As an undergraduate, I once had a professor, Colin Bird, who had us make up our own questions to our papers and then answer them. Asking the right question is often the hardest part–harder than giving the answer.
I have hit some roadblocks with the Lisbon Agenda research project. Once I have started looking at survey and budget numbers, In the last 7 years, very few countries have actually increased R&D as a share of GDP. European surveys show that most people don’t want the farm subsidies to change (which is ok) and that they think, if anything, they should be increased. At the same time, 54% of people have never heard of the Common Agricultural Policy (the farm subsidy program)–though 6% of that 54% then claim to know “a great deal about it”(!)
The question is this: what does the European budget matter if people don’t pay attention or feel like it matters? Why doesn’t Europe just make the financial shift themselves? That is what they are doing now with the Constitution–they have ratified a treaty that makes it so that they don’t have to put the constitution up to referendum (which failed miserably in 2005). People don’t want to change the funding structure, but they would hardly notice if it happened. Which makes me ask: why is it relevant studying in the first place?
(Speaking of asking the right question–that was a good question to ask. If I can answer that, I’ll make progress. But hours of reading through Eurobarometer surveys feels like very little progress to this point.)
ERB
