Ellen Quintelier

Yves Dejaeghere

Does European Citizenship Increase Tolerance in Young People?

While Europe is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Rome Treaty, there is much doubt about the extent of citizens' emotional attachment to Europe. In this article we examine whether young Belgians show a sense of European citizenship, using a range of questions about the European Union (EU) from a survey administered to more than 6000 secondary school students. We show that a genuine identification with Europe -one that is not purely based on a positive evaluation of the EU from a utilitarian point of view -is related to higher levels of tolerance towards ethnic minorities, Muslims and immigrants. In addition, we will provide an overview of the literature on European citizenship and its potential connection to a higher degree of tolerance towards different cultures.

Introduction

The idea of European citizenship has been at the centre of an intense normative debate. Questions have been raised about whether or not we should aim to achieve a common European identity and about who is eligible to take part in it and who should be excluded. Moreover, intense academic discussion is taking place regarding the existence of a common fertile ground to develop a European identity. Others point to an appreciation of these differences as a possible hallmark of a common European identity [START_REF] Habermas | Unsere Erneuerung. Nach dem Krieg: Die Wiedergeburt Europas[END_REF]. Already in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, the European Union (EU) defined and pledged to promote the feeling of European citizenship [START_REF] Jamieson | Theorising Identity, Nationality and Citizenship: Implications for European Citizenship and Identity[END_REF]. However, when the Union tried to compose a fully fledged European Constitution in 2005, it did not succeed in convincing its members; in fact, voters in France and the Netherlands disagreed with the definition of Europe that was proposed to them or even with the idea of Europe altogether. In this article, we want to build on the existing research by testing the relationship between European identification and tolerance towards ethnic minorities and immigrants among a large and representative sample of 16-year-old Belgian secondary school students.

So far, little is known about the relation between European citizenship and tolerance because the debate has been conducted largely on theoretical and ideological grounds. Authors such as [START_REF] Soysal | Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe[END_REF] and [START_REF] Benhabib | The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens[END_REF], for example, argue that, from a normative point of view, the development of a European identity is an important step forward. Citizens transcend the boundaries of their nation-state and develop a more encompassing sense of solidarity with broader groups (see also [START_REF] Habermas | The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalization[END_REF]. As such, the notion of European citizenship might even be considered as a first step toward the development of a truly global sense of 'post-national' membership or belonging [START_REF] Soysal | Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe[END_REF]. Other authors, however, are much more sceptical. Following the 'clash of civilizations' thesis, they assume that a strong European identity will inevitably lead to a more antagonistic attitude towards non-Europeans, especially if they originate from Islamic or Mediterranean countries [START_REF] Huntington | The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order[END_REF]. Moreover, some authors claim that the explicit limitation of European citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty to country nationals while excluding inhabitants who are non-EU nationals is a warning signal and shows that the EU does not consider these inhabitants to be European citizens [START_REF] Welsh | A People's Europe? European Citizenship and European Identity[END_REF][START_REF] Closa | European Union Citizenship and Supranational Democracy[END_REF].

The few available empirical studies on this subject seem to point to a positive relation between tolerance and European identification [START_REF] Dell'olio | The Europeanization of Citizenship. Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European Identity[END_REF][START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF]. In this article, we want to examine this relationship in depth using a sample of over 6000 secondary school students in Belgium surveyed in 2006. Belgium is an interesting country in which to examine the prevalence of a sense of European citizenship, because it was one of the Union's founding members half a century ago and currently hosts the largest number of European institutions. Thus, Belgians could be expected to have special ties to Europe. On the other hand, Belgium actually proved to be the least tolerant of the EU countries before the recent enlargement [START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF], so studying (in)tolerance amongst its youngsters might yield interesting clues to the origin of these attitudes.

In this article we will first review the theories concerning European citizenship and tolerance, before looking at young people's opinions and feelings towards Europe and whether they show a sense of being 'European citizens'. Then we will examine whether young Belgians are tolerant towards immigrants and ethnic minorities. Finally, we will bring these two elements together to examine whether there is a correlation between feelings of tolerance and a sense of European citizenship and how differences in tolerance can be explained. If European identity can be seen as a step towards the development of a wider sense of solidarity, we should expect a positive relationship between European citizenship and ethnic tolerance towards outsider groups. If this is not the case, we assume this relationship is either non-existent or even negative.

The normative and theoretical study of European citizenship

When the European Economic Community was founded in 1957, the Treaty of Rome mentioned 'the peoples of Europe'. This suggests that developing a supranational idea of citizenship was not an official objective at that point [START_REF] Welsh | A People's Europe? European Citizenship and European Identity[END_REF]. It was only with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, when 'Economic' was dropped from the title of the organization and the Community was transformed into a Union, that the EU institutionalized legal grounds for European citizenship [START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF]. This means that, for the first time, there was provision for a formal Euro-citizenship, to some extent approaching the concept of citizenship as defined by Marshall in his classic seminar in 1946: 'a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed' (see Marshall, 1964: 84). This legal Euro-citizenship is highly formalistic and there is a clear absence of a participatory or affective dimension, which a 'thick' concept of citizenship would need [START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF][START_REF] Delanty | Citizenship in a Global Age[END_REF]. In a further step towards developing a sense of European identity, the European Union tried to codify shared values and cultural norms in a European Constitution in 2005. Although the European Union has recently become an important regulator of people's lives, people still tend to distance themselves from it and refuse to identify with it fully [START_REF] Hooghe | Europe's Blues. Theoretical Soul-Searching after the Rejection of the European Constitution[END_REF].

Some 15 years after Maastricht, most so-called formal citizenship rights in the European Union are still limited to the few rules laid down in the Maastricht Treaty. 1 Although the European Court of Justice has broadened the concept of European citizenship, for example by entitling a European citizen's family members who do not have EU citizenship themselves to some of the rights laid down in EU law, we see, for example, that many of the old member states, including Belgium, have made provisions that limit the freedom of movement and employment for citizens of the new EU countries until 2009, and in some cases until 2011. So, recent developments risk increasing the gap between EU citizens and third-country nationals by creating multiple boundaries, instead of helping to bridge them [START_REF] Oger | Stratified EU-Denizenship Revolving around EU-Citizenship: Bridging or Restructuring the Gap?[END_REF].

As in any other form of citizenship, however, one must also distinguish between the empirical and normative aspects of European citizenship [START_REF] Kymlicka | Return of the Citizen: A Survey on Recent Work on Citizenship Theory[END_REF][START_REF] Closa | European Union Citizenship and Supranational Democracy[END_REF] Although, from a legal point of view, citizenship of the Union has hardly progressed in more than a decade, in the meantime there has been an intense debate among theorists in the fields of law, philosophy and social sciences about the possibility of a 'European citizenship' and the creation of a European identity. A European identity will in any case be combined with national identities: one can be simultaneously Flemish, Belgian and European, but not solely European (Brubaker, 1989;[START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF]. [START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF] and [START_REF] Delanty | Citizenship in a Global Age[END_REF] both describe the concept of multi-level or multi-identification membership: people are simultaneously a member of the European Union and a member of their national state (and of lower governance levels). We can see this for example in the 2004 Eurobarometer, where only 2% of the Dutch referred to themselves as 'only European' and nearly 7% said that being European took precedence over being Dutch. On the other hand, 58% said that they were Dutch first and European second [START_REF] Wennekers | Goed Europees Burgerschap in Nederland[END_REF]. [START_REF] Carrington | What Makes a Person British? Children's Conceptions of Their National Culture and Identity[END_REF] show that even children as young as eight years old with a mixed background easily identify with plural 'national' identities. [START_REF] Arnett | The Psychology of Globalization[END_REF] argues that, owing to globalization, people develop a bicultural identity: in addition to their local identity, young people also adopt a more global identity. However, he adds that this multi-level identity does not always have only positive implications, because it can create a great deal of confusion, which can lead to the individual denying one of his or her identities. In our more political conception of identity, this might mean that young people show a lack of interest in the higher-level identity, namely the European Union. [START_REF] Isin | Citizenship after Orientalism[END_REF] stresses a similar point by saying that post-modernity has allowed groups that were previously excluded and marginalized, such as migrants in Europe, to gain recognition, but that this phenomenon has conversely put further pressure on the limits of citizenship and might eventually cause animosity between certain groups. In effect, we should not immediately equate globalization and post-modernity with tolerance.

