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Referendums in the European Union
Derek Beach, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.503
Published online: 26 February 2018
Summary
Referendums are frequently used to ratify European Union (EU)–related propositions.
Since 1972 there have been in total 46 EU-related referendums, excluding third-country
referendums on EU-related matters. While referendums are constitutionally mandated in
some countries in order to ratify new treaties, other referendums are held for either
normative or for political reasons.
Referendums deal with topics that are less familiar to voters, where key issues typically
do not map onto domestic political cleavages. This means that we should expect that
campaigns and the information they provide about the issues and the positions of political
actors might matter more in framing issues than in first-order national elections. While
there is by no means a scholarly consensus, recent research has shown, for instance, that
an issue that dominates media coverage can impact how voters evaluate a proposition.
Finally, what do we know about voter behavior? While referendums on EU affairs have
been criticized as being decided by “second-order” factors such as government
popularity, there is evidence that when a proposition matters for voters, voting behavior
is more dominated by issue-voting. Recent research has drawn on advances in cognitive
psychology to investigate the impact of attitude strength and personality characteristics
for voter behavior.
Keywords: European Union referendums, European Union, direct democracy, campaign effects,
second-order elections, issue-voting, motivated reasoning, European Union politics
Different Types of EU Referendums
There are three main types of referendums: (1) on joining (or leaving) the European Union
(EU), (2) ratifying new EU treaties or agreements, and (3) referendums on particular EUrelated
issues, like the Greek 2015 referendum on the bailout package. Since 1972, 46
referendums in total have been convened.
1
A majority of referendums were convened by
countries acceding to the EU, with the second major category being ratification of new
treaties (e.g., the Maastricht Treaty).
Derek Beach, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University
1
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As shown in Table 1, turnout has varied extensively across referendums. In situations where
turnout was high, referendums can be seen as tools to alleviate the gap between EU-level
governance and voters (de Vreese, 2007, pp. 5–7). In other referendums, turnout has been low
in comparison to national parliamentary elections, suggesting that voters did not perceive the
issue to be important or that they were even unaware of the referendum being held.
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Table 1. EU Referendums
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Year Country Subject Required/
Advisory
Percent
yes-vote
Turnout Ratified?
1972 Denmark Accession Required 63.3% 90.1% Yes
1972 Ireland Accession Required 83.1% 70.9% Yes
1972 Norway Accession Advisory 46.5% 79% No
1972 France Accession
Treaty
Advisory 68.3% 60.3% Yes
1975 United
Kingdom
Accession
Treaty (remain
in)
Advisory 67.2% 64% Yes
1986 Denmark SEA Advisory 56.2% 75.4% Yes
1987 Ireland SEA Required 69.9% 44% Yes
1989 Italy Mandate for
MEPs
Advisory 88.1% 85% Yes
1992 Denmark Maastricht
Treaty I
Required 49.3% 83.1% No
1992 Ireland Maastricht
Treaty
Required 68.7% 57% Yes
1992 France Maastricht
Treaty
Advisory 51.1% 70% Yes
1993 Denmark Maastricht
Treaty II
Advisory 56.7% 86.5% Yes
1994 Austria Accession Required 66.6% 82% Yes
1994 Sweden Accession Advisory 52.3% 70% Yes
1994 Finland Accession Advisory 56.9% 83% Yes
1994 Norway Accession Advisory 47.8% 89% No
1998 Ireland Amsterdam
Treaty
Required 61.7% 56% Yes
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Year Country Subject Required/
Advisory
Percent
yes-vote
Turnout Ratified?
1998 Denmark Amsterdam
Treaty
Required 55.1% 76.2% Yes
2000 Denmark Euro opt-out Required 46.8% 87.6% No
2001 Ireland Treaty of Nice I Required 46.1% 35% No
2002 Ireland Treaty of Nice II Required 62.9% 49% Yes
2003 Sweden Euro
membership
Advisory 42% 83% No
2003 Czech
Republic
Accession Required 77.3% 55% Yes
2003 Estonia Accession Required 66.8% 64% Yes
2003 Hungary Accession Required 83.7% 46% Yes
2003 Latvia Accession Required 67.0% 73% Yes
2003 Lithuania Accession Required 91.1% 63% Yes
2003 Malta Accession Advisory 53.6% 91% Yes
2003 Poland Accession Required 77.5% 59% Yes
2003 Romania Accession
(change to
constitution to
join later)
Required 89.7% 56% Yes
2003 Slovakia Accession Required 92.% 52% Yes
2003 Slovenia Accession Required 89.6% 60% Yes
2005 Spain Constitutional
Treaty
Advisory 76.7% 42% Yes
2005 Luxembourg Constitutional
Treaty
Advisory 56.5% 89% Yes
2005 France Constitutional
Treaty
Advisory 45.3% 69% No
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Year Country Subject Required/
Advisory
Percent
yes-vote
Turnout Ratified?
