Exploring EU public opinion with cognitive mapping

European Union (EU) public opinion research is a rich field of study. However, as citizens often have little knowledge of the EU it remains the question to what extent their attitudes are grounded in coherent, ideologically informed belief systems. As survey research is not well equipped to study this question, this paper explores the value of the method of cognitive mapping (CM) for public opinion research by studying the cognitive maps of 504 Dutch citizens regarding the Eurozone crisis. The paper shows that respondents perceive the Eurozone crisis predominantly as a governmental debt crisis. Moreover, the concept bureaucracy unexpectedly plays a key role in their belief systems exerting an ambiguous but overall negative effect on the Eurozone and trust in the EU. In contrast to expectation, the attitudes of the respondents are more solidly grounded in (ordoliberal) ideology than that of the Dutch elite. Finally, the paper introduces new ways to measure ambivalence prompting a reevaluation of the significance of different forms of ambivalence and their impact on political behavior. Overall, the results of this study suggest that CM forms a promising addition to the toolbox of public opinion research.