Matthew Gabel

Public Support for European Integration: An Empirical Test of Five Theories

Public opinion, through its impact on mass behavior, shapes and constrains the process of European integration Why do citizens vary in their support for European integration? Previous research offers a variety of sometimes conflicting explanations, but the available evidence is insufficient to determine which explanations are valid. This article seeks to contribute to the resolution of this controversy by empirically examining five prominent theories of support for integration. Through regression analyses of Eurobarometer surveys from the period 1978-1992, the analysis shows that the partisan context of integrative reforms and the utilitarian consequences of integrative policy provide robust explanations for variation in support. In contrast, two other prominent theories-political values and cognitive mobilization-are only valid in a limited context, and in this context they exert a small substantive impact on support.

Off the Record: Unrecorded Legislative Votes, Selection Bias and Roll-Call Vote Analysis

Scholars often use roll-call votes to study legislative behaviour. However, many legislatures only conclude a minority of decisions by roll call. Thus, if these votes are not a random sample of the universe of votes cast, scholars may be drawing misleading inferences. In fact, theories over why roll-call votes are requested would predict selection bias based on exactly the characteristics of legislative voting that scholars have most heavily studied. This article demonstrates the character and severity of this sampling problem empirically by examining European Parliament vote data for a whole year. Given that many legislatures decided only a fraction of their legislation by roll call, these findings have potentially important implications for the general study of legislative behaviour.

Economic Integration and Mass Politics: Market Liberalization and Public Attitudes in the European Union

Theory: Theories of how domestic politics influence international economic policy differ fundamentally in their treatment of the mass public. A central issue in this controversy is whether members of the mass public form attitudes about international economics that reflect their economic interests. This article examines this assumption using international economic theory to identify variation in economic interests regarding international economic policy. Hypotheses: Citizens of the European Union (EU) form attitudes toward EU membership-an international economic policy-that are consistent with their occupation-based economic interests. Methods: Individual-level heteroskedastic ordered probit analysis of Eurobarometer survey data and OECD economic statistics from 1975 to 1992. Results: While controlling for a variety of potentially confounding factors, the likelihood of positive evaluations of EU membership is positively related to intraoccupational differences in economic benefits from EU membership.

Judicial Behavior under Political Constraints: Evidence from the European Court of Justice

The actual impact of judicial decisions often depends on the behavior of executive and legislative bodies that implement the rulings. Consequently, when a court hears a case involving the interests of those controlling the executive and legislative institutions, those interests can threaten to obstruct the courts intended outcome. In this paper, we evaluate whether and to what extent such constraints shape judicial rulings. Specifically, we examine how threats of noncompliance and legislative override influence decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Based on a statistical analysis of a novel dataset of ECJ rulings, we find that the preferences of member-state governments—whose interests are central to threats of noncompliance and override—have a systematic and substantively important impact on ECJ decisions.

Legislative voting behavior, seen and unseen: a theory of roll-call vote selection

The empirical study of legislative behavior largely relies on roll-call-vote analysis, but roll-call votes in many legislatures represent only a sample of legislative votes. We have good reasons to believe this sample is particularly poor for inferring party effects on legislative behavior. The selection of votes for roll call may be endogenous to exactly the characteristics of voting behavior (for instance, party cohesion) that we want to study. We must understand the roll-call-vote institution and account for its selection effects before we can draw inferences about legislative behavior from roll-call results. This paper develops a game-theoretic model of roll- call-vote requests predicated on party leaders requesting votes to enforce party discipline. The model offers general and testable predictions about the selection process and how it affects observed and unobserved legislative voting behavior, particularly party cohesion.

Mixed Messages Party Dissent and Mass Opinion on European Integration

Mass opposition to Europe may stem from mainstream as well as formally Euroskeptic parties. Large parties in the member states of the European Union (EU) tend to combine support for Europe with a high level of intra-party dissent over the issue. Thus, these parties provide heterogeneous yet potentially influential signals about European integration to their supporters. In this paper, we examine the effect of intra-party dissent on the opinion of party supporters. Our estimation of this relationship explicitly addresses the issues of endogeneity, omitted variables, and measurement problems endemic to the empirical study of elite effects on mass opinion. Specifically, we use variation in the centralization of candidate selection rules as an instrumental variable for intra-party dissent. We find substantial evidence that intra-party dissent does indeed increase variation in support for integration among party supporters. With common levels of intra-party dissent, even pro-EU parties can cause a substantial portion of their supporters to adopt anti-EU opinions.