2005 Netherlands Constitutional
Treaty
Advisory 38.2% 63% No
2008 Ireland Treaty of Lisbon
I
Required 46.6% 53% No
2009 Ireland Treaty of Lisbon
II
Required 67.1% 59% Yes
2012 Croatia Accession Required 66.7% 43% Yes
2012 Ireland Extra EU treaty
(Fiscal
Compact)
Required 60.3% 50% Yes
2014 Denmark European
Patent Court
Required 62.5% 55.9% Yes
2015 Denmark JHA opt-out Required 46.9% 72.0% No
2015 Greece Bailout terms Advisory 38.7% 59% No
2016 Netherlands EU–Ukraine
Association
Advisory 38.2% 32.3% No
2016 Hungary EU refugee
quotas
Advisory 98% 40.4% Rejected
2016 United
Kingdom
Exit from the
EU
Advisory 48.1% 72.2% No
Note: The table does not include third-country referendums on EU-related matters.
Sources: European Parliament Research Service, 2016; Hobolt, 2009; UK, 2016.
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Why EU Referendums Are Convened
The first scholarly debate relating to EU referendums is why they are convened. A key
distinction here is between advisory or required referendums (Christin & Hug, 2002). Many
referendums have been required, usually for constitutional reasons. For example,
referendums are often required in Denmark when transferring sovereignty to the EU level.
According to §20 of the Danish Constitution, measures transferring sovereignty have to be
ratified either by the Parliament with a 5/6 majority or by voters in a binding referendum. In
Ireland, in 1987 the Irish supreme court decided that a referendum was required before
ratifying the Single European Act (SEA). After this, Irish governments have had to decide
whether a new EU treaty required a referendum or not in relation to the constitution,
resulting in every EU treaty since the SEA being the subject of a referendum.
Advisory referendums are convened by governments for two predominant reasons: either
norm-related concerns relating to the need to ensure the democratic legitimacy of the
country’s EU policies or for politically strategic reasons. Normative explanations relate to the
ideational argument that actors attempt to follow “logics of appropriateness” in their
decisions to convene referendums (Closa, 2007). These can be driven by normative pressures
from either outside or inside one’s country. An external, norm-based dynamic can be seen in
the wave of referendums held to ratify the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. Here the EU-level
rhetoric about the EU’s “constitutional moment” and the need to legitimize the EU through
more participatory forms of democracy led elites in several member states to decide to follow
the example of other countries and hold referendums in order to be seen as doing “the right
thing.” In the words of Closa, “Arguments and decisions taken elsewhere create a context in
which domestic decisions . . . come to be seen as reasonable, logical and legitimate, easening
thus the cost for governments to take such decision. Both the logic of justification and the
imitation or mimesis generate a ‘rule of appropriateness’ about the proper way to ratify a
Constitution” (2007, p. 1327).
There can also be domestic normative reasons for convening referendums—a form of
normative path dependency (Closa, 2007). This ideational dynamic is best seen in the case of
Denmark’s ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. After the first no vote in June 1992, the major
yes parties (now including the Socialist People’s Party for parliamentary reasons) adopted the
so-called “national compromise,” which mandated that the Danish government would ask for
certain clarifications and exemptions from the common currency, defense cooperation, justice
and home affairs, and citizenship, along with an attempt to push for more “openness” and
subsidiarity. The Danish government took this deal to the Edinburgh Summit, where with the
support of the U.K. presidency they received non-binding clarifications on these issues in the
form of the “Edinburgh Agreement,” along with a promise of increased openness in the EC
(Piris, 2006). However, when the new Social Democrat–led government—which took power in
January 1993—had to decide how to ratify the Maastricht Treaty with the Edinburgh
Agreement clarifications, they decided to send it to an advisory referendum despite enjoying
the support of the 5/6 majority in parliament required for ratification. The predominant reason
for this choice was the widespread expectation among Danish voters that they should have a
say in ratifying the proposition with clarifications that a small majority had originally rejected.
The Danes voted yes in the second, advisory referendum held in May 1993.
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Other scholars have focused more on factors like partisan calculations and political strategy
when explaining why referendums are convened (Bogdanor, 1994; Prosser, 2016). One
explanation is that governments can use them as tactical weapons to strengthen their power,
for example, in an attempt to create divisions in the opposition (Bogdanor, 1994; Prosser, 2016).
This dynamic was seen in the 1992 French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, which was
convened by French President Mitterand partially as an attempt to undermine political
opponents.
Governments can also try to avoid being punished for an unpopular policy (EU) in a coming
election and decide to convene a referendum to shift the focus of EU unpopularity away from
a forum where they risk losing seats (Prosser, 2016). Another, sometimes overlapping,
strategic reason that governments decide to convene referendums is to use them to mediate a
crisis within a party, allowing voters to decide an issue that splits party elites. This dynamic
has been seen in the United Kingdom, where both membership referendums were to some
extent attempts to resolve internal party divisions (1975 within the Labour Party, in 2016
within the Conservative Party). For example, then-U.K. Prime Minister Cameron’s promise to
convene an advisory referendum on U.K. membership in the EU was an attempt to avoid
dangerous splits among Euroskeptic and pro-EU Conservatives in the run-up to local elections
in 2013. The promise of a referendum was included in the next Conservative party manifesto,
which after the victory in the 2015 parliamentary elections led to the decision to actually
convene a referendum.
