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handle: 11104/0264152
The chapter empirically estimates the preconditions of European integration, the European demos, and European public sphere. Democracies are conflict resolution systems, they are defined by constructive solution of multiple natural political cleavages. The attitudes and values of their citizens should not be in a destructive antagonistic clash but, instead, in an agonistic, benign competition. The European demos was operationalized in terms of democratic spirit, tolerance and civility; the public sphere was assessed by analysis of ideologies. The European Values Study (EVS) served as the data source (wave 4 with N=63 281 respondents). The results suggest that each of the 44 countries under study differs by its preconditions for democratic demos (as well as by nondemocratic skepticism, intolerant traditionalism or authoritarian activism); at the same time, there is a significant level of commonality e.g., in the countries of liberal Northwest, in the traditionalistic ex-soviet and South Eastern Europe, in the skeptical post-communist region which joined the EU, and in the authoritarian activism apparent in the countries of former Yugoslavia. The existence of public sphere was assessed by an analysis of ideologies representing various political orientations of European citizens. The ideologies appear to be fragmented by countries and by geopolitical regions—active Western democracy, post-communist moderate democracy and a passive democracy of the European Southeast Thus, as expected, rather than the existence of a general European public we observed partitioned ideology of individual countries or regions. Yet, at the same time, we identified significant clusters of secularized or religious democrats, which were particularly numerous among the elites. They appear as most instrumental in the formation of an agonistic system at the European level.
democratic spirit, demos, European Union, elites
democratic spirit, demos, European Union, elites
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