Publication
Framing international cooperation: citizen support for cooperation with the European Union in Eastern Europe
While there is a large literature studying the determinants of public support for European integration, much less is known about the factors shaping attitudes towards various international cooperation initiatives. This article by Dimiter Toshkov, Honorata Mazepus and Antoaneta Dimitrova studies the influence of framing on preferences for cooperation with the EU.
- Author
- Dimiter Toshkov, Honorata Mazepus, Antoaneta Dimitrova
- Date
- 23 June 2023
- Links
- Read the full article here
In this article, the authors study the possible influence of framing, a mechanism linking pre-existing values and causal beliefs, on preferences for cooperation with the EU. Six thematic frames are developed to related to the context of international cooperation: economic benefits, security, shared identity, traditional and liberal values, and rules and norms of governance. The authors test the effects of these frames using a survey experiment conducted in three countries in Eastern Europe—Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine—that are targeted by the integration projects of both the EU and Russia.
The article finds that thematic framing has only small effects on international cooperation preferences: priming liberal values and governance increases slightly support for cooperation with the EU, but the effects of the remaining frames are too small and heterogeneous to be estimated precisely with our sample. Contrary to expectations, some of these effects are exercised by changing the relevant causal beliefs of citizens, even if the thematic frames were not designed to do so.