Government can also decide to convene referendums in order to “tie their hands” in an
attempt to strengthen their bargaining power in treaty negotiations based on a two-level
game logic, at least in theory (Hug & König, 2002; Hug & Schulz, 2007). For the logic to work,
voters have to be skeptical toward a new treaty, enabling the negotiator to make arguments
like “we would love to accept what is on the table, but we need more to be able to sell the
treaty to our skeptical voters at home.” Hug and Schulz (2007) find that governments that had
scheduled a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty, and where voters were skeptical toward
more integration, actually had more gains than their counterparts. However, there are clear
limits to the applicability of this logic due to the risk of not being able to secure ratification
even after securing “selling points,” and it is questionable whether countries like Denmark
and Ireland can realistically utilize the tactic as a strategy for getting meaningful concessions
when their bargaining power is limited due to their relatively small size.
Another strategic reason for governments to convene referendums is to use them strategically
vis-à-vis the EU itself as a form of bargaining leverage in further negotiations in a policy area.
In the 2015 Greek referendum on the third bailout package, the Syriza government in Greece
convened a referendum on the terms of the agreement in an attempt to wrest more
concessions from the Troika (EU Commission, European Central Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund), with the Prime Minister Tsipras advocating a no vote (Triga &
Manavopoulos, 2017). However, it can be argued that additional concessions from the Troika
were unrealistic, meaning that the government would have to accept the terms irrespective of
the outcome of the referendum. This suggests that the vote might have also been motivated by
a desire by the government to be seen as protesting the deal before they were forced to
buckle under and accept the terms.
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In the Hungarian referendum in 2016, the government initiated a referendum on the EU’s
mandatory refugee quotas, a measure that had been opposed by the Hungarian government
(Pállinger, 2017). The referendum was a strategic tool to attempt to strengthen the
government’s hand in further discussions of mandatory quotas in the EU, but the referendum
did not succeed due to low turnout that were spurred by calls by the opposition to boycott the
referendum in protest against the government’s strategy (Pállinger, 2017).
Campaign Effects
Once the decision to convene a referendum is taken, a political campaign starts, which can
involve governmental ministries, political parties, political and economic interest groups, and
ordinary citizens. EU referendums often deal with quite complex topics that do not typically
map onto normal national political cleavages, meaning that this is a context in which we might
expect that campaigns could matter more than they do in national election contexts (de
Vreese, 2007; de Vreese & Semetko, 2004; Hobolt, 2006; Hobolt & Brouard, 2011; LeDuc,
2002).
A first critical question to ask before we proceed is: What exactly are “campaign effects”?
Campaigns can be defined as all of the activities that provide information that: inform voters
about the proposition under consideration, frame how issues are understood, prime particular
aspects of the issue, and potentially persuade voters to change their underlying attitudes
(Krosnick & Kinder, 1990; Lenz, 2009, 2013; Valentino, Hutchings, & White, 2002; Zaller,
1992). In democratic terms, a campaign should ideally enable voters to make a decision that
corresponds with their underlying attitudes on the issue. But campaigns can also alter how
voters perceive issues or even change their underlying attitudes.
The extent to which campaign effects matter can be illustrated using a continuum between
situations where they have little effect (voter stability) or large effects (voter volatility) (de
Vreese, 2007; LeDuc, 2002; see Figure 1). In situations where the issue is relatively unknown
to voters and/or where partisan and ideological conflicts on the issue do not mirror more
familiar patterns from regular national elections, voters lack signposts that can help guide
them to forming opinions on the issue.
Figure 1. The Importance (or Lack Thereof) of Campaigns
In this situation, campaign events and how issues are framed by media and political elites can
be very important, shifting public opinion on the issue in the short term in ways that can
affect the final outcome. Here voter attitudes are very volatile and malleable because they are
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not anchored in solid attitudes toward the EU that can be retrieved to help voters make an
informed choice based on their underlying attitudes. In contrast, at the other extreme, in
contexts where voters are familiar with EU-related issues, campaigns merely provide
information that enable voters to decide based on their underlying, non-malleable issue
attitudes, resulting in voter stability. In between are what LeDuc (2002) terms “opinion
reversal campaigns,” where, for example, the frame of a well-known issue shifts during a
campaign in ways that affect public opinion toward the issue.
There are two primary channels whereby the activities of political actors and the media can
matter in referendum campaigns: (1) the provision of campaign material to voters about the
proposition that provides information, frames the issue, and/or primes certain aspects of the
issue and (2) through elite cues in the form of recommendations and other forms of
endorsements.
