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This paper focuses on analysis of public opinion towards European integration in Greece, Portugal and Spain, countries known for their positive attitudes toward integration. In particular, the article analyses how public attitudes towards Europe have been formed in these countries. Secondly, it examines the determining factors of citizens' positive attitudes toward integration and shows the types of variables that are essential to understanding the differences between Greeks, Spaniards and the Portuguese. It also examines traditional euro-optimism in these southern countries. The findings show the relevance of identity and the various impacts of party platforms and ideology in attitudes of support for European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Latin American, South European and, later, the Central and East European democratic transitions have led to a 'revolution' in comparative politics. Instead of the polar notions of democracy and dictatorship, different types of 'transitions' have emerged and democracy has appeared also as a function of the world-system. The paper suggests that there are four scenarios for Central and East European democratic transitions in their international context: (1) Sleeping Beauty (easy westernization); (2) Deepfreeze (return to the past); (3) Latin Americanization (falling back to the Third World); and (4) Fair Weather (Central Europe joins the European integration). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical left parties actively encourage the participation of their members in internal decision-making and insist on promoting organised links to trade unions and social movements. As a party family, they deviate from what is considered to be the trend in which Western political parties have turned their backs on their social roots. Drawing on the experience of South European radical left parties from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the recent financial crisis, we argue that ideology, electoral incentives, party competition and external events explain the radical left's pronounced emphasis on linkage, while organisational trajectory explains variation within the party family in terms of the linkage strategies pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a comprehensive investigation into the relations between political elites and mass public opinion regarding attitudes towards European Union integration. The systematic study called the Intune project attempts to map the conceptions of identity and their multiple interconnections among elites, citizens, and the mass media considered crucial to the construction of a European identity. A comparison of Central and Eastern European post-communist countries and Southern Europe in terms of identity and representation as two basic dimensions of the European integration process is described.