For many authors, the problem with European citizenship is that it lacks many of the qualities that tie people to the nation-state. Delanty (2000: 114) for example states that Europe lacks 'core components of a national culture: language, a shared history, religion, an educational system and press or media'. Many authors are looking for the European equivalent of the equation that came into existence in the 19th century and is now almost seen as a dogma: 'state = nation = people' (Hobsbawm, 1997: 23). The search for a specific characteristic of Europe could prove fruitless, because, as [START_REF] Closa | European Union Citizenship and Supranational Democracy[END_REF] states, the Union lacks almost all sociopolitical traits that are usually associated with nationality and a communitarian understanding of citizenship. [START_REF] Dell'olio | The Europeanization of Citizenship. Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European Identity[END_REF] claims that, when using common denominators to determine national identity, Europeans differ as much among themselves as they do from non-Europeans. This is, in the view of [START_REF] Hainsworth | France Says No: The 29 May 2005 Referendum on the European Constitution[END_REF], [START_REF] Fuss | The Meaning of Nationality and European Identity among Youths from Different Nations[END_REF] and many others, a main cause of both the democratic deficit and Europeans' scepticism towards the integration project. According to Delanty (2000: 112), 'the more expansive citizenship becomes, the more formalized it is and the less substantive it can be'. This is why for many authors, instead of focusing on what we do not have in common, it is diversity in itself that is the best starting point for a European citizenship [START_REF] Kostakopoulou | European Union Citizenship as a Model of Citizenship beyond the Nation State. Possibilities and Limits[END_REF][START_REF] Habermas | Toward a European Political Community[END_REF][START_REF] Habermas | Unsere Erneuerung. Nach dem Krieg: Die Wiedergeburt Europas[END_REF][START_REF] Delanty | What Does It Mean to Be a "European"?[END_REF]. [START_REF] Dahrendorf | The Changing Quality of Citizenship[END_REF] actually argues that citizenship adds an extra dimension to political life only in a heterogeneous state, because there would hardly be any difference between citizenship and membership of a 'tribe' if it worked only in a culturally homogeneous environment. This leads him to say that 'the true test of citizenship is heterogeneity' (Dahrendorf, 1994: 17). Dahrendorf's view would lead us to see European citizenship as similar to Walzer's definition of what it is to be an 'American': 'a citizenship that allows for the flourishing of the manyness' (Walzer, 2004: 633).

From a theoretical point of view, 'citizenship' refers to either a formal status based on rights and duties, or a belonging to a cultural identity or public participation [START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF][START_REF] Delanty | Citizenship in a Global Age[END_REF][START_REF] Wallace | Young People and European Citizenship[END_REF]. Citizenship in a formal sense refers to a state (liberal perspective) or to a nation (communitarian perspective) [START_REF] Delanty | Citizenship in a Global Age[END_REF]. In a globalized world, nationstates as institutions of governance are eroding [START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF]. Tambini states that through post-national citizenship 'nationalism itself will not disappear, but the model of national citizenship will be transformed ' (2001: 212). If we look at the available European data concerning young people, Europe is considered a space of opportunities rather than a focal point of identification; this viewpoint implies that it enables people to go where they want to go and offers them economic gains as well as diversified job opportunities. Young people therefore largely perceive European citizenship as the right to study, work or move permanently to any other country in the European Union (Eurobarometer, 1997;2001). It is important to distinguish between this vision of Europe as a useful 'instrument' and true identification with Europe. [START_REF] Dell'olio | The Europeanization of Citizenship. Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European Identity[END_REF] shows that respondents who say that they feel positive towards EU institutions can nevertheless identify themselves as 'only Italian' and not as 'also European'.

This article will define European citizenship as the feeling of 'belonging' to Europe and the European institutions. This scale will not measure an 'instrumental' attachment to the EU institutions; it will use items that capture identification with Europe. The frequently found negative view of European citizenship might cast doubt on the validity of the concept. Do European citizens really have a European identity or should this be seen as a purely legal and/or theoretical concept without any wider resonance? And, if there is indeed such an identity, we might ask ourselves if it results in more tolerance among individuals. Tolerance will be an indispensable prerequisite if we want a European citizenship that is not equivalent with the idea of a mental 'fortress Europe' but rather an expression of diversity. These issues all point to the importance of researching the connection between the identification with Europe and tolerance.

Contribution to the concept of tolerance

Tolerance towards other groups is an essential element of democratic culture [START_REF] Almond | The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations[END_REF][START_REF] Dahl | On Democracy[END_REF] and European citizenship [START_REF] Delanty | Inventing Europe. Idea, Identity, Reality[END_REF]. Gibson puts it in very simple terms: 'if political tolerance increases, the likelihood of successful democracy increases ' (2006: 23). According to different authors, now that Europe is trying to develop a new encompassing form of belonging and citizenship, transcending the nation-state, tolerance should increase and this should create a sense of group trust [START_REF] Smith | National Identity and the Idea of European Unity[END_REF][START_REF] Soysal | Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe[END_REF][START_REF] Painter | Multi-level Citizenship, Identity and Regions in Contemporary Europe[END_REF]. Since the Second World War, three broad theories have been advanced that give a causal explanation of tolerance: the authoritarian personality thesis by [START_REF] Adorno | The Authoritarian Personality[END_REF], the contact hypothesis by [START_REF] Allport | The Nature of Prejudice[END_REF] and the social identity thesis mainly developed by Tajfel and Turner [START_REF] Tajfel | Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations[END_REF][START_REF] Reynolds | Prejudice as Group Process: The Role of Social Identity[END_REF]. Only the last two theories are important for our research and will be briefly described here.

Because much of the initial research on tolerance was driven by social psychologists, most studies have focused on individual-level variables. The contact hypothesis developed by [START_REF] Allport | The Nature of Prejudice[END_REF] states that, in specific circumstances, contact with persons of 'out-groups' increases tolerance towards people of these groups. One of the factors leading to increased tolerance is the positive evaluation of this contact by institutions -schools or companies -or by a government [START_REF] Fritzsche | Unpolitische Jugend? Eine Studie zum Verhältnis von Schule, Anerkennung und Politik[END_REF]. This means that the European Union could stimulate tolerance by defining European citizenship as a concept that is clearly an appreciation of diversity and thus yields a positive evaluation of contact with people from diverse groups. [START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF] points to the possible influence of institutions on tolerance in saying that, even after controlling for a large number of individual-level variables, there are still substantial differences between the people of West European nations concerning tolerance. Similarly to Allport, Mutz (2002) has shown that crosscultural exposure to conflicting ideas makes people more tolerant. He expects that in the larger European Union people will potentially have more contact with other people and ideas and thus possibly develop an increasingly positive attitude toward other cultural groups and/or religions. However, contact can also create tension between different groups, as was apparent in the debate about the 'Polish plumber' during the discussions in France over the EU Constitution. Although Allport's thesis provides a good insight into the mechanisms of (in)tolerance, many questions remain. Because the positive effects of contact were restricted to certain conditions, social psychologists tried to uncover the cognitive underpinnings of these notions. This enquiry led to the development of the social identity theory, social identity being defined as 'that part of the individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership' (Tajfel, 1982: 24). Further, this leads to a worldview that categorizes people as belonging to either ingroup(s) or out-group(s). Because people look for positive self-evaluation, they might emphasize the positive aspects of their in-groups and, albeit not in all cases, the negative aspects of the out-groups [START_REF] Reynolds | When Are We Better Than Them and They Worse Than Us? A Closer Look at Social Discrimination in Positive and Negative Domains[END_REF]. This is even said to happen when there is no conflict between the groups [START_REF] Tajfel | Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations[END_REF]. Experimental research has been able to produce this in-group/ out-group dynamic even in settings where the participants did not know each other and the difference between the groups was minimized as much as possible (for example, by dividing them by tossing a coin), thus bolstering the claim that this is a very powerful dynamic in human relations [START_REF] Tajfel | Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations[END_REF]. Of course, the degree to which the differences between the groups will be emphasized by any individual is functionally dependent on many variables, for example the importance of group identification to the self-concept, the salience of the out-group for comparison and the functionality of the comparative dimension [START_REF] Reynolds | When Are We Better Than Them and They Worse Than Us? A Closer Look at Social Discrimination in Positive and Negative Domains[END_REF].

The way these factors work in forming social identity has been the subject of a great deal of research concerning ethnocentrism and racism, sometimes leading to surprising results. [START_REF] Sniderman | Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities[END_REF] show that, under experimental survey manipulation of Dutch subjects, negative views towards immigrant out-groups by the native in-group are more pronounced under a perceived threat to the national culture than under economic or safety threats. Because a person's social identity is not fixed but is made up of his or her identification with several groups, it can change in differing circumstances. Researchers wondered if it was possible to rearrange these identities in such a way as to be more inclusive by stimulating an identity that encapsulates the former separate group identities; these authors call this a 'superordinate' identity [START_REF] Kramer | Effects of Group Identity on Resource Use in a Simulated Commons Dilemma[END_REF]. Positive results from stimulating a superordinate identification on ethnocentrism have, among others, been found between Caucasian-American and African-American groups in experimental research [START_REF] Gaertner | Understanding and Addressing Contemporary Racism: From Aversive Racism to the Common Ingroup Identity Model[END_REF] and survey experiments [START_REF] Transue | Identity Salience, Identity Acceptance, and Racial Policy Attitudes: American National Identity as a Uniting Force[END_REF] and between native Dutch and immigrants in survey experiments [START_REF] Sniderman | Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities[END_REF].

