Party Stances in the
Referendums on the EU
Constitution
Causes and Consequences of
Competition and Collusion
Ben Crum
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A B S T R A C T
This article examines political party behaviour around the
referendums on the EU Constitutional Treaty in 2005. Starting
from the presumption that this behaviour needs to be
analysed in the light of the domestic government–opposition
dynamics, a set of hypotheses on the causes and consequences
of party behaviour in EU Treaty referendums is
developed and reviewed for the EU member states in which
a referendum was held or anticipated. As it turns out, with
the exception of some right–conservative parties, all mainstream
parties endorsed the Constitutional Treaty. However,
because significant proportions of opposition party supporters
are bound to go to the ‘No’ side, government parties are
eventually crucial in securing a majority in favour of EU
Treaty revisions.
6 1
European Union Politics
DOI: 10.1177/1465116507073286
Volume 8 (1): 61–82
Copyright© 2007
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
K E Y W O R D S
᭿ EU Constitutional Treaty
᭿ opposition
᭿ party
᭿ referendums
᭿ strategies
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The damning verdict of the electorates in France and the Netherlands over the
proposed Constitutional Treaty for Europe revealed a deep divide between the
people and their political representatives. Had the political elites of the two
countries simply left the ratification to the national parliaments – as they did
in the case of the previous EU Treaty revisions of Nice and Amsterdam
(although France did have a referendum on the Treaty of Maastricht that
narrowly passed) – the Constitutional Treaty would have passed by comfortable
majorities. It is notable that, even in the referendums in Spain and Luxembourg
which did come out in favour of ratification, electoral support for the
Constitutional Treaty lagged significantly behind the level on which it could
count among parliamentarians. Six more EU member states had been
committed to a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty: the Czech Republic,
Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom. However, they
decided to suspend their ratification processes because the results in France
and the Netherlands led the European Council to call for a ‘period of reflection’.
This article examines political party behaviour around the Constitutional
Treaty referendums. I argue that this behaviour is determined by the interplay
of party ideology with the position of the party within the party system. In
particular, the article focuses on the basic asymmetries between government
and opposition parties. First, as concerns the conditions under which parties
determine their stance, opposition parties can exercise a genuine choice
whereas government parties are basically constrained to commit themselves to
the ‘Yes’ side. Depending on the decision made by the opposition parties, either
one finds the divide between the ‘Yes’ and the ‘No’ camps coinciding with the
divide between government and opposition (what I will call ‘the Competitive
Model’) or one finds all the main parties campaigning together in favour of
ratification (‘the Collusive Model’). Secondly, however, when it comes to
bringing their stance to bear upon the referendum, the choice enjoyed by opposition
parties actually becomes a liability because they are prone to intra-party
dissent and defection, especially when they choose to collude with the government.
Moreover, because opposition parties cannot be counted on to deliver
their constituency to the ‘Yes’ camp, the outcome of the referendum depends
crucially on the ability of governing parties to mobilize their supporters.
Building upon previous research, the first sections develop a set of
hypotheses on the causes and consequences of party behaviour. In the second
part of the article these hypotheses are tested against actual events around
the referendums on the Constitutional Treaty. With regard to the causes of the
party behaviour, the analysis involves all 10 countries in which a referendum
was planned because, in anticipation of the referendum, political parties had
already committed themselves to one side or the other. The subsequent
analysis of the consequences of party behaviour is inevitably limited to the
four countries in which a referendum actually took place.
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‘Issue-voting’ versus ‘second-order’ ballots
Central to the literature on national referendums on EU treaties is the divide
between those who argue that it is domestic politics that determines the
outcomes of these referendums and those who maintain that these outcomes
do indeed reflect the well-considered views of the public on the issue at stake.
The more sceptical argument that insists on the prevalence of domestic
politics basically extends the concept of ‘second-order elections’ to EU
referendums. Reif and Schmitt (1980) introduced this concept to highlight the
dominance of national political preoccupations in elections for other levels of
government. Characteristically, voting behaviour in second-order elections
tends to reflect an appreciation of national politics rather than of politics at
the level at issue. Thus, extending the argument, one can hypothesize that
referendums on European issues risk getting entangled in national political
dynamics rather than reflecting a genuine consideration of the issue at hand.
