When, why and how does the European Commission use polls in day to day decision-making?
(2021) 27th International Conference of Europeanists (CES) (21.June.2021)
Files
No attached file found for this publication.
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- Why and when do governing political elites produce opinion polls? For which purpose? How is “public opinion” used in day-to-day decision making? Not much is known when trying to understand the role of opinion polls in public action. Yet, opinion polls constitute a regular instrument of public action. At the European level, where it was long claimed that “mass public opinion” wasn’t of interest as it followed elites views, the European Commission (EC) commissioned polls as soon as the 1970s. Nowadays, this instrument of EU public action thus gathers more than 1000 different polls, from large quantitative polls to small focus groups surveys. In 2018 only, eight different DGs of the EC commissioned not less than 28 opinion polls, questioning European citizens on issues as diverse as attitudes towards antimicrobial resistance, internet security, biodiversity or perception of antisemitism. Our paper proposes to question the role of Eurobarometer survey in the ECs policy building process by focusing on two phases in the production on opinion polls: first decision to commission polls and its implementation - what do EC political entrepreneurs expect from public opinion when commissioning polls? - then receipt of the report and use of its results – what do they do with it? These questions will be investigated using two empirical cases: gender equality and anti-discrimination policies between 2009 and 2019. Understanding what are the expectations about and uses of opinion polls by political elites will offer new insights into the poorly investigated link between public opinion and public policy.
- Affiliations
Citations
Jacquot, S., & Belot, C. (2021). When, why and how does the European Commission use polls in day to day decision-making? 27th International Conference of Europeanists (CES). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/170321