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Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?

Year 2011, Volume: 16 Issue: 1, 47 - 70, 01.04.2011

Abstract

This article provides an in- depth analysis of Italian citizens’ attitudes towards Turkey’s accession to the European Union EU . It identifies opinion patterns in Italy concerning Turkey and key determinants of variation in popular support for Turkey’s possible membership of the EU. This article first analyzes whether the Italian public adopts a utilitarian approach in calculating the perceived costs and benefits of EU enlargement with Turkey. Second, turning to identity- related determinants, it examines whether Italians consider Turkey’s cultural, religious and universal values to be compatible with those of the EU and Italy. Third, in terms of threat- based determinants, it examines whether Turcoscepticism in Italy is based on the fear of an influx of Turks into Europe, both from realistic and symbolic threat perspectives. This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on public opinion by testing how these competing theories help explain attitudes of Italian citizens in the 2000s toward Turkey’s possible EU accession. Through binary logistic regression analysis of Eurobarometer survey data 20002008 , the article concludes that pragmatist sociotropic utilitarian considerations, in concert with mutual comprehension of values based on

References

  • Emiliano Alessandri and Ebru Ş. Canan, “Mamma Li Turchi Just and Old Italian Saying”, in Nathalie Tocci (ed.), Talking Turkey II, Quaderno IAI – Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome, 2008, p.11.
  • Italian public opinion was especially in favour of deeper EU integration (88%), in so far as a European identity did not override national identity. Even over specific challenges to the EU, for instance over the issue of non-EU immigrants’ rights, they were among the most supportive Europeans for extending rights to immigrants (EB No: 37).
  • Ebru Ş. Canan-Sokullu and Çiğdem Kentmen, “Turkey in the EU?: An Empirical Analysis of European Public Opinion on Turkey’s Protracted Candidacy”, in Armağan E. Çakır (ed.), A Sisyphean Story: Fifty Years of EU-Turkey Relations (1959-2009), London, Routledge, 2010, p.105.
  • Matthew Gabel and Simon Hix, “Understanding Public Support for British Membership of the Single Currency”, Political Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 65-81; Matthew Gabel and Guy D. Whitten, “Economic Conditions, Economic Perceptions, and Public Support for European Integration”, Political Behavior, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1997), pp. 81- 96.
  • Mikko Mattila, “Contested Decisions: Empirical Analysis of Voting in the European Union Council of Ministers”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 43, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 29- 50; Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, “Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multi-Level Governance”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (May 2003), pp. 233-243; Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, and Kermit Blank, “European Integration from the 1980s: State-centric vs. Multi-level Governance”, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 34, No.3 (1996), pp. 341- 378.
  • Canan-Sokullu and Kentmen, “Turkey in the EU?”.
  • Cynthia L. Pickett and Marilynn B. Brewer, “Assimilation and Differentiation Needs as Motivational Determinants of Perceived In-group and Out-Group Homogeneity”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 37, No. 4 (July 2001), pp. 341-348.
  • James A. Caporaso, “The Possibilities of a European Identity”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Summer- Fall 2005), pp. 65-75; Jurgen Habermas, The Divided West, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2006.
  • Risse argues that EU citizens actually share a ‘we-feeling’, as member states’ cultural and linguistic differences might prevent them forming a collective identity. See, Thomas Risse, “The Euro between National and European Identity”, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 10, No. 4 (August 2003), pp. 487- 505; See also, Anthony D. Smith, “National Identity and the Idea of European Unity”, International Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 1 (January 1992), pp. 55-76; Lauren McLaren, Identity, Interests and Attitudes to European Integration, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