First, campaigns have to provide information on the proposition in order for voters to be able
to choose the option that matches their attitudes toward the issue (Bartels, 2005; Zaller,
1992). Unfortunately, despite the potential importance, there have only been a few studies of
campaign effects, and these have concentrated on only a few cases (Denmark in referendums
in 2000 and 2015, Netherlands and France in the 2005 referendums, Irish referendums). One
of the reasons for this lack of research is that there are significant methodological and
practical challenges related to studying campaign effects. Assessing them systematically
requires expensive survey instruments that measure public attitudes repeatedly over the
course of a campaign (e.g., either through panel designs or rolling cross-sectionals), coupled
with the detailed analysis of media content during the campaign.
Most research on the importance of informational effects has looked at priming and framing
through media coverage and political campaigning. For example, de Vreese and Semetko
(2004) found in the 2000 Danish euro referendum that voter exposure to specific newspapers
and public broadcasting had an impact on how they voted, although the magnitude of the
effects found was not very large. Schuck and de Vreese (2008) found in the Dutch 2005 vote
on the Constitutional Treaty that exposure to positive media coverage had an impact on voting
behavior, making respondents more likely to support the proposition, other things equal.
Campaigns can also prime which aspects of an issue that voters find important. While
campaigns probably cannot change the underlying attitudes of voters toward European
integration, they can more plausibly impact short-term perceptions of the specific proposition
that voters are being asked to decide on in a referendum. Hobolt and Brouard (2011), for
example, found in the French referendum on the Constitutional Treaty that campaigns can
prime certain dimensions of underlying attitudes of voters related to the EU, especially when
the proposition is as complex and multidimensional as the Constitutional Treaty. In the French
case, attitudes relating to the EU as a social threat became the most prominent dimension for
voters in relation to deciding on the Constitutional Treaty, echoing the fact that economic
concerns was a major topic of debate in the campaign (Hobolt & Brouard, 2011, p. 7). Garry
(2013) found that campaigns can change voter perceptions of specific aspects of a treaty
when comparing the two Irish referendums on the Treaty of Lisbon (the first resulted in a no,
the second a yes). In the second referendum, fewer voters were concerned about the
implications of the treaty for Irish neutrality and the potential loss of an Irish Commissioner.
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Information provided by campaigns can also frame issues in terms of how voters perceive the
benefits of the proposition in relation to what happens in the event of a no vote (the reversion
point). In the Danish referendum on adopting the Euro in 2000, the yes side focused their
arguments on the economic benefits of joining the Euro. However, when this argument was
discredited by many experts, the yes side struggled to formulate a convincing argument for
why Denmark should join the Euro (de Vreese & Semetko, 2004). We saw a similar dynamic in
the 2015 Danish referendum on replacing the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) opt-out with an
opt-in model (Beach, 2017). The core yes-side argument was that the opt-in model had to be
adopted in order for Denmark to remain in Europol after the legal base became communitybased.
However, when the no side and experts argued that a form of Europol membership was
also possible in the event of a no vote because Denmark could negotiate an intergovernmental
“parallel agreement” that would allow participation, this left the yes side without clear
arguments in favor of removing the opt-out.
Second, elite cues can provide voters with heuristic shortcuts that can enable them to make
an informed choice “as if” they had all of the relevant knowledge that would enable them to
choose the option that best matches their underlying attitudes. The importance of elite cues
relates to the fact that most voters do not possess deep “expert” understanding of the issues
involved in an EU referendum, nor do they have motivations to undertake an exhaustive
information search in order to update their information. Instead, voters tend to rely on lowcost
cognitive shortcuts and different heuristics in order to make sense of the issues in
referendums (Bowler & Donovan, 1998; Downs, 1957; Hobolt, 2006; Lupia & McCubbins,
1998).
In research on Californian referendums, Bowler and Donovan (1998) found that different
types of voters use different types of information to calculate whether they should vote yes or
no based on their underlying interests. Highly educated voters often use what can be termed
more “objective” information available during a campaign, but even less educated voters can
make reasonable decisions based upon information from TV advertising, editorials, and
conversations with friends and colleagues, enabling them to vote “as if” they were fully
informed (Bowler & Donovan, 1998; Lau & Redlawsk, 2006; Lupia, 1992, 1994). One method
that less informed voters can utilize to gauge the veracity of statements put forward in a
campaign about the potential impact of a measure from different sources is to look at “who is
behind it” (Lau & Redlawsk, 2006; Lupia, 1994). Applied to EU referendums, Hobolt (2006)
has argued that voters can infer their own position based on whether it is endorsed by a group
they like or dislike. She finds in the 1994 Norwegian accession referendum that when voters
have knowledge of party endorsements on a proposition, they are just as competent in
choosing an outcome that maps onto their own underlying attitudes toward the EU as voters
with more detailed knowledge of the proposition.
