Comparing elite and citizen attitudes towards the differentiated implementation of EU law: evidence from a large- <i>N</i> survey of citizens, politicians and bureaucrats

Transnational regulatory harmonisation is a key building block of the international legal order. However, little is known about how elite and citizen views of it differ. Using data from a Norwegian survey from 2023 this article finds both citizen-elite and intra-elite gaps in perceptions of legal harmonisation. First, citizens are significantly less likely to support legal harmonisation than bureaucrats. In contrast, the article finds that their views of it are similar to those of all but the most Eurosceptic politicians. Furthermore, while the attitudes of bureaucrats only differ significantly from those of strongly Eurosceptic politicians, bureaucrats with a ministry or legal background hold views of legal harmonisation significantly different from those of other civil servants. Future studies of public and elite opinion of international cooperation must thus theorise more clearly how the elite-citizen gap may vary for different elites, and empirically test how these differences manifest across policy areas.