From the point of view of social identity theory, the influence of a European identity can have opposing effects on its young people, depending on the way it is perceived. If it is an affirmation of a mainly West European, Christian identity, then it is actually a confirmation of the national in-group status at a higher level. However, if it is the identification with people from other countries who do not share their language and faith, then it is a superordinate identity including former out-groups, as intended in the theory above. De Vreese and Boomgaardens' research (2005) on European integration points in the latter direction: people with anti-immigrant feelings are more unenthusiastic about European integration and vice versa; this has partly been related to a feeling of 'cultural threat' [START_REF] Mclaren | Research Notes. Public Support for the European Union: Cost/Benefit Analysis or Perceived Cultural Threat?[END_REF]. The difference with the current research question is that in existing studies the superordinate identity always includes the former out-group, which is not necessarily the case with European identity and immigrants who, for the most part, come from countries outside the EU. This means that we expect the possible positive influence of a superordinate identification to be 'contagious' to subgroups who remain outside this new identity. This kind of survey research might have less internal validity than the experiments of social psychologists with their very strict settings, but one has to keep in mind that one of the biggest problems in social identity theory is that most of its findings come from very artificial experimental settings that are therefore not always transposable to a more realistic environment, where different identities (and their consequences) might overlap and interact (see [START_REF] Huddy | From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity[END_REF]. This article, therefore, aims at taking real influences into account.

Following [START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF], it is important to differentiate between 'ethnic' social and political tolerance. People are politically tolerant if they are willing to allow full 'liberal democratic and political' rights to all others, for example the right of third-country nationals to demonstrate [START_REF] Mondak | Tolerance and Intolerance, 1976-1998[END_REF][START_REF] Gibson | Enigmas of Intolerance: Fifty Years after Stouffer's Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties[END_REF]. This kind of tolerance is often exemplified by the famous words erroneously ascribed to Voltaire: 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' (cited in Finkel et al., 1999: 205). Social tolerance is more related to the evaluation of direct contact with people from another group, for example having a boss from a different ethnic group or allowing one's child to date somebody from another ethnic group. [START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF] examination of the Eurobarometer data shows that Europeans are much more willing to be politically tolerant towards third-nation foreigners than to mix socially. Therefore, the items comprising our tolerance scale relate to social tolerance, as we try to measure a more direct and deeper tolerance, especially in 16-year-olds for whom the 'hypothetical' granting of political rights might not adequately capture their feelings towards foreign people.

Apart from the theories mentioned, there are some factors that seem to influence tolerance in most settings. We will, therefore, include them as control variables in our analysis. First, many investigations have established a connection between education and tolerance [START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF]. Separate studies have shown that this relation is not just owing to a better understanding of the social desirability of tolerance among the more highly educated [START_REF] Wagner | The Relation of Formal Education to Ethnic Prejudice: Its Reliability, Validity and Explanation[END_REF]. Among young people, girls have been found to be more tolerant than boys [START_REF] Fritzsche | Unpolitische Jugend? Eine Studie zum Verhältnis von Schule, Anerkennung und Politik[END_REF]. We will investigate whether an increased feeling of European citizenship leads to greater tolerance.

Data, methods and the Belgian context

Belgium offers an ideal setting for the study of citizenship, being a society with two large language groups that live in different parts of the country. About 60% of Belgians are Dutch speakers and 40% are French speakers; there is also a small German-speaking minority, who are not included in our research. Belgian federalism has developed a system in which the federal government gives policy-making power to 'communities' (mainly for culture, education, welfare and language policy) and 'regions' (responsible for more economic and employment-related topics), which to a large extent overlap -Brussels being the exception. Belgium is a society with multiple government levels, making it a linguistically divided country (e.g. the two language groups have a separate labour market and educational system [START_REF] Billiet | Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture between Flemings and Walloons[END_REF].

The cultural divide between the language groups in Belgium has already often been addressed [START_REF] Billiet | Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture between Flemings and Walloons[END_REF]. The two regions have different identities. The Flemish/Dutch-speaking identity 'appears to be associated with the protection of the Flemish cultural heritage -in particular the Dutch language -and hence with a more defensive attitude toward other cultures' (Billiet et al., 2003: 243). The Walloon/French-speaking identity, on the other hand, is more 'associated with the socio-economic emancipation of the Walloon region and also with openness toward other cultures and anti-racism' (Billiet et al., 2003: 243). This leads us to the expectation that Dutch-speaking respondents are less tolerant, even if other research indicates that there is no significant difference between the Dutch-and the French-speaking parts with regard to the acceptance of immigrants [START_REF] Witte | Alledaags" racisme in België. Een overzicht van de onderzoeksliteratuur over racistische opvattingen en een interpretatie van de betekenis van het opleidingsniveau[END_REF].

The relationship between European citizenship and tolerance will be tested using the results of the Belgian Youth Survey 2006 (BYS 2006), which was conducted among 6330 16-year-olds in Belgium. The respondents were sampled in the two major language groups, French and Dutch. Dutch respondents were sampled in the region of Flanders and in the bilingual region of the capital, Brussels (n = 3453). French-speaking respondents were sampled in the region of Wallonia and again in Brussels (n = 2877). To avoid confusion, we will refer to Flemish respondents and Dutch-speaking respondents from Brussels as 'Dutch-speaking' youngsters and to Walloon and Brussels francophone respondents as 'French-speaking' youngsters. The survey contained various questions on notions of citizenship, ethnocentrism, tolerance and other related political attitudes. The data were collected through written surveys in schools. Several researchers visited 112 schools in order to conduct the survey. The schools were selected by place of residence and school system and controlled for the offered tracks (general, technical and vocational) and number of pupils (Hooghe et al., 2006).

In our analysis we control for language groups because, in line with previous research, we expect significant differences. We also take the effect of the socioeconomic background of the family into account, because the more highly educated tend to be more positive towards foreigners [START_REF] Billiet | Onbekend of onbemind? Een sociologisch onderzoek naar de houding van de Belgen tegenover migranten[END_REF][START_REF] Pettigrew | Outgroup Prejudice in Western Europe[END_REF][START_REF] Witte | Alledaags" racisme in België. Een overzicht van de onderzoeksliteratuur over racistische opvattingen en een interpretatie van de betekenis van het opleidingsniveau[END_REF]. We asked the respondents to state their educational goals in life. This serves as a good indicator of their educational situation; non-reported findings also suggest that it is a good proxy for the educational attainment of the parents and thus the socioeconomic status of the subject. 2 Further, gender might also be an important control variable. Because we intended to measure tolerance towards ethnic minorities, Muslims and immigrants, we decided to exclude from the analysis all respondents who were not born in Belgium or whose parents were not born in Belgium (n = 1887) to avoid making a Type II error (i.e. saying that there is no relationship when there actually is one).

Main hypothesis and results

In this paper we want to explore the relationship between identification with Europe and tolerance, for example towards ethnic minorities, Muslims or other groups. More specifically, we want to address the question of whether European citizenship promotes or inhibits positive feelings towards outsider groups. Diversity is one of the main characteristics of a new, modern Europe in a globalizing world. We expect that people who identify themselves as 'European citizens' are more tolerant than those predominantly attached to the national or regional level.

Research has shown that the nation-state is the easiest level for people to identify with. One of the key advantages of nation-states is the presence of symbols that allow citizens to express their feelings of belonging [START_REF] Brubaker | Beyond Identity[END_REF]. The adherence to the nation-state can vary; [START_REF] Carey | Undivided Loyalties: Is National Identity an Obstacle to European Integration?[END_REF] shows that people who display stronger feelings of national identity display lower levels of support for the European Union; even if some of them acknowledge the practical aspects of the Union, they certainly do not see it as an object of identification [START_REF] Dell'olio | The Europeanization of Citizenship. Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European Identity[END_REF]. A first step, therefore, is to see which policy level young people prefer: Europe, Belgium or a lower policy level?

Looking at the results in Table 1, we find that, after Belgium, the local level is very important to youngsters. Although [START_REF] Fuss | The Meaning of Nationality and European Identity among Youths from Different Nations[END_REF] finds that Europe constitutes a significant source of political identity for young people, we cannot find such an attachment. Young Belgians feel most attracted to Belgium as a nation-state and to the city level (Table 1). We find significant differences between the language groups, with French-speaking youngsters showing a higher preference than Dutch speakers for the supranational and the global levels (European and world citizen).

Despite the fact that young people see themselves as Belgians in the first place and not as 'Europeans', they do not consider the decisions of the European Union to be of less importance in their daily lives than those of the Belgian or regional governments (Table 1). Whereas for Dutch-speaking youngsters the three policy levels receive about the same score, for French speakers the European Union is the most important policy-level influence. The fact that limited 'affective support' for the EU does not exclude 'utilitarian support' has already been found in adult samples [START_REF] Dell'olio | The Europeanization of Citizenship. Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European Identity[END_REF]. These results should also be put in perspective: as we can see in Table 1, politics are less important for young people than persons who are relatively close to them, such as their parents and friends.

