"In search of European citizens: A policy preference based approach"

We define European citizenship as a set of policy preferences favoring European Union responsibility for functions traditionally seen as being at the core of the nation-state: defense, foreign policy, currency, citizenship. We identify the degree to which such a sense of citizenship exists in each of the member states. (It is highest in Italy, lowest in Denmark). Using data from Eurobarometer 39.0, we then explore the role of knowledge, trust, general attitudes toward European integration, interest in European matters, location in the social structure, and media use patterns in accounting for European citizenship. General support for and interest in European integration are the most potent predictors of European citizenship, followed by trust, ideology, satisfaction with democracy, and knowledge. Variables tapping location in the social structure, e.g., age, gender, and class, as well as indicators of news media exposure, generally have little impact. The explanatory power of the model varies considerably across the EU member countries; performance is strongest in Denmark and weakest in Ireland. We conclude that European citizenship remains principally a product of general attitudes favoring European integration rather than being knowledge or experience-based. However, it is often influenced by country-specific contextual features

Citizens, Knowledge, and the Information Environment

In a democracy, knowledge is power. Research explaining the determinants of knowledge focuses on unchanging demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. This study combines data on the public’s knowledge of nearly 50 political issues with media coverage of those topics. In a two-part analysis, we demonstrate how education, the strongest and most consistent predictor of political knowledge, has a more nuanced connection to learning than is commonly recognized. Sometimes education is positively related to knowledge. In other instances its effect is negligible. A substantial part of the variation in the education-knowledge relationship is due to the amount of information available in the mass media. This study is among the first to distinguish the short-term, aggregate-level influences on political knowledge from the largely static individual-level predictors and to empirically demonstrate the importance of the information environment