Enforcing the rule of law in the EU: effects on public opinion

Abstract

How does the European Union's enforcement of democracy and rule-of-law standards influence the domestic public's attitudes toward backsliding governments? On the one hand, enforcement actions by international organisations may increase the costs of supporting backsliding governments and provide informational cues about non-compliance with international norms. On the other hand, scholars and practitioners worry that enforcement actions create ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effects that inadvertently increase support for backsliding regimes. We report descriptive, experimental, and quasi-experimental results from a survey designed to assess the public-opinion effects of EU action in response to rule-of-law backsliding in Poland. The survey results suggest both that Polish citizens perceive the EU as a main critic of measures undermining judicial independence and that these perceptions are correlated with opposing the targeted measures. We find no evidence that additional information about EU actions turns public opinion against the targeted measures but there is also no evidence of any rally-around-the-flag effect. In diagnosing the null findings from our experimental and quasi-experimental designs, we also highlight important challenges associated with using survey-experimental methods to assess the effectiveness of EU interventions in ongoing and salient public debates.