.096**	
      Public Sector	-.018	.020	.101	-.028	.032	.054	
Center/Periphery							
    Regionalism	-.025	-.011	-.050	.016	-.012	.032	
Intercept	.398***	.395**	.251	.376***	.619***	.122	
Adjusted R Square	.03	.07	.02	.04	.03	.06	
N	970	1033	369	979	868	1335	
*=p<.05 	**=p<.01	***=p<.001

Table 2  Proportion of Significant Cross-National Differences per Variable.

Regression Parameter
	% differences significant (p <  .05)	
Social Class		
     Manual Worker	24%	
Marginality		
     Income	12%	
    Education	26%	
     Unemployed	2%	
New Politics		
     Female	24%	
     Public Sector	20%	
     Post Material	36%	
Urban/Rural		
     Farmer	27%	
Church/State		
     Catholic	21%	
     Protestant	0%	
Center/Periphery		
   Regionalism	27%	
		
Intercepts	18%	

Table 3   Indicators of Policy Variation and Convergence

Policy/ Condition	Year	Mean	Coefficient of Variation	Standard Deviation	% change	
Average Wage  	1987	5.73	40.00	2.29		
 (inflation adjusted  ECU)	1991	5.85	37.14	2.17	-.05
	
Social Protection Spending 	1989	24.2	18.33	4.44		
 (% GDP)	1991	25.3	15.95	4.03	-.09
	
% of Labor Force Female	1987	38.28	11.68	4.47		
	1991	39.68	11.58	4.59	+.03
	
Average Family Allowance in 	1987	938	53.28	676.00		
1985 ECU 	1991	1079	58.19	800.38	+.18
	
Unemployment Rates	1987	10.23	49.02	5.01		
	1991	8.45	49.98	4.22	-.16
	
Farm Revenues per capita	1987	869	51.50	474.87		
	1990	1282	55.91	716.80	+.51
	
Government Consumption 	1987	17.89	19.27	3.45		
(% GDP)	1991	17.72	19.65	3.61	+.05
	
Regional Autonomy	1987		Data unavailable		
	1991	1.67	147	2.46	NA
	
Environmental Policy	1987		Data unavailable		
	1991	40	106	42.26	NA	

Table 4  Significance and Direction of Interactions between Social Cleavages and Policy Levels.

Interaction
Social Characteristic * Policy/Condition	Predicted Sign	Standard Beta	P Value	
Working Class * Wage	-	-.107	.0005	
Working Class* Social  Protection	-	-.177	.0084	
Unemployed * Unemployment Rate	+	+.039	.1360	
Unemployed * Social Protection	-	-.087	.1577	
Female * % Labour Force Female	-	-.076	.3714	
Female *  Family Allowances 	-	+.001	.9279	
Post Materialism * 
  EU Environmental Policy	+	+.095	.0028	
Farming * Farm Revenue	+	+.002	.8936	
Public Sector * 
  Government Consumption	-	-.132	.0070	
Regionalism *  Regional Autonomy	-	-.018	.1069	

Table 5   Significance and Direction of Interactions between Social Cleavages and Change in Policies.

Interaction
Social Characteristic * Change in Policy	Predicted Sign	Standard Beta	P value	
Working Class *  Wage	+	+.031	.2225	
Working Class *  Social  Protection	+	+.019	.1440	
Unemployed *  Unemployment Rate	-	-.007	.5268	
Unemployed *  Social Protection	+	-.007	.4774	
Female *  % Labour Force Female	+	+.030	.1127	
Female *  Family Allowances 	+	-.012	.3713	
Post Materialism * 
   EU Environmental Policy	+	Change Data not Available	
Farming *  Farm Revenue	+	+.033	.0104	
Public Sector *  
   Government Consumption	+	-.001	.9570	
Regionalism *   Regional Autonomy	-	Change Data not Available	

Appendix

Significance levels of cross-national differences in regression parameters.  157 of 732 differences (21%) significant at or above .05 level.

Significance of Differences in Intercepts				12 of 66 differences significant
Den												
Ger								*	= p <	.05		
Gre								**	= p <	.01		
Spa								***	= p <	.001		
Fra												
Ire												
Ita												
Lux												
Net												
Por	**		*			**			**	*		
UK		**	*		**		*	*		*	***	
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Manual Employment. 	16 of 66 differences significant
Den	*											
Ger								*	= p <	.05		
Gre		**						**	= p <	.01		
Spa		***						***	= p <	.001		
Fra												
Ire		*										
Ita		**										
Lux		***	*			*						
Net		*										
Por		***				*						
UK				*	*			*	**		*	
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Income			8 of 66 differences significant
Den	*											
Ger		*						*	= p <	.05		
Gre		*						**	= p <	.01		
Spa								***	= p <	.001		
Fra		***	*									
Ire		*										
Ita												
Lux												
Net												
Por						*						
UK		*										
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Education		17 of 66 differences significant
Den	*											
Ger		***						*	= p <	.05		
Gre		*						**	= p <	.01		
Spa		**						***	= p <	.001		
Fra			**		*							
Ire			*									
Ita												
Lux		*										
Net		*										
Por		**				*						
UK	*		**	*	**							
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Unemployment		1 of 66 differences significant
Den												
Ger								*	= p <	.05		
Gre								**	= p <	.01		
Spa								***	= p <	.001		
Fra												
Ire												
Ita												
Lux							*					
Net												
Por												
UK												
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Postmaterialism			24 of 66 differences significant
Den	***											
Ger	*	***						*	= p <	.05		
Gre	***	***	*					**	= p <	.01		
Spa		***		***				***	= p <	.001		
Fra		***	*	***								
Ire		***		**								
Ita		***		***								
Lux		***		**								
Net		***		**								
Por	**	***				*						
UK		***		***								
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Gender			16 of 66 differences significant
Den	*											
Ger		*						*	= p <	.05		
Gre	*		*					**	= p <	.01		
Spa				*				***	= p <	.001		
Fra		*		**								
Ire												
Ita		*		*								
Lux		*		*								
Net	*		*			*			*			
Por												
UK	*		*			*			*			
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Regionalism		25 of 66 differences significant
Den												
Ger								*	= p <	.05		
Gre								**	= p <	.01		
Spa	***	***	***	*				***	= p <	.001		
Fra					**							
Ire					**							
Ita					***							
Lux	*	*			*							
Net					***				*			
Por					**							
UK				*	***	*	*		**			
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Public Employment.	13 of 66 differences significant
Den	**											
Ger		**						*	= p <	.05		
Gre								**	= p <	.01		
Spa		*						***	= p <	.001		
Fra												
Ire		*										
Ita		**										
Lux		***		*		*	*					
Net									*			
Por		**										
UK		***				*						
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Effect of Farming Employment. 	18 of 66 differences significant
Den												
Ger	**	***						*	= p <	.05		
Gre			***					**	= p <	.01		
Spa			**					***	= p <	.001		
Fra		**		*								
Ire		*	**									
Ita		**		*								
Lux			***			*		*				
Net		*										
Por			***			**		*				
UK												
	Bel	Den	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por	

Significance of Differences in Protestantism	0 of 6 differences significant
Ger						
Net						
UK						
	Den	Ger	Net			

Significance of Differences in Catholicism	 	14 of 55 differences significant
Ger							*	= p <	.05		
Gre	**	*					**	= p <	.01		
Spa			**				***	= p <	.001		
Fra			**								
Ire			*								
Ita			*								
Lux			**								
Net			*								
Por			*								
UK	*			*	*			*		*	
	Bel	Ger	Gre	Spa	Fra	Ire	Ita	Lux	Net	Por