Public Opinion and Disunity over EU Integration: Conflict and Cleavage in the Age of Polycrisis

The book makes two major contributions to this topic by first explaining the origins of public support for the European Union (EU) and secondly understanding how that public support affects the EU integration process. Our main aim is to contribute to the Grand Theories of EU integration. Accordingly, the “red thread” of the whole work is the research of the explanatory factors of both the mechanism and the dynamics of EU integration. Why do EU states and polities integrate or not? Which are the dynamics behind the dis/integration processes? These general questions are at the origins of an extensive literature bridging International Relations and Democracy studies, now representing a clear subject (European Studies) in politics. Through our specific analyses and the recent findings in the field, we will show the current dynamics of integration, and we frame and demonstrate the publicelite logic behind it.