Explaining public opinion on the enforcement of the Stability and Growth Pact during the European sovereign debt crisis

Abstract

The EU reformed the regulatory rules of the Eurozone in response to the European sovereign debt crisis, empowering the EU to more effectively enforce the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which is designed to prevent debt crises. Given recent empirical evidence that the EU’s willingness to enforce EU law depends on public opinion, under what conditions will EU residents view SGP enforcement as an effective way of tackling the crisis? I theorize how individuals will evaluate SGP enforcement and test my theory’s predictions using cross-national survey data from all Eurozone member states and Bayesian multi-level models. I find that respondents’ preferences over SGP enforcement depend on the interaction of their political support for the European Economic and Monetary Union and their member state’s noncompliance with the SGP criteria. Public buy-in for SGP enforcement is lower precisely when enforcement is most important.