Describing and explaining support for regional integration: An investigation of German business elite attitudes toward the European Community

Data collected from a survey of corporate managers in the Federal Republic of Germany are used, first, to describe the level and pattern of attachment of this critical elite as regards regional integration in Western Europe and, second, to assess two alternative hypotheses purporting to explain different integration support levels among members of this elite. While not entirely satisfactory, the concept we introduce, “external interest” (defined as an individual's perception of the “effect” and “valence” of regional integration on one's own well-being), is more highly correlated with integration attitude than is its rival, Inglehart's concept of “values,” with respect to both the German managerial data we collected and also the European Community (EC) survey data upon which Inglehart's original analysis was based. The investigation drew attention to operationalizations of the concept “regional integration”; what in fact is being measured and explained when alternative (often analyst-specific) approaches yield conflicting findings.