However, a reliance on cues and endorsements can also lead voters to make a decision that
reflects the position of the party they normally vote for instead of their own issue attitudes
(Hobolt, 2006; Kriesi, 2005). In the Danish Maastricht referendums in 1992 and 1993, Hobolt
(2006) finds that reliance on party endorsements also means that parties can frame the
meaning of the choice voters face—either by making the proposition appear to be more
attractive or by making the reversion point in the event of a no vote less attractive. When
comparing the two referendums, she finds evidence that yes parties succeeded in the second
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vote in 1993 in framing the proposition as more beneficial and the implications of a second no
vote as more negative, making supporters of yes parties more prone to support the
proposition, other things being equal in comparison to the first referendum.
For party endorsements to matter, parties also have to be united in their messaging. In EU
referendums, parties often find it difficult to “formulate a clear campaign message and
mobilize what is often an internally divided party to stay ‘on message’ during the
campaign” (de Vreese, 2007, p. 10). When a party sends mixed messages, voters who identify
with the party are unable to use endorsements as a heuristic to figure out how they should
vote in a referendum.
There are significant avenues still to be explored relating to how different types of voters
respond to campaigns. The general literature on voter behavior has long identified
heterogeneity, understood as a situation where voters with different characteristics respond
differently to campaigns. Zaller (1992) told us that reasoning processes differ depending on
whether voters are politically sophisticated or not, but there has been relatively little
investigation of the effects levels of political sophistication on how referendum campaigns
impact different types of voters (although see later for a few examples).
Recent research in political psychology also suggests that we might expect that citizens with
strongly held attitudes would tend to engage in more motivated reasoning, where voters
selectively recruit and evaluate evidence so that it matches their prior beliefs (Epley &
Gilovich, 2016; Holbrook, Berent, Krosnick, Visser, & Boninger, 2005; Taber, Cann, & Kucsova,
2009; Visser, Bizer, & Krosnick, 2006). In an EU referendum context, this would imply that
voters with strongly held attitudes: (1) require less information overall to make a decision that
maps onto their underlying issue attitude (e.g., Druckman, 2012; Holbrook et al., 2005;
Houston & Fazio, 1989; Schuck & de Vreese, 2008); (2) are less susceptible to cues and
endorsements than less motivated voters (Hobolt, 2006); and (3) overall are less susceptible to
persuasion and arguments because they give greater weight to information that matches their
prior beliefs when they evaluate incoming information from a campaign.
Based on evidence from studies of EU skepticism and public opinion toward the EU, we should
expect that anti-EU attitudes are affect-based, meaning that voters would hold them more
strongly (Boomgaarden, Schuck, Elenbaas, & de Vreese, 2011). By contrast, pro-EU attitudes
are typically utilitaristic and therefore are likely to be less strongly held. Pro-EU voters
therefore are in theory less motivated to deploy the cognitive resources required to “protect”
their existing beliefs, meaning that we might expect that they are more predisposed to utilize
second-order behavior where they either stay home (see next section) or utilize party
recommendations and/or level of trust/satisfaction with the proposer of the proposition (i.e.,
the government). Given the lower salience of the EU issues in general for these pro-EU voters,
we should expect stronger campaign effects within this group. At present there is some
evidence from the 2015 Danish opt-out referendum (Beach, 2017) that suggests that
Euroskeptical voters were able to better utilize information provided by the campaign to
figure out whether voting no corresponded to their underlying issue attitudes. For example,
on election day the percentage of undecided and, therefore, non-mobilized pro-EU voters was
three times higher compared to the group of undecided Euroskeptical voters. Although the
same information was available to every voter, there were larger shifts in vote intention and
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learning for voters with Euroskeptical attitudes throughout the campaign. This provides some
evidence for asymmetric campaign effects due to motivated reasoning, where a group of
voters with strong, affect-based attitudes needed less information to decide how to vote.
Voter Behavior—Do Voters Actually Answer the Question They Are
Asked?
What factors determine voter choice in EU-related referendums? The core debate in the
literature is whether citizens actually decide in relation to their underlying attitudes toward
the EU and/or the proposition itself (issue-voting) or whether they decide based on other
considerations like governmental popularity because they do not believe EU-related
propositions are important enough to expend the cognitive resources required to actually
understand the issue and make an informed decision (second-order). This section explores the
debate between second-order and issue-voting theories and the evidence for both, illustrating
the developing consensus about the contextual conditions under which issue-voting
dominates. However, even when issue-voting dominates in high-salience referendums, there is
also evidence that voters hold a status-quo bias, and in instances where a vote is close, voter
dispositions to keep what they know instead of opting for more unsure gains can tip the
balance toward preserving the status quo. Finally, more recent research has opened up for the
role of emotional dynamics might play alongside more “rational,” material considerations in
relation to issue-voting.
Many scholars and commentators claim that EU referendums are perceived by ordinary
citizens as abstract and relatively unimportant affairs, meaning that we should not expect
voters to expend the cognitive resources required to evaluate the proposition and the
reversion point in relation to their underlying attitudes towards European integration.