Following this line of argument, Franklin, Marsh and McLaren have
suggested that ‘referendum votes held to ratify [the Maastricht Treaty] are
better interpreted as decisions made on short-term, national, rather than on
long-term, European considerations’ (Franklin et al., 1994: 470).
However, this sceptical line towards the issue relevance of European referendums
has been contested. Most notably, empirical studies of referendums
in Denmark and Ireland seem to revalidate the claim that sincere issue preferences
do play an important role (Svensson, 2002; Garry et al., 2005). Not
surprisingly these are the two EU member states that have a tradition of referendums
and a longer-standing experience with referendums on European
treaties. Indeed, confronted with these findings, Franklin has conceded that
referendums may be decided by the merits of the case if voters have been able
to develop in-depth knowledge and enduring preferences on the issue (see
Ray, 2003a). Still he maintains that government standing is bound to be significant
‘in other countries that hold referendums on European topics, since in
other European Union countries opinion regarding Europe is less well
developed’ (Franklin, 2002: 756).
Regardless of which tendency preponderates, voters in European referendums
face a choice that Schneider and Weitsman (1996: 583) have called
the punishment trap:
Voters may have to choose between accepting an agreement on the basis of its
merit and risk rewarding a government that has not successfully managed
domestic politics, or rejecting the treaty, thereby punishing a popular government
that negotiated and supported ratification of the agreement.
In turn, this dilemma is reflected in the choices that political parties face.
When voters have only limited information, political parties can provide
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voters with important ‘cues’ about what is at stake in the referendum
and how they should cast their vote (LeDuc, 2002: 722; see also Lupia and
McCubbins, 1998). Voters who have come to associate their political opinions
with certain political parties may well rely on these political parties to provide
them with a pointer on how to position themselves in relation to a political
choice about which they have insufficient knowledge.
The distinction between issue-oriented and second-order referendums
not only operates at the level of the electorate but affects parties as well. If
indeed voters approach referendums as second-order national elections, then
parties may well want to recognize this in their strategies. Furthermore, this
is a recursive relationship since the strategy that parties adopt may in turn
influence voters’ perception of the referendum. As Ray (2003b: 273) puts it:
‘Not only do parties provide cues to voters, but individuals approach EU
referendums and questions of further integration with an eye on the consequences
for the relative power of domestic political actors.’ If parties choose
to approach the referendum as a test of the government’s standing rather than
strictly on the basis of the issue at hand, they can have a big hand in
reaffirming its second-order character.
The causes of party stances: Ideology and strategy
The issue of determining a position on EU Treaty revisions is more obvious
for some parties than for others. In seeking explanations of the stance parties
take towards EU treaties, we find the contrast between issue-voting and
second-order effects reflected in the contrast between ideological and
strategic factors. Ideologically, national party systems in Europe have
generally come to be organized along a left–right axis, with socialist worker
parties towards the left end and conservative parties towards the right (Lipset
and Rokkan, 1967). Although the issue of European integration has very much
appeared outside this dimension, empirical studies demonstrate a remarkable
degree of coherence in the way parties of similar political persuasion
have accommodated it (Marks et al., 2002; Hooghe et al., 2004; Kriesi, in this
issue). From the start of the integration project, centre–right parties have
tended to look approvingly on it, especially as long as the emphasis was on
market integration through liberalization. Centre–left parties may have been
more reluctant initially, but gradually they too have come to embrace
European integration once it moved more and more into issues of reregulation
in spheres such as regional and environmental policy (Hooghe
et al., 2004: 129). Outright opposition to Europe is mostly restricted to the
ideological fringes occupied by parties that generally adopt a protest-oriented
or anti-system stance (Taggart, 1998). Hooghe et al. (2004) thus suggest that
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support for European integration along the left–right axis can be seen as an
inverted U-curve with low support being concentrated at the extreme ends
on both sides.
In fact, Hooghe et al. (2004) have proposed an alternative ideological axis
that displays a simple, linear relationship in support for EU integration: the
‘GAL–TAN axis’. According to their findings, support for European integration
tends to be high among parties that can be characterized as
green/alternative/libertarian (GAL) and low among parties that qualify
instead as traditional/authoritarian/nationalist (TAN). The two ideological
axes – left–right and GAL–TAN – cannot be reduced to one another because
each captures a different aspect of European integration, left–right focusing on
the economic aspect and GAL–TAN on the political aspect. On the left, one
finds both GAL parties, such as the Greens, as well as parties with more of a
TAN character, such as (former) communist and regionalist parties. Similarly,
at the right end of the spectrum there are GAL parties of an outspoken liberal
or libertarian character as well as nationalist parties with a TAN inclination.
