The experiences of the Maastricht ratification process and the widening of the European Community (EC) suggest that further integration will be problematic. This study is concerned to ascertain whether Britain's traditional reputation as an ‘awkward partner’ will be sustained by the next generation of industrial, business, and public administrative élites. Using three designated academic disciplines: natural science, engineering, and social science, we sampled approximately one thousand students in eleven British universities.* We found that there were significant and surprising differences between the three designated discipline groups and that partisan identification was less significant than ‘youth values’ in determining attitudes towards Europe. Overall, however, British students strongly support the EC as an abstract entity but are largely ignorant of its institutional structures and rather skeptical when it comes to specific EC policies. We conclude that this cognitive dissonance reveals the fragile nature of British student support for the EC and that given the pressures towards further integration the next generation of élites might be only marginally less skeptical than is the present.
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Allington et al. (1994) studied this question.