Instead, voters are expected to treat an EU referendum as a “second-order” election, where
they express their level of satisfaction with the performance of the incumbent government by
voting yes or no (Franklin, 2002; Franklin, Marsh, & Wlezien, 1994; Ivaldi, 2006; Reif &
Schmitt, 1980). A popular government will be able to steer a proposition it has proposed to
ratification because a majority of voters will trust that the government will only endorse it if it
is good for the country, and vice versa (Franklin et al., 1994, p. 102). If this second-order
dynamic holds, this implies that referendums are not useful tools for democratic legitimization
of EU affairs because they are decided on non-EU–related matters.
While there is some disagreement about the exact causes and mechanisms of the secondorder
election thesis, at the core is the argument that when voters feel little is at stake, they
either abstain from voting (resulting in lower turnout), or if they decide to vote, they merely
utilize heuristics drawn from first-order, national affairs such as attitudes towards government
performance or attitudes to national political issues (Hix & Marsh, 2011; Hobolt & Brouard,
2011; Marsh & Mikhaylov, 2010). Franklin, van der Eijk, and Marsh (1995) claim that as
public opinion is ill-informed about issues in referendums, in a parliamentary regime nothing
will be more salient to voters than the standing of government, meaning that any proposal by
a government will be colored by this fact. Franklin et al. (1995) claim that partisan
attachments are the primary factor in determining outcomes because voters will decide
merely to follow the recommendations of the party that they otherwise support, but at the
same time party preferences will typically track with governmental popularity because voters
Page 14 of 23
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who supported a government in the last election, but who are unhappy with its current
performance, might indicate in a survey during the referendum that they would vote for an
opposition party. Irrespective of the specific mechanisms, the results of the second-order
dynamics are the same: when going to the polls in European referendums, voters focus on
how they feel about national politics rather than how they feel about European integration.
In contrast, other scholars claim that voter behavior in referendums on EU matters is similar
to normal elections, where voters decide based upon their attitudes towards the issue itself,
thereby engaging in issue-voting (Hobolt, 2006, 2009; Merrill & Grofman, 1999; Svensson,
1994, 2002). Other things being equal, we can expect that when a referendum is required,
voters will perceive that it is more important because the outcome is binding (Hug, 2002).
Early versions of the issue-voting model in regard to EU referendums argued that voter choice
was based upon voters’ general attitudes toward European integration (Svensson, 1994,
2002), whereas more recent formulations focus more explicitly on voter attitudes toward the
specific question they are posed (e.g., Garry, 2013; Hobolt, 2006, 2009). While it is usually not
made explicit in issue-voting models, it is assumed in many studies that these issue-related
attitudes reflect voter evaluations of their utility gains in relation to EU integration based
upon the socio-economic predispositions of the individual voter, in that those groups stand to
gain the most from integration support it and vice versa, other things equal (Gabel, 1998;
Hooghe & Marks, 2005). However, other research has suggested that voter attitudes toward
the EU can also be driven by identity concerns, with voters who fear immigration and are
strongly attached to their national identity having more negative attitudes toward the EU
(Hobolt & de Vries, 2016; Hooghe & Marks, 2005; McLaren, 2006). (We refer readers with
further interest in the drivers of EU attitudes to consult Hobolt & de Vries, 2016.)
Hobolt (2006, 2009) has proposed the most ambitious issue-voting model regarding EU
referendums. Hobolt draws upon a rational choice proximity model, where the median voter
decides based upon the relative location of their ideal point (IP) toward EU integration in
relation to their perceptions of the placement of the proposition and the reversion point (RP)
in the event of a no vote.
2
When the proposition is closer to the median voter’s IP than the RP,
the voter will vote yes, and vice versa.
3
While engaging in issue-voting, voters might also be relatively risk-averse, preferring the
certainty of what they know to the uncertainty of change. Therefore, there is often a status
quo bias in voter behavior in referendums. This argument can be found as far back as 1932,
where Schumacher, in a case study of Oregon initiatives, attested that “the elector, when in
doubt, is inclined to vote no” and there was a tendency for voters “to continue the status
quo” (1932, p. 251). More recently, other scholars have also argued that referendums have a
potential conservative bias toward the status quo. For example, Bowler and Donovan (1998)
propose that the electorate in referendums use a no vote as an anchoring reference point.
Lupia (1994) has demonstrated that voters often have more information about the status quo
than the change that will be initiated by the proposal at the ballot. The logic is that they know
what they have, and changes to the status quo involve greater uncertainty (risk). Hobolt
(2009) has included this factor in her model as a propensity for voters to prefer the status quo
except in circumstances where it is very clear for voters that the reversion point in the event
of a no vote is very harmful.