Table 1 lists the position of all the main ideological families on economic
and political integration and also presents an overall appraisal. There is clearly
a distinct ‘pro-integration core’ (in bold type in Table 1) of social democrats,
liberals and Christian democrats, who are ideologically inclined to endorse
further integration both economically and politically. Euroscepticism is mostly
to be found outside the ideological core. At the same time, one can observe
Crum Party Stances in the Referendums on the EU Constitution 6 5
Table 1 Ideological predispositions of main European party families towards EU
integration
Ideological Economic Political Overall stance on
family integration integration EU integration
Extreme left/ Strongly opposed Moderately Strongly opposed
communist opposed
Green Moderately Mixed Moderately opposed
opposed
Social democratic Moderately in Strongly in favour Moderately to
favour strongly in favour
Liberal Strongly in favour Strongly in favour Strongly in favour
Christian Strongly in favour Strongly in favour Strongly in favour
democratic
Conservative Strongly in favour Strongly opposed Moderately in favour
Extreme right Moderately Strongly opposed Strongly opposed
opposed
Note: Based on Marks et al. (2002: 587).
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that, whereas for economic integration the centre of gravity of support tends
to lie to the right of the centre, for political integration it tends to the left.
However, parties’ ideological inclinations need not necessarily coincide
with the strategic incentives created by the context of EU Treaty referendums.
First and foremost, government parties are bound to endorse Treaty revisions
because these revisions are established only with the approval of each and
every government involved. The ratification that follows basically involves the
government getting the result of the international negotiations approved at
home. Thus government parties will be expected to endorse the negotiation
result; moreover, a failure to ratify will cause a loss of face vis-à-vis the other
governments. Because parties in government are mostly affiliated to the ideological
pro-integration core, few of them experience a tension between their
positional incentives and their ideological inclination.
This is less self-evident when we turn to opposition parties, which may
be tempted to use EU referendums as a means to mobilize against the government
in power. Indeed, this is exactly what we find among protest parties that
are resigned to remaining in opposition indefinitely. However, opposition
parties that expect to return to office face a more complex calculation (see
Franklin et al., 1994; Hug and Sciarini, 2000: 7). Tempting as it may be for them
to use the referendum as a means to mobilize against the government, such a
move might alienate them from future coalition partners. Moreover, when a
Treaty change does come to be adopted, a party will find itself obliged to abide
by its terms once it does come into office, regardless of how it campaigned.
Thus, given that EU Treaty changes are generally established by a broad
European political consensus and that any party entering government will
have little choice but to play by the rules, mainstream parties vying for office
experience pressure to behave ‘responsibly’ and to campaign on the ‘Yes’ side.
The adoption of such a responsible stance is all the more likely when a party
is ideologically committed to a pro-EU position.
Whereas government parties are bound to endorse the EU Constitutional
Treaty and protest parties are naturally inclined to oppose it, the main variation
is to be found in the positioning of (mainstream) opposition parties. It
follows that there are basically two different patterns of party positioning on
EU Treaty referendums. On the one hand, there are party systems in which
the government factions are left alone to defend the EU Treaty and all the
opposition parties campaign against it. These systems I label ‘Competitive
Party Systems’. In contrast, ‘Collusive Party Systems’ are those in which the
major opposition parties join the government on the side of the EU Treaty.
The distinction between the Competitive and the Collusive models highlights
the crucial role of opposition parties in determining the configuration
of party positions. Because the analysis of the strategic considerations these
parties face remains inconclusive, ideological orientations are expected to
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prevail in determining the stance of mainstream opposition parties. A first
hypothesis is then:
H1: When parties associated with the pro-integration ideological core (social
democrats, Christian democrats and liberals) dominate the opposition, the distribution
of party positions will resemble the Collusive Party Model.
Put the other way around, if the opposition is of a different ideological
persuasion, we would expect to find the Competitive Model.