  • José Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities and European Integration”, in Timothy A. Brynes and Peter J. Katzenstein (eds.), Religion in an Expanding Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.73.
  • Ted G. Jelen, “The Political Consequences of Religious Group Attitudes”, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (1993), pp. 178-190; Milton Rokeach, “The Role of Values in Public Opinion Research”, The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 4 (1968), pp. 547-559.
  • Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities”, p. 71.
  • Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No.3 (Summer 1993), p, 158.
  • Alessandri and Canan, “Mamma Li Turchi ”, p. 28; Canan-Sokullu, “Perceptions of Islam, Turkey and the European Union”.
  • Sara De Master and Michael K. Le Roy, “Xenophobia and the European Union”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 32, No. 4 (July 2000), pp. 419-436; Joel S. Fetzer, Public Attitudes towards Immigration in the United States, France and Germany, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; Joel S. Fetzer and Christopher J. Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France and Germany, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005; Marilyn Hoskin, New Immigrants and Democratic Society: Minority Integration in Western Democracies, New York, Praeger, 1991.
  • Irmina Matonyte and Vaidas Morkevicius, “Threat Perception and European Identity Building: The Case of Elites in Belgium, Germany, Lithuania and Poland”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 61, No. 6 (August 2009), p. 968.
  • Maria G. Cowles, James Caporaso and Thomas Risse (eds.), Transforming Europe. Europeanization and Domestic Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001.
  • Emil J. Kirchner and James Sperling, “The New Security Threats in Europe: Theory and Evidence”, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2002), pp. 423-452.
  • Charalamabos Tsardanidis and Stefano Guerra, “The EU Mediterranean State, the Migration and the “Threat” from the South”, in Russell King, Gabriella Lazaridis and Charalambos Tsardanidis (eds.), Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, Houndmills, MacMillan Press, 2000, pp. 321- 344.
  • Lauren M. McLaren, “Public Support for the European Union: Cost/Benefit Analysis or Perceived Cultural Threat?”, Journal of Politics, Vol. 64, No. 2 (May 2002), p. 557.
  • Lauren M. McLaren, “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe: Contact, Threat Perception, and Preferences for the Exclusion of Migrants”, Social Forces, Vol. 81, No. 3 (March 2003), p. 915.
  • Wolfgang Lutz, Brian C. O’Neill, and Sergei Scherbov, “Europe’s Population at a Turning Point”, Science, Vol. 299, No. 5615 (28 March 2003), pp. 1991-1992.
  • Turner, “Social Comparison and Social Identity”; Turner, Brown, and Tajfel “Social Comparison and Group Interest”; Levine, Prosser, Evans and Reicher, “Identity and Emergency Intervention”.
  • Matonyte and Morkevicius, “Threat Perception”, p. 969.
  • Sean Carey, “Undivided Loyalties: Is National Identity an Obstacle to European Integration?”, European Union Politics, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 2002), pp. 387-413; McLaren, “Public Support for the European Union”; McLaren “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe”, p. 917.
  • Canan-Sokullu and Kentmen “Turkey in the EU?”, p. 111.
  • Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p. 447.
  • Ashmore, “Prejudice: Causes and Cures”, p. 253.
  • McLaren, “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe”, p. 917.
  • Gabel, “Economic Integration”.
  • Marija J. Norušis, SPSS 14.0 Advanced Statistical Procedures Companion, Upper Saddle River: NJ, Prentice Hall, 2005, p.26; Andy Field Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, London, Sage, 2005. For a binary/categorical dependent variable Y and an explanatory variable X, the regression model is Intermediate Statistics: Use and Interpretation, Mahwah: New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005, p. 109; Peter McCullagh, “Regression Models for Ordinal Data”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 42, No. 2 (1980), pp. 109-142.
  • Confidence intervals and Wald values are not reported in Table 2 to make the interpretation of the table easier. However, these data and results are available on request to the author.
  • Scott Menard, Applied Logistic Regression Analysis, Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, Thousand Oaks: CA, Sage, 2001.
  • Raymond Myers, Classical and Modern Regression with Applications, Boston: MA, Duxbury, 1990.
Year 2011, Volume: 16 Issue: 1, 47 - 70, 01.04.2011

