Thought Communities and Pre-conditions for Polity Formation in the European Union: Evidence From Six EU Member States

Abstract

How do citizens in European Union (EU) member states think about the EU? And what are the implications of different ‘thinking styles’ for citizens' preferences regarding formation of policies, politics and polity in the EU? The current article uses relational class analysis (RCA) and analyses perceptions of the EU as a political order by citizens in six selected member states. These are France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – three founding/large member states and three members of the Visegrád group (two of which represent the most notorious examples of the ongoing ‘sovereignist’ backlash). Using RCA, we identify two thought communities in the selected EU member states: statists and pragmatists. These are the communities of citizens sharing thinking styles that would suggest their support for particular polity types in the EU.