Competitive Party Systems would seem particularly conducive to introducing
second-order considerations into the campaign, because every vote in
favour of the EU Treaty may be regarded as a vote in support of the government
position. In contrast, one would expect issue-voting to have more of a
chance in collusive settings, because the way one casts one’s vote does not
involve a choice between government or opposition. Hence, I now turn to the
consequences of party positions.
The consequences of party stances
Ultimately, we are interested in the stances of parties in EU Treaty referendums
because of their presumed impact on voting behaviour in the referendum.1
This impact can vary in terms of its direction – for or against the EU
Treaty – and also its size; under certain conditions we may expect parties to
have more leverage on the electoral decisions than under others. The consequences
of the party stances adopted are bound to vary under the two
models and for each of the three kinds of party. Previous research suggests
that the ability of a party to sway its electorate is mediated by the general
level of salience, intra-party unity and the visibility of inter-party disagreement
(LeDuc, 2002; Ray, 2003a; see also Steenbergen et al., in this issue).
One factor in which parties vary is their potential for maintaining internal
unity and preventing internal factionalization. Ray (2003a) has demonstrated
Crum Party Stances in the Referendums on the EU Constitution 6 7
Government Opposition
Protest
parties
Government Opposition
Protest
parties
A. COMPETITIVE MODEL B. COLLUSIVE MODEL
YES NO
YES
NO
Figure 1 Two models of party behaviour in referendums.
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that a party’s influence over its voters increases if it can maintain internal
unity. Maintaining internal unity seems least of a challenge for protest parties,
for which all the incentives point against EU Treaties (see Gabel and Scheve,
in this issue). In the case of government parties, internal dissent is likely to
be restrained owing to the responsibility incumbent upon them, although it
may still be a factor in parties that are not ideologically predisposed to
support European integration. Factionalization would appear most likely
among parties that are exposed to contradictory incentives.2 The preceding
analysis suggests this is most likely among opposition parties. Even if these
parties and their leaderships are formally committed one way or the other,
they are likely to face contrary sentiments within their party, thus leading to
factionalism (see Taggart, 1998: 369). This applies in particular to opposition
parties of a pro-European persuasion: if they follow their ideology, followers
will accuse them of ‘sleeping with the enemy’, whereas if they choose to
campaign in the ‘No’ camp, they will be accused of letting strategy prevail
over substance (see Franklin et al., 1994: 466).
H2: Opposition parties that decide to collude with the government are liable to
factionalism.
More generally, Ray has found an inter-party disagreement effect in that
‘the effect of party positions is significantly greater when parties take a variety
of positions on the issue of European integration’ (Ray, 2003a: 988; but see
also Steenbergen et al., in this issue). In other words, ceteris paribus, parties
under the Competitive Model will be more successful in swaying their voters
than those under the Collusive Model since, owing to the reinforcement of
the second-order character of the EU Treaty referendum, mainstream parties
will have a stronger claim on the loyalty of their followers. Under the Collusive
Model, in contrast, the ability of the mainstream parties, both in
government and in opposition, to command their voters will tend to decrease,
whereas protest parties are likely to benefit from their relative isolation and
are able to increase their grip on their voters. Even if the signal from the
governing parties remains unequivocal, the pressure on their electorates
loyally to follow the party line will decrease.
Again the spotlight is on the role of the main opposition parties. The
dilemma these parties face between ideological and strategic inclinations can
be expected to spill over to their electorates (see Schneider and Weitsman,
1996). Because opposition parties reflect different inclinations, the readiness
of their voters to follow their lead is likely to be reduced; alternatively, following
the suggestion by Gabel and Scheve (in this issue), intra-party disagreement
offers the party constituency a choice in being ‘influenced by those
elites in the party who share their interests, values, and predispositions’. In
any case,
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H3: Opposition parties will be less successful than government parties in swaying
their supporters to their side.
In fact, Franklin et al. (1994: 463; but see Hug and Sciarini, 2000) have found
this hypothesis confirmed in the case of the three referendums on the
Maastricht Treaty: ‘Those [pro-Treaty parties] in government did well enough
but those in opposition, whatever their European credentials, saw their
supporters significantly divided between “yes” and “no” camps.’
