Do Citizens Have Views about Single Market Governance?

To what degree do citizens hold structured views about the governance of openness in multi-jurisdictional markets? This article presents the results of a preregistered experiment that assesses public attribution of governmental authority with respect to five issues central to market integration. We fielded the survey in the world’s two largest single markets, the United States and the European Union (EU). Across the nine sampled countries (N = 17,304), we find that EU residents are statistically more likely to make federal or geographic distinctions than American respondents, especially in the areas of goods regulations and standardized benefits for workers. We also find that certain subgroups are more likely to favor decentralized policy approaches to single market issues: those skeptical of regulation, those who are less trusting of government, and select partisan affiliates. Europeans’ relatively greater responsiveness is most plausibly explained, we argue, as a result of institutional mobilization. The EU’s single market project has fed back on European societies to attract citizens’ attention to the EU’s core goals of cross-border openness.