Temporoparietal Hypometabolism in Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration and Associated Imaging Diagnostic Errors

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cause of diagnostic errors in the visual interpretation of positron emission tomographic scans with fludeoxyglucose F 18 (FDG-PET) in patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). DESIGN Twelve trained raters unaware of clinical and autopsy information independently reviewed FDG-PET scans and provided their diagnostic impression and confidence of either FTLD or AD. Six of these raters also recorded whether metabolism appeared normal or abnormal in 5 predefined brain regions in each hemisphere-frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, anterior temporal cortex, temporoparietal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex. Results were compared with neuropathological diagnoses. SETTING Academic medical centers. PATIENTS Forty-five patients with pathologically confirmed FTLD (n=14) or AD (n=31). RESULTS Raters had a high degree of diagnostic accuracy in the interpretation of FDG-PET scans; however, raters consistently found some scans more difficult to interpret than others. Unanimity of diagnosis among the raters was more frequent in patients with AD (27 of 31 patients [87%]) than in patients with FTLD (7 of 14 patients [50%]) (P=.02). Disagreements in interpretation of scans in patients with FTLD largely occurred when there was temporoparietal hypometabolism, which was present in 7 of the 14 FTLD scans and 6 of the 7 scans lacking unanimity. Hypometabolism of anterior cingulate and anterior temporal regions had higher specificities and positive likelihood ratios for FTLD than temporoparietal hypometabolism had for AD. CONCLUSIONS Temporoparietal hypometabolism in FTLD is common and may cause inaccurate interpretation of FDG-PET scans. An interpretation paradigm that focuses on the absence of hypometabolism in regions typically affected in AD before considering FTLD is likely to misclassify a significant portion of FTLD scans. Anterior cingulate and/or anterior temporal hypometabolism indicates a high likelihood of FTLD, even when temporoparietal hypometabolism is present. Ultimately, the accurate interpretation of FDG-PET scans in patients with dementia cannot rest on the presence or absence of a single region of hypometabolism but rather must take into account the relative hypometabolism of all brain regions.

Public Support for the European Parliament

The study of the European Parliament (EP) is motivated in large part by its central role in the democratic legitimacy of the European Union (EU). Public support for the EP is important to this legitimacy. At a fundamental level, a parliament designed to represent citizens ought to enjoy public respect and support and, in this study, I examine whether EU citizens vary systematically in their support for the EP. Based on regression analysis of Eurobarometer survey data, I demonstrate that EU citizens differ in their support for the EP based on their considerations of the current scope of EU governance, their appraisal of EU membership, their sense of European political identity, and their level of satisfaction with national democracy. These results have implications for how institutional reforms may shape public support for and the legitimacy of the EU.

Understanding the Role of the European Court of Justice in European Integration

In 2008 we published an article finding evidence for political constraints on European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision making. Stone Sweet and Brunell (this issue) argue that our theoretical foundations are fundamentally flawed and that our empirical evidence supports neofunctionalism over intergovernmentalism “in a landslide.” We respectfully disagree with Stone Sweet and Brunell regarding both their conclusions about our theoretical arguments and what the empirical evidence demonstrates. We use this response to clarify our argument and to draw a clearer contrast between our and their perspective on the role the ECJ plays in European integration. Finally, we reevaluate their neofunctionalist hypotheses. Ultimately, we do not find support in the data for Stone Sweet and Brunells empirical claims.

Forum Section: Who is afraid of cumulative research? : Improving data on EU politics

The study of European Union (EU) politics has matured in important ways in the past two decades. In place of the grand yet vague focus on the study of European integration writ large, scholars have increasingly organized themselves into research communities focusing on particular aspects of European Union governance. With this specialization, scholars in each community have advanced towards agreement on definitions and conceptual characterizations. These ‘ground rules’ are essential to the collective research enterprise and the advancement of knowledge. However, we are concerned that this advancement is retarded unnecessarily by the dearth of public and systematically collected data on EU politics. In short, such data are essential if the field endeavours to move toward ‘normal science’. It is our opinion that too little attention has been given to disseminating information about available data and, more fundamentally, to the collection of such data. In this essay, we argue that the cumulation of knowledge in the study of European Union politics depends crucially on expanding the amount