In particular, it is suggested that, whichever way the main opposition
parties go, the government has little reason to stake its desired positive
outcome of the referendum on the followers of these parties. Because the
Competitive Model pits the government against the opposition as a whole, the
key to the referendum outcome is in the hands of the government parties. The
referendum is in many respects bound to turn into a test of the standing of
the government. LeDuc (2002: 728) has called this situation an uphill struggle:
The [government] party initiating the referendum knows that it can count on the
votes of its core supporters. It knows also where the additional votes may lie that
it needs in order to secure a majority and that it can win these only through a
hard fought campaign.
The government can win the referendum if it is able to re-establish the
majority by which it was elected. Although this capacity is likely to vary from
moment to moment and from government to government, electoral cycle
theories would suggest that governments that are still in the early days of
their victory have the best hope of swinging the referendum to their side.
Given that protest parties will mobilize against EU Treaty revisions and
that electoral support from opposition supporters is insecure (at best), we find
that under the Collusive Model too it falls upon government parties to lay
the basis for a positive outcome by securing the loyalty of their own followers.
In particular, the opposition’s joining the ‘Yes’ side is a handicap to
the extent that it reduces the pressure on government parties’ followers by
downplaying the second-order character of the referendum. Compared with
the ‘uphill struggle’ scenario of the Competitive Model, in the Collusive
Model one would expect the ‘Yes’ side to gain some support from loyal
followers of the main opposition parties, although this might come at the cost
of loosening the grip of the government parties on their electorate. The
question then becomes which of these two effects outweighs the other.
Party stances in the EU Constitution referendums
By spring 2005 almost all political parties in the 10 countries in which a referendum
on the European Constitutional Treaty was planned had determined
their stance on the issue (see Table 2).3 As expected, all government parties
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European Union Politics 8(1)7 0
Table2Partypositionsinthe10referendumcountries
GOVERNMENTOPPOSITION
PartyVotePartyVote
PartygroupshareY/N/UPartygroupshareY/N/U
CZECHREPUBLIC
CzechSocialDemocraticParty(CˇSSD)PES(30%)YCivicDemocraticParty(ODS)EPP-ED(24%)N
ChristianandDemocraticUnion–CommunistPartyofBohemiaandMoravia
CzechoslovakPeople’sParty(KDU–CˇSL)EPP-ED(10%)Y(KSCˇM)EUL-NGL(18%)N
FreedomUnion-DemocraticUnion(US–DU)EPP-ED(4%)U
DENMARK
Liberals(V)ELDR(29%)YSocialDemocrats(SD)PES(26%)Y
ConservativePeople’sParty(KF)EPP-ED(10%)YDanishPeople’sParty(DF)UEN(13%)N
SocialLiberals(RV)ELDR(9%)Y
SocialistPeople’sParty(SF)EG/EFA(6%)Y
FRANCE
UnionforaPopularMovement(UMP)EPP-ED(34%)YSocialistParty(PS)PES(24%)Y
UnionforFrenchDemocracy(UDF)ELDR(5%)YNationalFront(FN)NA(11%)N
FrenchCommunistParty(PCF)EUL-NGL(5%)N
TheGreens(Verts)EG/EFA(4%)Y
IRELAND
FiannaFailUEN(41%)YFineGaelEPP-ED(22%)Y
ProgressiveDemocratsELDR(4%)YLabourPartyPES(11%)Y
SinnFeinEUL-NGL(6%)N
GreenPartyEG/EFA(4%)U
LUXEMBOURG
ChristianSocialPeople’sParty(CSV)EPP-ED(36%)YLuxembourgSocialistWorkers’Party(LSAP)PES(23%)Y
DemocraticParty(DP)ELDR(16%)YTheGreens(DéiGréng)EG/EFA(12%)Y
ActionCommitteeforDemocracyandPensions
Justice(ADR)NA(10%)N
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Crum Party Stances in the Referendums on the EU Constitution 7 1Table2Continued
GOVERNMENTOPPOSITION
PartyVotePartyVote
PartygroupshareY/N/UPartygroupshareY/N/U
THENETHERLANDS
Christian-DemocraticAppeal(CDA)EPP-ED(29%)YLabourParty(PvdA)PES(27%)Y
People’sPartyforFreedomandDemocracy(VVD)ELDR(18%)YSocialistParty(SP)EUL-NGL(6%)N
Democrats66(D66)ELDR(4%)YPimFortuynList(LPF)NA(6%)N
GreenLeft(GL)EG/EFA(5%)Y
POLAND
