Economic crisis and democratic legitimacy

In the context of the Eurozone crisis a deeper economic or political integration in the European Union has often been presented as the only remedy to instability, as opposed to dissolution. A bottom-up look at individual values and understanding of political cultures across member states reveals that different practice and evaluations of the political system present substantial obstacles to further integration. Using data from the 2008 European Values Study, the authors illustrate how individual-level interpretations of political practice and country-level evaluations of the political system bring forth substantial differences in the construction of legitimacy for national and EU institutions.