Etnocentrisme & Europa; Etnocentrisme als verklaring voor een negatieve houding tegenover de Europese Unie

Abstract

The European Union is not very popular in the Netherlands. The media and the Dutch politics are wondering what the reason is behind the negative view. Many social scientists did research and many have different explanations, but it is still not very clear. This study looks at ethnocentrism as explanation for not supporting the European Union. Hereby, we will look at the variable ethnocentrism itself, but we will also split the definition because ethnocentrism has two different features. The first one is that people who are ethnocentric are very positive about their ‘ingroup’, their own nationality. The second one is that they are negative about other populations. We want to find out which feature has more effect on supporting the European Union. Overall, we find a significant negative effect of ethnocentrism on support for the European Union. The founding about being positive about the ‘ingroup’ is surprising, because it has no effect on support for the European Union. There is a significant negative effect of being negative about other populations and supporting the European Union. The controlvariables did not change the outcome of the independent variables. It seems to be that being negative to other populations has the most effect on not supporting the European Union.