AllianceofDemocraticLeft(SLD)+PES(41%)YCitizensPlatform(PO)EPP-ED(13%)U
UnionofLabour(UP)+SelfDefenceofthePolishRepublic(S)NA(10%)N
PolishSocialDemocracy(SDLP)LawandJustice(PiS)UEN(9%)N
PolishPeasantParty(PSL)EPP-ED(9%)U
LeagueofPolishFamilies(LPR)ID(8%)N
PORTUGAL
SocialistParty(PS)PES(45%)YSocialDemocratParty(PSD)EPP-ED(29%)Y
UnitarianDemocraticCoalition(CDU)EUL-NGL(8%)N
People’sParty(PP)EPP-ED(7%)Y
LeftBlock(BE)EUL-NGL(6%)N
SPAIN
SpanishSocialistWorkers’Party(PSOE)PES(43%)YPeople’sParty(PP)EPP-ED(38%)Y
UnitedLeft(IU)EUL-NGL(5%)N
DemocraticConvergenceofCatalunya(CDC)ELDR(3%)Y
RepublicanLeftofCatalunya(ERC)EG/EFA(2%)N
BasqueNationalistParty(EAJ-PNV)EG/EFA(2%)Y
UNITEDKINGDOM
LabourPartyPES(35%)YConservativePartyEPP-ED(32%)N
LiberalDemocratsELDR(22%)Y
Notes:Summer2005,betweenUKelectionsof5/5/2005andPolishelectionsof25/9/2005.BasedontheEPINRatificationMonitor(Kurpasetal.,2005).Votesharesbasedonwww.electionworld.org.
Y[plaintext]–partyinfavourofConstitutionalTreaty;N[bolditalics]–partyagainstConstitutionalTreaty;U[italics]–partyundecidedontheissue.
PES=PartyofEuropeanSocialists;EPP-ED=EuropeanPeople’sParty-EuropeanDemocrats;ELDR=EuropeanLiberalDemocratandReformgroup;UEN=UnionforEuropeoftheNationsGroup;
EUL/NGL=ConfederalGroupoftheEuropeanUnitedLeft–NordicGreenLeft;EG/EFA=GroupoftheGreens/EuropeanFreeAlliance;ID=Independence/DemocracyGroup;NA=non-attached.
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came out in favour of ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty. Only
the Czech Freedom Union, which served as a junior partner in the governing
coalition, had not fully committed itself in favour of the Constitutional Treaty.
For most governing parties, endorsement of the Constitutional Treaty was
fairly unproblematic because they had consistently supported European integration
over the years. Moreover, with the sole exception of the Portuguese
Socialist Party, which came into office only after the negotiations had been
concluded but whose support for the Treaty was in any case not in doubt, all
these parties had been involved in the negotiations over the Constitutional
Treaty.
As far as non-government parties are concerned the picture is more
diverse. Three countries (the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic) conformed
to the Competitive Model, whereas the other seven reflected the Collusive
Model. It is notable that, in all three cases following the Competitive Model,
the opposition was dominated by right–conservative parties. Typically, the
British Conservatives and the Czech Civic Democratic Party (ODS) make up
the European Democrats (ED) group within the European Parliament’s
Christian democrat–Conservative European People’s Party-European Democrats
(EPP-ED) group. The Polish case was rather unusual because the main
opposition party at the time, the Christian democrat Citizens Platform, was
reluctant to make up its mind on the Constitution and was experiencing
severe pressure from other right-wing opposition parties that had adopted a
strong anti-Constitution position. In contrast, centre–right parties in Spain,
Portugal and Ireland stuck to their traditional pro-European orientation. In
the case of Portugal and Spain this orientation was reinforced by the fact that
the centre–right parties had only recently left office and had been representing
their countries in (most of) the negotiations on the Constitutional Treaty.
In the case of the Irish centre–right (Fine Gael), one needs to point out that it
was opposing a right-wing government rather than a left-wing one, as was
the case for the other Christian democratic opposition parties.
Whereas opposition parties that operate to the right of the centre may
thus be tempted to come out against the EU Constitutional Treaty, such
tendencies are completely absent from social democratic parties. Nor do we
find opposition to the Constitutional Treaty among parties associated with
the European Liberal Democrat and Reform (ELDR) group. Thus all
centre–right governments know that the mainstream opposition parties are
on their side.