Young people do not just believe that the European Union takes important decisions; they also have a certain degree of trust in the European Parliament, more than in the Belgian or regional parliament (Table 1). The Dutch-speaking youngsters tend to have more trust in parliaments in general, but the differences between the language groups are not significant.

In interpreting these results, the respondents' actual knowledge about the European Union must be taken into account. At the time of the survey, only 16% of the respondents knew for example that José Manuel Barosso was the President of the European Commission; 23% knew who the Belgian Minister of Justice was and 42% to which party Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt belonged. According to [START_REF] Wallace | Young People and European Citizenship[END_REF], emotional attachment to Europe A number of questions were asked with the aim of measuring the attitudes of young people towards the (dis)advantages of the European Union. As we can see in Table 2, for young people Europe means a better future, more job opportunities and the opportunity to travel around freely, as well as a guarantee for peace. Whereas many adults consider the European Union to be a bureaucratic institution, this is not the case for the young people in this sample. Nor do they perceive the European Union as a destroyer of national cultural identity. However, the European Union only half-heartedly succeeds in the creation of a European identity, because young Belgians do not feel that the EU makes them into European citizens. However, there is a difference of 14 percentage points between Dutch-speaking (majority disagreeing) and French-speaking (majority agreeing) respondents to this item. In Table 2 we see that the more utilitarian aspects, such as travelling and jobs, prevail over the affective or identity aspect of Europe.

We find different feelings towards Europe and the European Union that might conflate to something approximating 'European citizenship'. Especially among the French-speaking youngsters, we find a reasonable indication of a belonging to Europe in Tables 1 and2. These young people Range of all questions (1-4), from strongly agreeing, somewhat agreeing, somewhat disagreeing and strongly disagreeing.

certainly appreciate a number of benefits in the European Union and do not especially adhere to scepticism about a Brussels-based bureaucratic monster demolishing national cultures, an image often portrayed during the debate about the EU Constitution. Contrary to the findings of [START_REF] Wallace | Young People and European Citizenship[END_REF], the European Union does not carry the lowest priority for young people: it even outperforms Belgian and community institutions in terms of trust and importance. Young people do not feel close to one specific policy level; they feel a little close to all of them. Out of the questions presented above, we created a 'European citizenship' scale expressing a feeling of really belonging to the European Union. This scale is composed of four items: trust in the European Parliament, the importance attributed to the European Union, the feeling of being a European citizen through the European Union and the feeling of being in the first place European. These are items that capture a sense of belonging to or identification with Europe, which is important for the subsequent use of this scale, because the relationship predicted by authors between tolerance and European citizenship concerns the benefits of supranational identification; it has less to do with a utilitarian vision on travel inside Europe, even if the latter has more adherents in the survey (see the Appendix at the end of this article). The rather moderate Cronbach's alpha (0.56) shows that it is a scale with a low internal consistency, but if we know the theoretical validity of the items we can nevertheless use it [START_REF] Schmitt | Uses and Abuses of Coefficient Alpha[END_REF]. The fact that our sample consists of young people from all educational levels and the scale is made up of items derived from different question batteries probably further explains the modest performance of this scale [START_REF] Alwin | Aging, Cohorts, and the Stability of Sociopolitical Orientations over the Life Span[END_REF][START_REF] Jennings | Political Socialization[END_REF]. 4 Furthermore, because these are the best items we have at our disposal to measure European citizenship -a concept that in general lacks good empirical measures -we also have to rely on face validity to measure it [START_REF] Jenson | The European Union's Citizenship Regime. Creating Norms and Building Practices[END_REF].

In the second phase of the analysis we will look at the attitudes of young Belgians towards different ethnic groups. First, we offered the subjects a list of statements concerning immigrants or the need for cultural homogeneity. In Table 3 we see that, on almost every item, half of the population shows support for the negative statement towards immigrants. They have difficulties accepting the immigrants' customs, the presence of the immigrants in terms of job security, and so on. Almost four out of ten in the Dutch-speaking group indicate that they do not trust people from other ethnic groups. These rather intolerant attitudes are not a new finding: Eurobarometer surveys (1997, 2001and 2006, for the general population;[START_REF] Billiet | Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture between Flemings and Walloons[END_REF] have already shown that young Belgians are fairly intolerant compared with other European countries. In general, we see that the French-speaking youngsters are more tolerant. The only tolerance item where French speakers are less tolerant than Dutch speakers is the job security item; this may be related to the fact that the economic situation is precarious in large parts of the French-speaking region.

Besides general statements about immigrants, tolerance towards specific groups was also measured (Table 4). We asked how close young Dutch/French speakers felt to French/Dutch speakers, Muslims, immigrants, Africans and Caucasian people. Young Belgians feel most closely connected to Caucasians (mean = 7.88;std.dev. = 2.33). As regards the feeling of closeness towards the other language group, we see that even the positive feeling towards 'Caucasians' is limited to one's own language group, lending support to the notion that intolerance constitutes a general personality trait. Young people feel least connected to immigrants, Muslims and African people. For all the items, we find significant differences between the language groups, with the French-speaking youngsters being significantly more tolerant towards the other groups, although they also stay below the mean score for all these tolerance items. Only the feeling of closeness towards 'Caucasians' is not significantly different on the two sides of the language barrier.

The respondents were also asked if they could see themselves dating somebody from another cultural or ethnic group one day. In this way, we tried to evoke a real situation and capture the feelings involved. We found a similar pattern, in that once again the respondents trust Caucasian people: Range of all questions (1-4), from strongly agreeing, somewhat agreeing, somewhat disagreeing and strongly disagreeing.

80% think it is possible that they might ever date a Caucasian girl/boy. By contrast, the subjects are quite sure that they will never date an immigrant or a Muslim (70%) and are also fairly sure that they will never date an African.

When it comes to a real situation, we again find significant differences for every item at the p < .001 level, except in the case of 'Caucasians'. Additionally, the French-speaking youngsters are more open than the Dutch speakers to the other groups.

We have created a scale for tolerance using the replies to the above questions on tolerance. It is composed of the battery of questions concerning 'dating' and 'feeling close', though including only the attitude questions towards Muslims, immigrants and African people. This is a strong and reliable scale, suitable to be the dependent variable in a regression analysis (see the Appendix).

In a final analysis we will now bring the different elements of our examination together to see whether people who consider themselves real European citizens are more tolerant towards different groups of people and if they have a more tolerant attitude in general. We use an ordinary least squares regression (OLS), with the tolerance scale as the dependent variable (see the Appendix). We opted for the most parsimonious model that is related to the theory instead of adding as many variables as possible in the regression to inflate the explained variance. The analysis consists of two steps: the first model (Model 1) does not control for contact with people of different ethnic groups; in a second model we add this variable to see whether the influence of European citizenship still holds when controlling for Allport's 1958). In the first model we can see that the standard control variables of 'Gender' and 'Education' are completely in line with our theoretical expectations. Girls are more tolerant than boys, and having higher educational aspirations also has a benign effect on attitudes towards other ethnic groups. The strongest parameter among the variables is the linguistic region in which the young people live. Our results show that the regions are already very clearly delimited on this topic at the age of 16. This supports Weldon's claim that 'there is a strong relationship between citizen tolerance for ethnic minorities and the degree to which the dominant ethnic tradition is institutionalized in laws, rules, norms of a nation-state' (Weldon, 2006: 332).

Finally, as we predicted from theory, we find that European citizenship has an effect on tolerance, even after the effects of gender, language group and education are taken into account. This impact is in the same range as that of gender and educational goal. Our theoretical section referred to research showing that tolerance is (in certain circumstances) influenced by the amount of contact people have with members of out-groups. To test this claim, we add a contact variable to see if our results from Model 1 still hold. If we look at the change in explained variance between the models, we see that the contact variable has considerable explanatory power and that it also becomes the largest parameter in our model. Nevertheless, it is clear from the table that, although there is a small decrease in the parameter for European citizenship in this second model, it still stands independently as an explanatory variable for tolerance among the young respondents.

These findings contradict other research that found a relationship between European identification and intolerance towards immigrants. This research relied on a very small sample and was -unlike this study -not representative of the Belgian population, as the authors themselves indicate [START_REF] Licata | Does European Citizenship Breed Xenophobia? European Identification as a Predictor of Tolerance towards Immigrants[END_REF]. Our results show that tolerance is a multifaceted phenomenon, and that there are several variables forming tolerant attitudes. This implies that tolerance is a desirable good in a democracy. Moreover, our results stress the importance of educating young people in being European, and thus tolerant, citizens.