2
3
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Several authors have suggested that the context of the referendum might matter for which
dynamic is dominant. Franklin (2002) suggests that second-order dynamics might be
particularly dominant in low-salience referendums, whereas when a question has high
political salience we should expect voting based upon the issue (Franklin, 2002; see also
Szczerbiak & Taggart, 2004a, 2004b). Hug (2002) has claimed that second-order dynamics are
more likely in referendums that have been convened for strategic reasons by governments
and when the outcome is non-binding on the government. The non-binding nature of the
referendum enables voters to more easily use the referendum to send a signal to unpopular
political elites, other things equal.
What evidence do we have that issue-voting or second-order factors dominate voter decisionmaking
in EU referendums? As referendums across Europe have become politically
contentious, a scholarly consensus has begun to develop that suggests that issue-voting is
increasingly the prevalent dynamic in EU referendums (Garry, Marsh, & Sinnott, 2005;
Hobolt, 2009; Schuck & de Vreese, 2008). Simply put, there is not a lot of evidence that
suggests that unpopular governments proposing referendums are less successful than their
more popular counterparts.
Schuck and de Vreese (2008) found that in the 2005 Dutch no vote to the Constitutional
Treaty, the strongest predictor for how voters decided was their general EU skepticism, which
was a factor through which political attitudes and predispositions (unrelated to the specific
issues) exerted influence. They did find that voters who had little faith in the political elites
that supported the referendum tended to have more skeptical attitudes toward the EU and
that voters that were strongly attached to Dutch national identity were also more skeptical
toward the EU. Additionally, voters who feared immigration and globalization were also more
skeptical. They conclude that EU skepticism is a mediator of influence of other, non-EU–
related political attitudes and predispositions, although they did find some second-order
effects also (Schuck & de Vreese, 2008, p. 117).
There is also strong evidence for issue-voting in Danish referendums (Hobolt, 2006, 2007,
2009), Irish referendums (Garry, 2013; Garry et al., 2005), and in the wave of accession
referendums in 2003 (Szczerbiak & Taggart, 2004b). Comparing the two Maastricht
referendums in Denmark in 1992 and 1993, Hobolt (2006) finds that issue-voting dominated in
both but that partisan cues did affect voter assessments of the benefits of the proposition and
the location of the reservation point in the event of a no vote. Voters with identical EU
attitudes shifted their evaluation of the proposition due to information from parties that
claimed that (1) the Maastricht + Edinburgh agreement package sent for ratification in the
second referendum was better for Denmark than Maastricht on its own (i.e., closer to the
median voters ideal point) and (2) the consequences of voting no a second time would be
Danish exit from the EU. The difference between the first no and the second yes vote on the
same treaty can therefore be explained by a shift in voter perceptions of the consequences of
a yes and no vote.
Garry (2013) found that issue-voting dominated in the two Irish Lisbon Treaty referendums
and that voter choice was dominated by attitudes toward the specific proposition and not just
underlying and general EU attitudes. And in a journal special issue on the accession
referendum in 2003, the editors concluded based on the case studies that issue-voting
Page 16 of 23
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dominated across the cases but that elite cues did matter depending on how knowledgeable
voters were of EU affairs and how credible elites themselves were (Szczerbiak & Taggart,
2004a, 2004b).
Recent work in the field of issue-voting has begun to investigate whether there is
heterogeneity in voter behavior, with some types of voters behaving differently from others.
Drawing on Zaller (1992), Hobolt (2009) found that politically sophisticated/knowledgeable
voters were more likely to have substantive opinions on the issues at stake and thereby were
more likely to engage in issue-voting. Garry (2013) did not, however, find evidence of this in
the two Irish Lisbon referendums. Another form of heterogeneity was detected in his analysis.
Garry (2013) assessed whether economic concerns are more salient for voters with low
“human capital.” The logic is that voters who are potentially exposed to competition created
by the EU’s free movement of workers would be more skeptical toward more integration in a
referendum. There was some empirical support for the thesis.
Another form of heterogeneity has also been assessed by Garry (2014). Building on research
from political psychology on the role of emotions—in particular work that has found that
voters who are “anxious” are more likely to engage in deliberation in contrast to “angry”
voters, who are more likely to rely on partisan attitudes (e.g., Petersen, 2010). Angry voters
are more likely to make choices based on second-order factors, whereas anxious voters will
tend to be risk-averse and seek out more information in an attempt to make a choice based on
their attitudes toward the issue. Garry (2014) provides empirical evidence supporting this
hypothesis about emotions. In line with risk aversion, anxious voters were more likely to
support the Fiscal Compact than angry voters. Of those who felt angry during the referendum
campaign, “a strong and highly statistically significant relationship emerges between
dissatisfaction with the government and voting No” (Garry, 2014, pp. 246–247). The final
result was a yes vote because there were more anxious voters than angry voters.
Recent EU Referendums—Anything New Under the Sun?
There have been three no votes in EU referendums in 2015 and 2016, including the dramatic
British no vote in June 2016 to leave the EU. Are we witnessing new voter dynamics? Is voter
decision-making more influenced by a broad lack of confidence in political elites and
institutions among large groups of voters, resulting in a new form of second-order dynamics?