Beyond the pro-integration ideological core, the only parties that
supported the EU Constitutional Treaty as opposition parties were Green
parties. Indeed, the majority of Green parties in the referendum countries
(Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands) came to endorse the
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Constitutional Treaty, even if this had not come about easily. Both the French
and Danish Greens made their stance the object of an internal party referendum.
In both cases the majority of the party membership (53% among the
French Greens and 64% among the Danish Greens) came out in favour of the
Constitutional Treaty. Indeed, if the ratification process had been continued,
the Irish Greens, which had been a leading force in the anti-Nice campaign,
would also have held a party referendum on the Constitutional Treaty. In
Spain, the regionalist parties that are associated with the Green group in the
European Parliament remained divided, with the Basque group choosing to
endorse the Constitution and the Catalans opposing it.
Apart from the right–conservative parties that chose to campaign against
a social democrat government and the Green parties that refused to join the
pro-integration camp, opposition to the EU Constitutional Treaty was concentrated
among the nationalist and extreme right, the extreme left and smaller
protest parties. Without exception, all the parties associated with the
European United Left (EUL) in the European Parliament opposed the Constitutional
Treaty. The same would apply to all the parties associated with the
right-wing Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN) were it not for the Irish
Fianna Fail, which sits in government. The remainder of the opposing parties
comprise anti-establishment and protest parties such as the French National
Front, the Pim Fortuyn List in the Netherlands, the Action Committee for
Democracy and Pensions Justice in Luxembourg, the League of Polish
Families, and Self Defence of the Polish Republic.
The consequences of party stances
Factionalization
The most notable case of party factionalization over the EU Constitutional
Treaty was the French Socialist Party (PS). Although admittedly also provoked
by motives of inter- and intra-party political strategizing, the internal divisions
came to be articulated as ideological ones, with the opponents of ratification
invoking the prospect of an ‘Alter-Europe’ (Ricard-Nihoul and Larhant, 2005;
see also Eurobarometer, 2005b). Eventually, the party line was determined by
way of an internal referendum in which 59% of the members who voted were
in favour of the Constitutional Treaty. Still, this did not keep some prominent
socialists from campaigning for a ‘non’.
However, other social democratic parties in opposition, such as those in
the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg and Ireland, showed no significant
signs of internal factionalization. For internal tensions similar to those in the
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PS we have to turn instead to right-wing opposition parties. One may for
instance consider the ambivalent tendencies that the Czech ODS opposition
harboured beyond the Eurosceptic rhetoric of its founder, Czech president
Vaclav Klaus. A similar tension between the reflexes of opposition and the
inclination to strike a responsible pose may account for the indecisiveness of
the Citizens Platform and the Peasant Party in Poland.
Another group of parties liable to internal factionalization were the Green
parties. Although many of the Green parties had opposed earlier EU Treaties,
the majority of them tended to come out in favour of the Constitutional Treaty.
This development may partly be attributed to a shift in the integration process
towards (re-)regulation (see Hooghe et al., 2004), but it may also signal a trend
in which Green parties are increasingly shedding their anti-establishment
views and merging into the political mainstream. Typically, in the case of the
French and the Danish Greens, referendums were used to legitimize the
change in party stance, and the Irish Greens refrained from adopting a
position on the Constitutional Treaty.
One thing worth noting is what we may call the ‘force of government’:
government parties remain distinctively immune from any significant
factionalization (see Franklin et al., 1994: 466). Being part of the government
and having been associated with the negotiations over the Constitutional
Treaty, there have been few challenges to the official party line, even though
in most government parties Eurosceptic voices have not been completely
silenced. A good case in point is the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and
Democracy (VVD), which in the run-up to the referendum maintained a
united front, although in retrospect regrets have been expressed about the
pro-Constitutional Treaty stance adopted (Soetenhorst, 2005).
Electoral sway
Of the four countries that held a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty in
2005, two (Spain and Luxembourg) produced a positive outcome and two
(France and the Netherlands) a negative one. In all four cases, the electorates
turned out to be considerably more sceptical about the Constitutional Treaty
than their parliamentary representatives were (see Table 3). Even in the
Spanish referendum, which occurred first and resulted in a comfortable
majority of 77% for the ‘Yes’ camp, popular support still fell considerably
short of the landslide endorsement that the Constitutional Treaty would have
received in parliament. The negative referendum outcomes in France and the
Netherlands revealed major gaps between the preferences of the parliamentary
representatives and those of the people. In Luxembourg too the 57%
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popular support still fell far short of the prevailing inclination among the
parliamentary representatives.
