Misperceiving Matters: Elite Ideas and the Failure of the European Constitution

Abstract: The ongoing problems confronting the European political elite in its attempt to legitimate the European Union (EU) suggest the existence of substantial obstacles to the legitimation of the EU polity. This article presents the findings of a survey conducted from a critical realist perspective, in which the views held by the European political elite about the objections of the European public to the process of European integration are compared with the objections actually expressed by the public themselves, in the specific instance of the French and Dutch no-votes in the referendums on the European Constitution in 2005. The findings suggest a disjuncture between the perceptions of the European political elite regarding popular objections to the EU polity, and the objections actually expressed. In particular, the survey identifies a tendency among the European political elite to redirect blame for political failure towards external (national-level or extra-European) factors and/or to re-interpret political failure in terms that confirm (rather than repudiate) existing ideological predispositions.