Abstract

References

  • Emiliano Alessandri and Ebru Ş. Canan, “Mamma Li Turchi Just and Old Italian Saying”, in Nathalie Tocci (ed.), Talking Turkey II, Quaderno IAI – Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome, 2008, p.11.
  • Italian public opinion was especially in favour of deeper EU integration (88%), in so far as a European identity did not override national identity. Even over specific challenges to the EU, for instance over the issue of non-EU immigrants’ rights, they were among the most supportive Europeans for extending rights to immigrants (EB No: 37).
  • Ebru Ş. Canan-Sokullu and Çiğdem Kentmen, “Turkey in the EU?: An Empirical Analysis of European Public Opinion on Turkey’s Protracted Candidacy”, in Armağan E. Çakır (ed.), A Sisyphean Story: Fifty Years of EU-Turkey Relations (1959-2009), London, Routledge, 2010, p.105.
  • Matthew Gabel and Simon Hix, “Understanding Public Support for British Membership of the Single Currency”, Political Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 65-81; Matthew Gabel and Guy D. Whitten, “Economic Conditions, Economic Perceptions, and Public Support for European Integration”, Political Behavior, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1997), pp. 81- 96.
  • Mikko Mattila, “Contested Decisions: Empirical Analysis of Voting in the European Union Council of Ministers”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 43, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 29- 50; Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, “Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multi-Level Governance”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (May 2003), pp. 233-243; Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, and Kermit Blank, “European Integration from the 1980s: State-centric vs. Multi-level Governance”, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 34, No.3 (1996), pp. 341- 378.
  • Canan-Sokullu and Kentmen, “Turkey in the EU?”.
  • Cynthia L. Pickett and Marilynn B. Brewer, “Assimilation and Differentiation Needs as Motivational Determinants of Perceived In-group and Out-Group Homogeneity”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 37, No. 4 (July 2001), pp. 341-348.
  • James A. Caporaso, “The Possibilities of a European Identity”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Summer- Fall 2005), pp. 65-75; Jurgen Habermas, The Divided West, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2006.
  • Risse argues that EU citizens actually share a ‘we-feeling’, as member states’ cultural and linguistic differences might prevent them forming a collective identity. See, Thomas Risse, “The Euro between National and European Identity”, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 10, No. 4 (August 2003), pp. 487- 505; See also, Anthony D. Smith, “National Identity and the Idea of European Unity”, International Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 1 (January 1992), pp. 55-76; Lauren McLaren, Identity, Interests and Attitudes to European Integration, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
  • José Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities and European Integration”, in Timothy A. Brynes and Peter J. Katzenstein (eds.), Religion in an Expanding Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.73.
  • Ted G. Jelen, “The Political Consequences of Religious Group Attitudes”, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (1993), pp. 178-190; Milton Rokeach, “The Role of Values in Public Opinion Research”, The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 4 (1968), pp. 547-559.
  • Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities”, p. 71.
  • Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No.3 (Summer 1993), p, 158.
  • Alessandri and Canan, “Mamma Li Turchi ”, p. 28; Canan-Sokullu, “Perceptions of Islam, Turkey and the European Union”.
  • Sara De Master and Michael K. Le Roy, “Xenophobia and the European Union”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 32, No. 4 (July 2000), pp. 419-436; Joel S. Fetzer, Public Attitudes towards Immigration in the United States, France and Germany, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; Joel S. Fetzer and Christopher J. Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France and Germany, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005; Marilyn Hoskin, New Immigrants and Democratic Society: Minority Integration in Western Democracies, New York, Praeger, 1991.