The following will discuss only the British and Danish no votes, as the extremely low salience
of the Dutch 2016 referendum on the EU’s association agreement with Ukraine makes it
difficult to draw any conclusions about voter decision-making, with only 32.3% of voters
turning up.
That a majority of British voters opted to leave the EU was a shock for many observers,
although polls in the run-up suggested that it might be close. Many observers expected that
the well-known status quo bias would kick in when it was a 50/50 situation, pushing enough
undecided voters arriving at the polls to tip the vote toward a remain result. However, a small
majority voted to leave the EU, with a turnout of 72.2%. Overall, Hobolt (2016) found that
issue-voting dominated voter decision-making, which was not surprising given the high
salience of the issue. Hobolt (2016) found that the remain arguments about the economic
costs of leaving the EU resonated with pro-EU voters, whereas the leave side’s anti-
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immigration arguments were effective in mobilizing anti-EU voters. Voters who “benefited”
from increased internationalization (better educated, younger, and more well-off voters)
tended to vote remain, whereas the “losers of globalization” tended to vote leave. This
suggests that voter decision-making was driven by some of the same concerns that have led to
increased support for right-wing populist parties throughout Europe, both in national
elections and in the EP election of 2014.
Steenbergen and Siczek (2017) also found support for issue-voting, but they also investigated
whether voter levels of risk propensity affected how they voted. The theory was that more
risk-averse voters would prefer to keep what they know and vote Remain, whereas voters who
responded in surveys that they were willing to take risks also were more likely to vote for
Brexit. Their findings suggest that the emerging political psychology literature, which looks at
the impact that different underlying personality traits can have, is also relevant in
understanding voter behavior in EU referendums.
Related to this, there is some evidence from recent studies of the importance of attitude
strength and motivated reasoning from Danish referendum in 2015. In this referendum, the
proposition was to replace the Danish Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) opt-out with a Britishstyle
opt-in protocol. However, a majority of Danes voted no despite the referendum being
relatively high salience (turnout of 72%). Issue-voting dominated decision-making by voters,
but there was also a difference in how voters with strong attitudes behaved. The theory of
motivated reasoning suggests that voters with strongly-held attitudes will selectively recruit
and evaluate information in a manner that gives greater credence to information that matches
their pre-existing beliefs. Based on survey data (see Beach, 2017), there is evidence to suggest
that voters with strongly held attitudes needed less information to make a decision, and were
more / less responsive to arguments that were consistent / inconsistent with their underlying
attitudes. This suggests that providing more information in a campaign will not necessarily
shift voters, but instead enables them to figure out how they should vote based on their preexisting
EU attitudes.
Conclusions
Research on EU referendums can be split into three distinct questions: (1) Why are
referendums convened?; (2) Do campaigns matter?; and (3) What factors determine voter
decision-making?
Governments convene referendums for a number of reasons. There are situations where they
are constitutionally mandated, but in other situations they are voluntary. Here research has
suggested both norm-based and strategic reasons for convening referendums. There can be
situations where convening a referendum can be seen as the “right thing to do,” best seen in
the wave of referendums to ratify the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. But governments also use
referendums strategically—for example, the decision by then-British PM Cameron to convene
a referendum on EU membership to reduce pressure on the Conservative party from the UK
Independence Party (UKIP).
Campaigns do matter, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that the effects deal
mainly with providing information about the proposition that can enable voters to determine
whether they should support it or not based on their underlying attitudes toward the EU. One
Page 18 of 23
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key channel for this information is through partisan endorsements that provide voters with a
useful heuristic to decide “as if” they had full information. Campaigns can also matter by
priming particular aspects of the issue.
When making decisions, there is a strong body of evidence that indicates that in salient
referendums, voter decision-making is dominated by issue-voting. There is some disagreement
about whether issue-voting is driven by general EU attitudes or more proposition-specific
attitudes, and there is debate about what drives EU attitudes (economic/materialist or
identity-based concerns). However, there is still significant work to be done in incorporating
insights from political psychology into the study of voter decision-making in EU referendums.
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Notes
1. This excludes the French 1972 referendum on enlargement of the EEC as well as also Swiss and Liechtenstein’s
referendums on EFTA and EEA.
2. While it cannot be reasonably expected that average voters engage in a synoptic evaluation of the proposition in
relation to their IP and the expected RP, voters can utilize heuristics like cues from referent persons to calculate their
position “as if” they had expended the analytical resources to calculate their utility function (Hobolt, 2009; Lupia,
1992, 1994; Lau & Redlawsk, 2006; Sniderman, Brody, & Tetlock, 1991).
3. Berinsky and Lewis (2007) question whether voters ever have more than general notions about the location of a
proposition and the RP, but many other scholars contend that while voters do not have the information to actually
engage in a fully synoptic utility calculation, they can utilize different heuristics when issues are salient, like cues from
referents to enable them to make a decision “as if” they had engaged in this type of calculation (Hobolt, 2009; Lupia,
1992, 1994).
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