Towards an Integrated Model of EU Citizenship and Support

This chapter explicitly models reciprocal causal effects, providing a comprehensive and integrated account of EU citizenship attitudes on EU support. While preceding explanatory chapters are all based on single-equation models, here a system of equations is estimated in which instrumental variables are employed to sharpen the understanding of the potentially reciprocal causal effects between citizenship and support. The results show that: i) among the three dimensions of EU citizenship, they key driver is people's sense of representation; ii) once the 'endogenous' links between identity, representation and scope are carefully controlled for, all four of the theoretical perspectives whose impacts have been tested throughout the book appear relevant, although the stronger influences are associated with instrumental rationality and the use of heuristics; iii) although some inter-correlation exists between citizenship and support, estimates controlling for such endogeneity show that support for the EU is dependent on people's sense of EU citizenship.