Conclusion

This article has tried to add an empirical part to the normative and theoretical discussion about the consequences of European citizenship. In the bivariate analysis our results show that, although Europe is not on a par with the national Belgian level as a focal point of identification, its score is very similar to that of the lower policy levels. When we ask young people about the importance of decisions at different policy levels, the European Union equals (among Dutch speakers) or surpasses (among French speakers) the different Belgian levels. The European Parliament is also the assembly that instils the most confidence in Belgian youth. This shows that, although Europe may not be their first priority, they do not dismiss its value in policy terms. Concerning tolerance, Belgian youth sadly live up to the expectation gained from previous research on adults [START_REF] Weldon | The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe[END_REF]: half of them see immigration as a source of tension; four out of ten think everybody should share the same customs and traditions; and one-third state that they do not trust people who are not from their ethnic group. In addition, many respondents cannot imagine dating someone from another ethnic group one day. There is, nevertheless, a marked difference between the language groups, with Dutch speakers being more ethnocentric than French speakers. Bringing both elements together, we were able to demonstrate that adherence to a European identity leads to more tolerance, just as some proponents of supranational or superordinate identity have predicted. Young Belgians who see themselves as being European citizens are more tolerant towards ethnic minorities and immigrants, controlling for level of education, origin and gender. This means that identification with Europe can be viewed as a positive choice accompanied by tolerance and openness. The results of the analysis, therefore, do not support fears concerning the rise of a 'fortress Europe', possibly with a corresponding antagonistic European identity. Rather, all our findings support [START_REF] Soysal | Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe[END_REF] argument that Europe is the first step towards post-national citizenship and solidarity. [START_REF] Carrington | What Makes a Person British? Children's Conceptions of Their National Culture and Identity[END_REF] found in their research that eight-year-old children hardly make any reference to 'race' when asked what it means to be 'British'; it is only at a later stage that this terminology appears in their language (see also [START_REF] Nesdale | The Development of Prejudice in Children[END_REF]. This means that there is no innate sense of an 'ethnic' definition of a community. If young people could learn to feel a sense of connection to a European community that already defines itself as a 'unity in diversity', this might greatly diminish ethnic intolerance in Europe. This is definitely an interesting challenge for a Union that has been doing much soul-searching following the failure of the European Constitution.

Table 1

 1 indicates a certain interest in European developments. Hence, considering the fact that the young people in the sample have a rather low sense of belonging to the European Union as well as a low level of European knowledge, we might expect them to show little interest in Europe.3

		Dutch-	French-	Mean	Significance
		speaking	speaking	difference t-value
	a. 'In the first place I think of myself as . . .' (range: 0-5)
	a citizen of my town	3.74 (1.26)	3.52 (1.48)	0.229	5.218***
	a citizen of my province	3.37 (1.28)	3.04 (1.38)	0.339	7.968***
	Flemish/Walloon/Bruxellois	3.50 (1.41)	3.06 (1.51)	0.438	9.368***
	Belgian	4.05 (1.18)	4.17 (1.20)	-0.112	-3.006**
	European	3.04 (1.40)	3.41 (1.44)	-0.370	-8.255***
	World-citizen	2.48 (1.63)	3.09 (1.78)	-0.606	-11.305***
	b. 'How important are the decisions of . . . in your daily life?' (range 0-10)
	Parents	7.87 (1.90)	7.80 (2.00)	0.065	1.058 (n.s.)
	Friends	7.83 (1.79)	7.39 (2.04)	0.440	7.210***
	Teachers	5.27 (2.34)	5.55 (2.42)	-0.279	-3.742***
	European Union	3.79 (2.67)	3.57 (2.79)	0.228	2.621**
	Belgian government	3.75 (2.58)	3.39 (2.67)	0.358	4.311***
	Regional government	3.80 (2.57)	3.30 (2.59)	0.493	6.041***
	European Parliament	5.42 (2.50)	5.32 (2.52)	0.099	1.246 (n.s.)
	Regional parliament	5.04 (2.43)	4.96 (2.52)	0.074	0.935 (n.s.)
	Belgian parliament	4.80 (2.36)	4.68 (2.38)	0.113	1.497 (n.s.)
	Data: BYS 2006; N = 4,443.
	Entries are mean scores; standard deviation between brackets.
	Significance: p < 0.001 = ***; p < 0.01 = **; p < 0.05 = *

c. 'How much trust do you have in the following institutions?' (range: 0-10)

Table 2

 2 Attitudes towards the European Union (EU): percentages that 'strongly agree' and 'somewhat agree'

	Dutch-	French-
	speaking	speaking

Data: BYS 2006; N = 4,443. Entries are frequencies.

Table 3

 3 Attitudes towards immigrants: percentages that 'agree' or 'completely agree' on the following statements

	Dutch-	French-
	speaking	speaking

Table 4

 4 Mean scores for the sense of closeness to members of other groups

		Dutch-	French-	Significance
		speaking	speaking	t-value
	French-speaking people Dutch-speaking people	3.10 (2.82) n.a.	n.a. 3.59 (2.93)	-5.101***
	Muslims	2.02 (2.44)	3.11 (2.71)	-12.598***
	Immigrants	2.06 (2.40)	3.00 (2.71)	-10.922***
	African people	2.81 (2.74)	4.08 (2.91)	-13.489***
	Caucasian people	7.91 (2.73)	7.83 (2.25)	1.103 (n.s.)
	Number of cases	2,650	1,415
	Data: BYS 2006; N = 4,443.
	Entries are mean scores and standard deviation between brackets.
	Significance: p < 0.001 = ***; p < 0.01 = **; p < 0.05 = *
	Question: How close do you feel to the following groups? (range: 0-10)

Table 5

 5 Mean scores for dating members of other groups (0-5)

	Dutch-	French-	Significance
	speaking	speaking	t-value

European Union Politics 9(3)

Quintelier and Dejaeghere Does European Citizenship Increase Tolerance in Young People?

Notes

1 It states that every person holding the nationality of a member state shall be a citizen of the Union and that citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights conferred by the Treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed by it. Those rights as an EU citizen are the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states; the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the member state in which one resides; the right to be entitled to protection by the diplomatic or consular authorities of any member state; and the right to petition the European Parliament [START_REF] Hottinger | La "Citoyenneté" au niveau de l'Union Européenne: Prolégomenes d'une problematique[END_REF]. 2

The correlation coefficient between educational goal and a composite index of the educational attainment of the parents in our survey is .380 (as a comparison, two similar trust items asked contiguously have a correlation coefficient of .450 in our sample). The parents' educational attainment question produced significantly more missing data because students used the 'other diploma' category more than expected, and very often their description was too unclear to fit into the strict coding scheme. 3 However, growing knowledge about the European Union increases trust, and vice versa (Eurobarometer, 2006). 4

We also tested whether the scale yielded similar results to those gained from other items (for example, 'Thanks to the European Union I feel myself a full citizen of Europe'), and this is indeed the case. As far as we know, this is also one of the first attempts to construct a scale of European identity.

Appendix continued

Tolerance scale (0-10)

About the authors

Ellen Quintelier is a doctoral student at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Fax: +32 16 323 088 E-mail: ellen.quintelier@soc.kuleuven.be Yves Dejaeghere, is a doctoral student at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Fax: +32 16 323 088 E-mail: yves.dejaeghere@soc.kuleuven.be


Cosmina Tanasoiu
email: ctanasoiu@aubg.bg

Constantin Colonescu
email: colonescuc@macewan.ca

Determinants of Support for European Integration The Case of Bulgaria

The electorate's ability to influence the European agenda through European elections and national referenda has led to a close inspection of public attitudes by both academics and politicians. Taking a micro-level approach, this article contributes to the larger literature on the formation of public attitudes and aims at identifying the factors that influence public attitudes towards European integration in Bulgaria, one of the new member states. We use a national survey and rely upon utilitarian, value-based and heuristic factors to test several hypotheses. Although our data confirm the argument that support is higher in countries with lower opportunity costs of transferring sovereignty to the European Union, we also find that EU membership is assessed by projecting potential benefits for future generations rather than self-centered expectations of immediate returns.

Introduction

The political agenda of Bulgarian governments in the post-communist era has been simultaneously driven by a difficult political, economic and social transition and by accession to the European Union (EU). Bulgaria applied for EU membership in 1995, started the accession negotiations in 2000, and became an EU member state on 1 January 2007. Failure to introduce necessary reforms in key areas, in particular in the judicial system, by successive Bulgarian governments led to the country's exclusion from the 2004 accession wave and to a temporary freezing of accession negotiations in 2005. Despite difficulties in meeting the Copenhagen accession criteria and subsequent delays in the accession negotiations, public support has not withered. According to Eurobarometer surveys, Bulgarian public support for EU membership has been constantly high throughout the post-communist period. Following accession, although positive views on the benefits of membership have dropped, 60% Bulgarians continue to think highly of the EU and 55% of all Bulgarians think that their country's membership is a good thing (Eurobarometer 67, spring 2007). Consequently, Bulgaria rates as one of the most pro-European EU member states.

This article contributes to the literature on public support for European integration by using a case-study approach on Bulgaria, a country that has been subjected to comparatively little research among the Central and East European states. Taking a micro-level view while checking for macroeconomic variables, we search for explanations behind the high levels of support for European integration in Bulgaria. We base our article on a unique data set, collected six months before the country became an EU member. We compared the data from this pre-accession survey with a post-accession Eurobarometer analysis, to account for changes in Bulgarian public's attitudes. The results show that, although Bulgarians have a low opinion of their country's economic performance and state institutions, they assess the potential of EU membership by looking into the future instead of focusing on immediate, personal benefits.