  • Irmina Matonyte and Vaidas Morkevicius, “Threat Perception and European Identity Building: The Case of Elites in Belgium, Germany, Lithuania and Poland”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 61, No. 6 (August 2009), p. 968.
  • Maria G. Cowles, James Caporaso and Thomas Risse (eds.), Transforming Europe. Europeanization and Domestic Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001.
  • Emil J. Kirchner and James Sperling, “The New Security Threats in Europe: Theory and Evidence”, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2002), pp. 423-452.
  • Charalamabos Tsardanidis and Stefano Guerra, “The EU Mediterranean State, the Migration and the “Threat” from the South”, in Russell King, Gabriella Lazaridis and Charalambos Tsardanidis (eds.), Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, Houndmills, MacMillan Press, 2000, pp. 321- 344.
  • Lauren M. McLaren, “Public Support for the European Union: Cost/Benefit Analysis or Perceived Cultural Threat?”, Journal of Politics, Vol. 64, No. 2 (May 2002), p. 557.
  • Lauren M. McLaren, “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe: Contact, Threat Perception, and Preferences for the Exclusion of Migrants”, Social Forces, Vol. 81, No. 3 (March 2003), p. 915.
  • Wolfgang Lutz, Brian C. O’Neill, and Sergei Scherbov, “Europe’s Population at a Turning Point”, Science, Vol. 299, No. 5615 (28 March 2003), pp. 1991-1992.
  • Turner, “Social Comparison and Social Identity”; Turner, Brown, and Tajfel “Social Comparison and Group Interest”; Levine, Prosser, Evans and Reicher, “Identity and Emergency Intervention”.
  • Matonyte and Morkevicius, “Threat Perception”, p. 969.
  • Sean Carey, “Undivided Loyalties: Is National Identity an Obstacle to European Integration?”, European Union Politics, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 2002), pp. 387-413; McLaren, “Public Support for the European Union”; McLaren “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe”, p. 917.
  • Canan-Sokullu and Kentmen “Turkey in the EU?”, p. 111.
  • Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p. 447.
  • Ashmore, “Prejudice: Causes and Cures”, p. 253.
  • McLaren, “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe”, p. 917.
  • Gabel, “Economic Integration”.
  • Marija J. Norušis, SPSS 14.0 Advanced Statistical Procedures Companion, Upper Saddle River: NJ, Prentice Hall, 2005, p.26; Andy Field Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, London, Sage, 2005. For a binary/categorical dependent variable Y and an explanatory variable X, the regression model is Intermediate Statistics: Use and Interpretation, Mahwah: New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005, p. 109; Peter McCullagh, “Regression Models for Ordinal Data”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 42, No. 2 (1980), pp. 109-142.
  • Confidence intervals and Wald values are not reported in Table 2 to make the interpretation of the table easier. However, these data and results are available on request to the author.
  • Scott Menard, Applied Logistic Regression Analysis, Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, Thousand Oaks: CA, Sage, 2001.
  • Raymond Myers, Classical and Modern Regression with Applications, Boston: MA, Duxbury, 1990.
There are 34 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Ebru Ş. Canan-sokullu This is me

Publication Date April 1, 2011
Published in Issue Year 2011 Volume: 16 Issue: 1

Cite

APA Canan-sokullu, E. Ş. (2011). Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, 16(1), 47-70.
AMA Canan-sokullu EŞ. Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?. PERCEPTIONS. April 2011;16(1):47-70.
Chicago Canan-sokullu, Ebru Ş. “Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?”. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 16, no. 1 (April 2011): 47-70.
EndNote Canan-sokullu EŞ (April 1, 2011) Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 16 1 47–70.
IEEE E. Ş. Canan-sokullu, “Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?”, PERCEPTIONS, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 47–70, 2011.
ISNAD Canan-sokullu, Ebru Ş. “Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?”. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 16/1 (April 2011), 47-70.
JAMA Canan-sokullu EŞ. Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?. PERCEPTIONS. 2011;16:47–70.
MLA Canan-sokullu, Ebru Ş. “Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?”. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, vol. 16, no. 1, 2011, pp. 47-70.
Vancouver Canan-sokullu EŞ. Italian Public Opinion on Turkey’s EU Accession: Utilitarian Calculations, Identitarian Evaluations or Perceived Threats?. PERCEPTIONS. 2011;16(1):47-70.