Madsen, Mayoral, Strezhnev, & Voeten: Sovereignty, Substance, and Public Support for European Courts

Mikael Madsen (Univ. of Copenhagen - Law), Juan Mayoral (Univ. of Copenhagen - iCourts), Anton Strezhnev (Harvard Univ. - Government), & Erik Voeten (Georgetown Univ. - School of Foreign Service) have posted Sovereignty, Substance, and Public Support for European Courts. Here's the abstract:

Is the public backlash against European courts driven by substantive concerns over case outcomes, procedural concerns over sovereignty or combinations thereof? We conducted pre-registered survey experiments in Denmark, France, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom using three vignettes: a foreigner who faces extradition, a person fighting a fine for burning Qurans, and a home-owner contesting eviction. Each vignette varies whether a European court disagrees with a national court (deference treatment) and whether an applicant wins a case (outcome treatment). We find little evidence that deference moves willingness to implement judgments or acceptance of court authority but ample evidence that case outcomes matter. Even nationalists are unmoved by European court interventionism as long as they agree with the case outcome. These findings imply that international courts cannot resurrect their popularity through deference alone and that backlash to domestic and international courts may be driven by similar forces.