Literature review

The literature on public support for European integration identifies an array of determinants of individual attitudes towards the integration process, such as expectations about economic costs and benefits, cultural characteristics, personal values and beliefs, party allegiance, and the popularity of incumbent governments. For the purposes of this study, three categories of factors are relevant: utilitarian, value-based and heuristic.

Utilitarian theories look at the collective or individual costs and benefits of integration. These theories reveal that an average European evaluates the Union according to his or her country's economic performance and role in international relations [START_REF] Eichenberg | Europeans and the European Community: The Dynamics of Public Support for European Integration[END_REF], the volume of trade among EU members and net national returns from the EU budget [START_REF] Eichenberg | Europeans and the European Community: The Dynamics of Public Support for European Integration[END_REF][START_REF] Anderson | Economic Benefits and Support for Membership in the EU: A Cross-National Analysis[END_REF]. Positive attitudes also depend upon the individual's ability to adapt to, and benefit from, market liberalization [START_REF] Anderson | Economic Benefits and Support for Membership in the EU: A Cross-National Analysis[END_REF]Gabel, 1998a). EU citizens form attitudes toward EU membership that are consistent with their occupationbased economic interests (Gabel, 1998b). An individual's level of support is also related to the nation's security and trade interests within the EU and the individual's potential to benefit from liberalized markets [START_REF] Gabel | Understanding Variation in Public Support for European Integration[END_REF]. Studies on Central and Eastern Europe have found that 'winners' from transition as well as supporters of the free market appear more likely to support EU membership [START_REF] Tucker | Transitional Winners and Losers: Attitudes towards EU Membership in Post-Communist Countries[END_REF][START_REF] Christin | Economic and Political Basis of Attitudes toward the EU in Central and Eastern European Countries in the 1990s[END_REF]. Although individual and regional characteristics influence Central and East European attitudes towards integration, greater weight is placed upon the benefits from liberation and integration than on the potential gains from redistribution [START_REF] Doyle | Who Favors Enlargement?: Determinants of Support for EU Membership in the Candidate Countries' Referenda[END_REF].

Public opinion is also determined by 'value-based' factors, such as identification with one's nation, as well as one's political beliefs and values. [START_REF] Inglehart | The Silent Revolution[END_REF] argued that post-materialist political values determine support for international integration. Recent studies, however, showed that post-materialist variables have little or no effect on subjective evaluations of EU membership [START_REF] Janssen | Postmaterialism, Cognitive Mobilization and Support for European Integration[END_REF][START_REF] Anderson | Economic Benefits and Support for Membership in the EU: A Cross-National Analysis[END_REF]Gabel, 1998a). Moreover, scholars have found that national contextual factors (i.e. type of capitalist system or welfare state) condition or limit the impact of individuallevel factors, such as ideology [START_REF] Brinegar | Location, Location, Location. National Contextual Factors and Public Support for European Integration[END_REF]. Nevertheless, concerns about the EU's democratic deficit, the quality of the democratic process and its institutional framework appear to shape public attitudes [START_REF] Rohrschneider | The democracy deficit and mass support for an EUwide government[END_REF][START_REF] Karp | To Know It Is to Love It? Satisfaction with Democracy in the European Union[END_REF]. More specifically, in the process of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe, a relatively slow pace of reform and beliefs in democratic norms, the market economy and human rights were found to positively influence support towards integration [START_REF] Christin | Economic and Political Basis of Attitudes toward the EU in Central and Eastern European Countries in the 1990s[END_REF][START_REF] Rohrschneider | Political Parties, Public Opinion and European Integration in Post-Communist Countries: The State of the Art[END_REF]. Whereas for average West Europeans concerns over the loss of national identity may lead to Euroskepticism [START_REF] Carey | Undivided Loyalties: Is National Identity an Obstacle to European Integration?[END_REF][START_REF] Mclaren | Public Support for the European Union: Cost/Benefit Analysis or Perceived Cultural Threat?[END_REF]Dulphy and Manigand, 2004), for Central and East Europeans, European integration is seen as a recognition of their 'Europeanness' and, as such, it carries a certainty of 'belonging' [START_REF] Verdery | Civil Society or Nation? "Europe" in the Symbolism of Postsocialist Politics[END_REF][START_REF] Schopflin | Nations. Identity. Power[END_REF].

A third strand of the literature maintains that citizens use proxies, or 'shortcuts', when they are called upon to make decisions on issues about which they have little or no information. On the basis of Eurobarometer data on seven West European countries, [START_REF] Anderson | When in Doubt Use Proxies: Attitudes toward Domestic Politics and Support for European Integration[END_REF] finds evidence that citizens tend to look to their governments or their parties when deciding whether to support European integration. In a more general context, other scholars show that citizens tend to be ill informed about abstract international issues [START_REF] Huckfeldt | Political Environment, Cohesive Social Groups, and the Communication of Public Opinion[END_REF]. Therefore, individuals rely on their informal social environment such as friends, acquaintances, colleagues and neighbors when called upon to evaluate such issues.

Theories and hypotheses

Although party competition has been argued to negatively influence support towards integration in Central and East European countries [START_REF] Rohrschneider | Political Parties, Public Opinion and European Integration in Post-Communist Countries: The State of the Art[END_REF], this was not a factor in the Bulgarian context. Prior to the 2005 national elections, Bulgarian politics were characterized by an elite consensus over EU accession [START_REF] Dimitrova | Bulgaria's Road to the European Union: Progress, Problems and Perspectives[END_REF][START_REF] Giatzidis | Bulgaria on the Road to European Union[END_REF], which induced successive governments to maintain integration as a top priority on their agenda. The public was presented with a rather coherent discourse on European integration. In this context, and based upon previous findings that incumbent popularity and voter assessment of government performance influence public support for European integration [START_REF] Franklin | Uncorking the Bottle: Popular Opposition to European Unification in the Wake of Maastricht[END_REF][START_REF] Franklin | Referendum Outcomes and Trust in Government: Public Support for Europe in the Wake of Maastricht[END_REF], one could conceivably explain Bulgarian public support for EU membership through government popularity. However, in the fall of 2006, two-thirds of the Bulgarians did not trust their national government (Eurobarometer 65). National politicians are often seen as untrustworthy, corrupt and driven by personal interests. Hence, support for EU accession cannot be explained by the government rate of approval. On the contrary, Bulgarians might hope that Brussels would monitor the activities of their national government. Based on these arguments and the observation of Bulgarians' low trust in their national government, we formulate a first hypothesis (H1): low trust in national government translates into high support for European integration. This viewpoint follows the thesis that the worse the country's situation, the higher the support for the EU [START_REF] Christin | Economic and Political Basis of Attitudes toward the EU in Central and Eastern European Countries in the 1990s[END_REF], but it challenges some of the results of previous studies on Central and Eastern Europe [START_REF] Ehin | Determinants of Public Support for EU Membership: Data from the Baltic Countries[END_REF] as well as some research concerning West European states.

The second hypothesis deals with the relationship between a person's political values and his or her support for integration. Scholars who study Central and Eastern Europe suggest that democratic and free market values, positive attitudes towards minorities and liberal principles increase support for European integration [START_REF] Cichowski | Western Dreams, Eastern Realities: Support for European Union in Central and Eastern Europe[END_REF][START_REF] Ehin | Determinants of Public Support for EU Membership: Data from the Baltic Countries[END_REF][START_REF] Tucker | Transitional Winners and Losers: Attitudes towards EU Membership in Post-Communist Countries[END_REF][START_REF] Slomczynski | Dynamics of Support for European Integration in Post-Communist Poland[END_REF]. Hence, apart from beliefs in economic benefits, individuals perceive EU membership as a way of consolidating freedom and democracy in their countries. EU requirements, such as the rule of law, respect for human rights and respect for minorities, meet expectations for good governance, transparency and the irreversibility of reforms. Support for EU membership is therefore related to liberal democratic values (see also [START_REF] Schimmelfenning | The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union[END_REF]. Such expectations are not unreasonable -scholars (see [START_REF] Grabbe | The EU's Transformative Power. Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe[END_REF] reveal the benefits of EU conditionality in terms of both political and economic developments in Central and Eastern Europe. Identification with Europe, or Europeanization, is a positive determinant of support for EU membership [START_REF] White Stephen | Enlargement and the New Outsiders[END_REF]. Strong backing of EU accession at the beginning of these countries' transition period, when information about the EU was scarce, was essentially based on the systems of values attached to the idea of Europe. In contrast to their countries, which were perceived as provincial, underdeveloped and authoritarian, 'Europe' was seen as cosmopolitan, prosperous and democratic. Whereas the EU's democratic deficit and the quality of democratic processes within its institutional framework are matters of concern for a Western European, for citizens living in Eastern Europe the state of national democracy still lags too far behind to worry about democratic processes in Brussels [START_REF] Rohrschneider | The democracy deficit and mass support for an EUwide government[END_REF][START_REF] Karp | To Know It Is to Love It? Satisfaction with Democracy in the European Union[END_REF]. Data for Bulgaria are therefore expected to confirm that individuals with strong beliefs in democracy are more supportive of integration (H2).

