Public Support for European Integration in Croatia: Utilitarian, Identity-based, Institutionally Driven or All of the Above?

The bulk of empirical studies that examined attitudes towards the European Union (EU) and European integration have targeted political elites and party-based support. However, growing rates of Euroskepticism among EU citizens and a widening gap between elite and popular attitudes—recorded since the mid-1990s—brought about an agenda shift both in theorizing and researching Euroskepticism (Boomgaarden et al., 2011). ¹ As EU citizens are gaining more means of channeling their views on the EU and Eurointegrations (e.g., national referenda on EU-related issues, growing legislative powers of the European Parliament), their preferences are becoming increasingly hard to ignore. More than ever, stability of the European political system thus depends on popular support (Loveless and Rohrschneider, 2008; Fligstein et al., 2012) in spite of the democratic deficit that still taints the EU's political institutions.