Changing Attitudes through International Participation: European Parliamentarians and Integration

Regional integration theory emphasizes elite social learning and attitude change as concomitant processes of integration. Participation by national elites in EEC decision making may bring about these changes. To test these hypotheses, French and German delegates to the European Parliament were interviewed, and their attitudes compared with those of a control group sampled among their national colleagues. The general finding was that the delegates’ attitudes appear to undergo cognitive, but not affective, changes. Delegates develop more complex perceptions and become better informed and more interested in European matters, yet they become neither more favorable nor less hostile to these issues because of the self–recruitment of many legislators who were avowed Europeans before their nomination. Strong ties to national parties apparently diminish the attitudinal effects of this learning experience. Only when the parliament has full time legislators who exercise potent policy–making tasks will its role in European integration increase.