Citizens perceive national economic factors as belonging to the category of utilitarian factors able to influence their attitude towards membership. Previous studies show that attitudes towards European integration are positively related to national economic conditions, the timing of entry into the Union and length of membership in it [START_REF] Anderson | The Dynamics of Public Opinion toward European Integration, 1973-1993[END_REF], a low inflation rate [START_REF] Eichenberg | Europeans and the European Community: The Dynamics of Public Support for European Integration[END_REF] and the individual's ability to adapt to and benefit from market liberalization [START_REF] Gabel | Understanding Variation in Public Support for European Integration[END_REF][START_REF] Anderson | Economic Benefits and Support for Membership in the EU: A Cross-National Analysis[END_REF]Gabel, 1998a). Would a person with a high regard for the national economy be in favor of or against EU membership? Suppose that a hypothetical citizen, Mr X, thinks that the standard of living, unemployment, inequality and economic growth in Bulgaria are acceptable, but he is afraid that the economy could be destabilized by unfettered foreign competition. He therefore opposes Bulgaria's membership. Another hypothetical citizen, Ms Y, who also thinks highly of the Bulgarian economy, might presume that the economy could successfully withstand foreign competition and would even benefit from larger markets. In contrast to Mr X, Ms Y supports EU membership. Which of the two views prevails? Ms Y might be a more likely model of the average citizen because her view is supported by the economic theory that trade liberalization improves a country's welfare in the long run. Answers to the open-ended question in the questionnaire show that Bulgarians assess integration in terms of long-term benefits rather than immediate returns. Thus, our data are expected to show that an individual's support for integration is positively related to his or her perception of the country's economic performance (H3).

The next hypothesis examines the impact of 'informal social ties' on opinion formation. Some studies have shown that individuals do not form their opinions on the basis of a personal effort to acquire proper information, but rely strongly on other members of their social environment for guidance [START_REF] Nowak | From Private Attitudes to Public Opinion: A Dynamic Theory of Social Impact[END_REF]. One may expect that such a hypothesis will hold when the marginal cost of acquiring information is high and the marginal private benefit is low. Thus, information that is of great social value but low individual benefit has the characteristics of a public good: it is too costly to be provided by an individual but, once it is provided, no one can be excluded from the benefits of it. We expect to find a positive relationship between the pro-EU attitude of an individual's social group and the individual's support for EU membership (H4).

Summarizing, we hypothesize that support for EU membership is (H1) negatively related to trust in national government; (H2) positively related to an individual's beliefs in democratic norms; (H3) positively related to citizens' opinion of the economic performance of their country; and finally (H4) positively related to the attitude of the social group to which an individual belongs.

Variables, data and model

Some of the variables in our analysis are equal-weight indexes incorporating several questions. (Other than equal-weight structures were also considered and it was found that the results were robust.) The purpose of constructing composite variables is twofold: to increase the variability in the data, and to obtain a more accurate measure of the variable in question by quantifying several of its distinct aspects. 1 'EU support' is the dependent variable. It measures the individual's support for his or her country's membership in the European Union. Janssen (1991: 443) notes that 'the picture one gets depends heavily on the indicator one uses to measure support.' 'EU support' is constructed as an index based on three questions (see Tables A1, A2 and A3 in the Web appendix 2 ). All questions in this index are positively correlated and the index is highly correlated with each of its components; a principal factor analysis reveals that all components load into the same factor (correlation tables and factor analysis are available on request).

The variable 'Confidence in home government' reflects the respondent's trust in the country's political class. The variable 'Confidence in EU officials' is based on the question: 'On a scale of 1 to 100, rank your confidence in EU officials.' This question does not assume that the respondent is familiar with particular personalities, but refers to the EU political class as a whole. 'Democratic values' is a composite variable based on a set of three questions referring to pluralism, the importance of elections and attitudes towards the different constituencies of power; for instance, prioritizing government over parliament is considered a rather authoritarian view. The variable 'Home economy' captures the respondent's perception of how the country's economy is performing. It is the sum of six questions about the performance of the economy as a whole, unemployment, the standard of living, inflation and income inequality. The variable 'Group of friends' measures to what extent the respondent's social environment favors EU membership; the source question for this variable is 'What percentage of your friends do you think would support your country's EU membership?' A number of socioeconomic variables were also part of the survey and used as 'controls.'

Most of the previous research uses Eurobarometer data, which are based on answers of the 'yes/no/don't know' type. [START_REF] Brinegar | Varieties of Capitalism and Political Divides over European Integration[END_REF] point out that such data are insufficiently detailed for quantitative analysis. Our survey allows the answers to vary on a scale of 1 to 100, to provide room for nuances and diversity in opinions. 3 The survey is based on a stratified random sample of 1016 citizens. We encountered the problem of missing values in the data to an extent that it needed to be addressed. The literature (e.g. [START_REF] King | Analyzing Incomplete Political Science Data: An Alternative Algorithm for Multiple Imputation[END_REF][START_REF] Little | Statistical Analysis with Missing Data[END_REF] identifies a few distinct types of missing values, depending on whether the probability of occurrence of a missing value is correlated with observed or unobserved data. Unfortunately, there is no reliable test for determining which of the types is present, since any test should be based on the very missing values. Therefore, the nature of the problem can best be determined by reasoning alone. Since the questions in this survey are not of a sensitive nature, it is reasonable to believe that the respondents have no particular motivation to refuse to answer some questions. Therefore, we can safely assume that our missing data are of either the 'missing at random' or the 'missing completely at random' type. In any case, a 'multiple imputation by chained equations' method is applicable [START_REF] Van Buuren | Multiple Imputation of Missing Blood Pressure Covariates in Survival Analysis[END_REF]. This method replaces the missing values in the data set with values obtained from cross-regressing all the variables.

We construct the following regression equation: 'EU support' is a linear function of the variables 'Confidence in home government', 'Confidence in EU officials', 'Democratic values', 'Home economy', 'Group of friends', the person's employment status, some control variables, plus a stochastic error term. The control variables are Age, Education and Gender. The first column in Table 1 presents a 'list-wise deletion' OLS model, where only the observations with no missing values are included. The second column presents a similar specification, with the control variables Age, Gender and Education removed. The next two columns, (3) and ( 4), use the same specifications as before, but with multiple imputations for the missing values.

The variable 'Group of friends' may raise some suspicion concerning its exogeneity with respect to the explained variable 'EU support,' since a person might choose friends who share similar political views or, conversely, might form political views under the influence of his or her friends. A Durbin-Wu-Hausman test is performed [START_REF] Davidson | Estimation and Inference in Econometrics[END_REF] and the null hypothesis that this variable is exogenous is not rejected.

Findings

The coefficient of the variable 'Confidence in home government' came out negative and statistically significant. This indicates that Bulgarian citizens who are dissatisfied with their political leaders' performance tend to be more in favor of EU integration. This finding is in line with [START_REF] Sánchez-Cuenca | The Political Basis of Support for European Integration[END_REF], who argues that distrust of domestic authorities and trust in EU institutions are interdependent. This is not to say, though, that national governments should worsen their performance and credibility for a pro-integration policy. Such an interpretation of these results would be both inaccurate and unfortunate.

Eurobarometer data confirm that Bulgarians have low confidence in their national institutions and that this attitude persists over time (Eurobarometer 65, spring and fall 2006). In spring 2006, confidence in the Bulgarian Parliament was only 17%, in the government 24% and in the judiciary 20%, the lowest figures of all the countries included in Eurobarometer surveys; confidence in political parties was only 10%. Consequently, the average Bulgarian has specific expectations about the impact that EU membership would have on the country's governance. Answers to the open-ended question in our survey show that Bulgarians expect EU membership to 'lower corruption,' bring about respect for 'norms,' induce 'order' and 'change mentalities for the better.' Although it is not clear how Bulgarians expect these changes to happen, the data certainly suggest that dissatisfaction with the national political elite is an important factor inducing a pro-accession attitude. This confirms Sánchez-Cuenca's thesis that the presence of political corruption at the national level has a positive impact upon support for European integration (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2000), as well as Christin's findings that a relatively slow pace of democratization leads to higher support for integration [START_REF] Christin | Economic and Political Basis of Attitudes toward the EU in Central and Eastern European Countries in the 1990s[END_REF].

The variable 'Confidence in EU officials' is significant and has a positive coefficient. Taking into account that the scale of the variable 'Confidence in home government' is three times the scale of 'Confidence in EU officials,' the magnitudes of the two coefficients show that the credibility of EU officials is a determinant of support that is just as important as trust in domestic political leaders. This result to some extent leads to a reconsideration of McLaren's finding that attitudes to European integration are influenced by perceptions of EU institutions rather than perceptions of national institutions [START_REF] Mclaren | Explaining Mass Level Euroskepticism: Identity, Interests and Institutional Distrust[END_REF]).

