Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the VII World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, Berlin, July 2005, and to the annual conference of UACES at Limerick, Ireland, August to September 2006. We acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council under grant RES-000-23-0146 to Stephen White, Margot Light and Roy Allison and of the Nuffield Foundation under SGS/32823 to Stephen White and the comments of anonymous referees.
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A Wider Europe? The View from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine†
Article first published online: 14 FEB 2008
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5965.2007.00775.x
© 2008 The Author(s)
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How to Cite
WHITE, S., KOROSTELEVA, J. and MCALLISTER, I. (2008), A Wider Europe? The View from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 46: 219–241. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5965.2007.00775.x
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Publication History
- Issue published online: 14 FEB 2008
- Article first published online: 14 FEB 2008
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Abstract
On the evidence of national surveys conducted between 2000 and 2006, there is a declining sense of European self-identity in the three Slavic post-Soviet republics of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Attitudes towards the European Union and the possibility of membership are broadly supportive, but with a substantial proportion who find it difficult to express a view, and substantial proportions are poorly informed in comparison with the general public in EU member or prospective member countries. Those who are better informed are more likely to favour EU membership and vice versa. Generally, socioeconomic characteristics (except for age and region) are relatively poor predictors of support for EU membership as compared with attitudinal variables. But ‘Europeanness’ should not be seen as a given, and much will depend on whether EU member countries emphasize what is common to east and west or establish ‘new dividing lines’ in place of those of the cold war.