It appears that, although Bulgarians distrust their governments and politicians, they trust Brussels to monitor domestic authorities. Analyses based on Eurobarometer data show a close correlation between the awareness Bulgarians have of the EU and their trust in it. In spring 2006, Bulgarians' level of trust in European institutions was as follows: confidence in the European Parliament 51%, in the European Commission 44%, in the Council 41%, in the European Central Bank 45%, and in the European Court of Justice 39% (Eurobarometer 65.2). One year later, following Bulgaria's accession, trust in European institutions had not changed significantly (Eurobarometer 67, spring 2007). Membership, therefore, does not seem to have changed Bulgarians' view of EU institutions. However, interestingly enough, Bulgarians' trust in the EU as a whole is on average lower than the EU average by 3% (54% compared with 57%).

The positive sign for 'Democratic values' indicates that people who hold democratic views are more in favor of integration. Related to the low degree of trust in national governments and a relatively high degree of trust in EU officials, this indicator also seems to suggest that the respondents believe that, following EU accession, the regime in their country will consolidate its democratic features owing to conditionality and constant monitoring from Brussels.

In the literature, it has been suggested that EU conditionality has fostered political reforms in terms of transparency, integrity, rule of law and the protection of minorities [START_REF] Grabbe | The EU's Transformative Power. Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe[END_REF]. Our qualitative data further support this argument (Bulgarians expect 'less corruption,' 'less bureaucracy,' 'norms' and 'laws'; Roma citizens expect 'their life will improve'). In spring 2007, the majority of Bulgarians viewed the European Union as 'democratic' (78%), 'modern' (76%) and 'protective' (Eurobarometer 67).

The coefficient of the variable 'Home economy' is significant and positive, showing that those individuals who believe that Bulgaria's economy is performing well are likely to be in favor of European integration. However, the survey also shows that the average rate of trust in the country's economy is only about 17%, which indicates that the vast majority believe that their economy is performing poorly. The disproportion between the 17% average evaluation of the home economy and the overall level of support for EU membership, which in Bulgaria is about 60%, is striking. These facts, together with the low value of the regression coefficient of the 'Home economy' variable, indicate the relatively low importance of macroeconomic considerations in explaining the total variability in 'EU support.' This suggests that macroeconomic considerations, though positively related to public attitudes, explain only a small part of the process of opinion formation. For most of the respondents, the reasons for being in favor or against membership are other than concerns about the country's economy. However, people expect improvements at the macroeconomic level from accession. Eurobarometer 65.2 (spring 2006) found that 48% of Bulgarians believed that the EU played a positive role in determining the economic situation in Bulgaria. Our result suggests only that public opinion about the performance of the home economy is not a major determinant of support. It also indicates that good domestic economic policies make for a good pro-European policy.

The extent of pro-integration attitudes seems to depend significantly on a person's social environment, as the coefficient of the variable 'Group of friends' indicates. The positive sign of this coefficient suggests that this kind of opinion formation is important in Bulgarian culture. Eurobarometer 65.2 shows that Bulgarians on average spend 30% of their socializing time discussing EU-related topics, which may explain why the heuristic factor in our model is so significant.

A person's employment status appears to be hardly relevant to opinion formation in relation to the EU. Since qualitative data show that the opening of borders to labor migration is a determinant of support, one would think that people who are unemployed would look forward to the liberalization of labor markets that would supposedly come about with accession. The prospect of new jobs abroad is seen both as an opportunity ('for the young,' 'for better income') as well as a problem ('the young will leave'). Bulgarians looked positively on accession, especially since they perceive an increased opportunity to cross borders freely ('looking for jobs'). On the other hand, it is conceivable that the great majority of potentially migrating workers are people who already have a job at home but are looking for higher wages abroad, rather than individuals who have not found employment in their own country.

Besides the variables included in our quantitative analysis, the openended question in the survey provided interesting insights. Many of the answers indicate that support for accession is driven by the hope for a better future and an improvement in the administrative and political life of the country ('less bureaucracy', 'less corruption,' 'more norms,' 'less crime'). The impact of accession is seen in terms of future benefits rather than present ones: although older generations fear accession ('high prices' but 'low pensions'), they see it as an opportunity for the young, 'our kids.' For them, support for accession is conceived in terms of sacrifice for the betterment of future generations rather than self-centered and narrow-minded cost/benefit considerations.

Conclusion

As discovered by other studies on countries plagued by political instability, corruption or sectarian interests (e.g. [START_REF] Sánchez-Cuenca | The Political Basis of Support for European Integration[END_REF][START_REF] Christin | Economic and Political Basis of Attitudes toward the EU in Central and Eastern European Countries in the 1990s[END_REF][START_REF] Rohrschneider | Political Parties, Public Opinion and European Integration in Post-Communist Countries: The State of the Art[END_REF], lack of trust in national governments is a strong determinant of support for integration. Combined with trust in EU officials and the belief in democratic values as determinants of support, this suggests that Brussels is perceived as capable of raising the level of good governance and lowering corruption by placing additional checks upon national politics. These findings further support both Sánchez-Cuenca and Christin's general thesis that positive attitudes towards integration are higher in countries with lower opportunity costs of transferring sovereignty to the EU, owing to either political instability, the slow pace of reforms, inefficient political actors and state institutions or poor economic performance. They also relate to arguments in the larger literature on East European politics according to which individuals in the young democracies of Eastern Europe rely upon external rather than national actors for solutions (see e.g. [START_REF] Verdery | Civil Society or Nation? "Europe" in the Symbolism of Postsocialist Politics[END_REF][START_REF] Tisma ˘neanu | Fantasies of Salvation[END_REF][START_REF] Schopflin | Nations. Identity. Power[END_REF].

Although economic performance and individual competitiveness have been identified as determinants of EU support by previous research, in this case a person's employment status appears as a weak determinant of support for European accession. Though economic benefits from EU membership ('more jobs,' 'higher income') are expected, they are anticipated to be a result of labor mobility across borders rather than of an improvement in the national economy. In other words, as far as the economic dimension goes, support for membership is driven by perceived individual benefits. Moreover, the average Bulgarian seems to want to join the EU for non-economic reasons that are at least as important as those related to the nation's economy, one of which is the perceived benefits for future generations rather than immediate returns. Therefore, although the losers from transition perceive themselves as losers from integration (as argued by [START_REF] Tucker | Transitional Winners and Losers: Attitudes towards EU Membership in Post-Communist Countries[END_REF], they are likely to support integration for the benefit of their children.

Overall, the average electorate's support for integration is based upon expectations for the future, being linked either to Brussels' ability to improve good governance at the national level or to the individual's own ability to take advantage of the opportunities granted by EU membership. Although some of these findings carry implications for the general study of public attitudes towards integration, others may be case specific.

Notes

This research was supported by a grant from the CERGE-EI Foundation under a program of the Global Development Network. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and have not been endorsed by CERGE-EI or the GDN. We wish to thank three anonymous referees for their comments. A replication data set and some accompanying material can be found at http:// ccolonescu.googlepages.com/data. 1

The Web appendix (at http://ccolonescu.googlepages.com/data) provides the questions that are used to construct each variable, as well as the method of construction. Summary statistics of the variables are also reported there. 2 See http://ccolonescu.googlepages.com/data. 3 Table A2 in the Web appendix provides an excerpt from the survey instrument.

Table 1

 1 Regression results (p-values in parentheses): (1), (2) OLS with 'list-wise deletion' of missing values; (3), (4) OLS with missing values calculated using the method of multiple imputations by chained equations. All regressions use heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors

		(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
		EU support	EU support	EU support	EU support
	Confid. in home gov.	-0.417	-0.439	-0.257	-0.282
		(.005)	(.003)	(.049)	(.026)
	Confidence in EU	1.293	1.291	1.139	1.144
		(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
	Democratic values	0.112	0.114	0.0902	0.0904
		(.002)	(.002)	(.004)	(.004)
	Home economy	0.0605	0.0652	0.0625	0.0666
		(.019)	(.010)	(.008)	(.004)
	Group of friends	1.353	1.361	1.623	1.633
		(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
	Unempl. (E = 0, U = 1)	12.20	12.15	0.167	-0.104
		(.096)	(.097)	(.979)	(.987)
	Age categories	-0.422	_	-1.252	_
		(.818)		(.444)
	Gender (M = 0, F = 1)	2.572	_	-0.658	_
		(.608)		(.884)
	Education categories	-1.097	_	-0.666	_
		(.663)		(.771)
	Constant	40.47	36.36	35.20	28.18
		(.001)	(.000)	(.002)	(.000)
	Observations	725	729	1016	1016
	Adjusted R-squared	.472	.474	.477	.478

European Union Politics 9(3)

Tanasoiu and Colonescu Determinants of Support for European Integration