It is notable that these four cases all followed the Collusive Model, with
the main opposition parties campaigning in favour of the Constitutional
Treaty. The French, Dutch and Luxembourg cases are even more similar
because here the main opposition party was the social democratic party,
which together with the Green party campaigned side by side with a
centre–right government. The ‘No’ campaign in these countries was thus left
to anti-establishment parties on the (left and right) extremes of the political
spectrum. The Spanish case is slightly distinctive because here the referendum
was sought by the young social democratic government that only a year
earlier had succeeded the centre–right People’s Party (PP), which had led
most of the Spanish negotiations over the Constitutional Treaty.
Zooming in on relations between the different parties and their sympathizers
among the electorate, some interesting patterns emerge (Table 4). In
all four countries we find that it is indeed the protest parties, combining their
ideological opposition to Europe with practical opposition to the government,
that have been most successful in cueing their followers to vote ‘No’. Among
the followers of these anti-establishment parties we generally see around 80%
to 90% sharing the party position. The pattern is less convincing among the
governing parties. Although most of them have a majority of their electorate
on their side, many of them see their followers seriously divided, with as
much as 25–50% defecting to the ‘No’ camp. However, as anticipated, the
situation is most dramatic for pro-Constitution opposition parties, most of
which in fact see the majority of their followers joining the ‘No’ camp.
Crum Party Stances in the Referendums on the EU Constitution 7 5
Table 3 Shares of Constitutional Treaty supporters among parliamentary factions
and electorate
B. Yes-parties C. Yes-parties
A. % Yes seat share vote share last
electorate Lower House Lower House
(% No) (∆AB) elections (∆AC)
Spain 77% (23%) 95% (18) 86% (9)
France 45% (55%) 93% (48) 70% (25)
The Netherlands 38% (62%) 85% (47) 83% (45)
Luxembourg 57% (44%) 92% (36) 87% (31)
Note: The source of the vote shares is www.electionworld.org.
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Basically, it was the loyalty of the supporters of the government parties
that sealed the positive outcome of the referendums in Spain and Luxembourg.
In the Spanish case, with a defection rate of no more than 7%, the followers
of the social democrat Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) alone almost sufficed
to decide the issue. Also, because the majority of the PP electorate followed
the official party stance, the ‘Yes’ vote increased to 77%. The positive result in
Luxembourg was primarily secured by the effectiveness of Prime Minister
Juncker’s senior government party, the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV),
in keeping its followers in line. However, the other pro-Constitution parties in
Luxembourg had much more mixed results, with the junior government
partner (the Democratic Party, DP) seeing a considerable minority yielding to
the ‘No’ camp and the electorates of the main opposition parties (the Luxembourg
Socialist Workers’ Party, LSAP, and the Greens) being almost evenly
split between the ‘Yes’ and the ‘No’ camps.
In the French case, in contrast, it is the abysmal performance of the proConstitution
opposition that is most striking. Having decided to endorse the
European Union Politics 8(1)7 6
Table 4 Distribution of voters in EU constitutional referendums by party proximity (%)
Pro- AntiGovernment
Constitution Constitution
parties Yes No opposition Yes No opposition Yes No
Spain (N = 1392)
PSOE 93 4 PP 72 19 IU 32 61
CDC/CiU 62 19 ERC 5 87
PNV 42 57
France (N = 1745)
UMP/UDF 70 24 PS 35 55 FN/MNR 4 81
Verts 33 50 PCF 6 90
The Netherlands (N = 1640)
CDA 53 47 PvdA 37 63 SP 13 87
VVD 49 51 GL 54 46
D66 51 49
Luxembourg (N = 961)
CSV 79 21 LSAP 49 49 ADR 23 77
DP 55 42 Déi Gréng 48 49
Notes: Blank answers disregarded, hence not all pairs sum up to 100%. Respondents’ party
proximity is determined on the basis of the following question: ‘Which of the following parties do
you feel the closest to or the least far from?’
Source: Eurobarometer (2005a–d).
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‘Yes’ camp after internal party referendums, the social democrat Socialist
Party (PS) and the Greens (Verts) failed to sway their voters and found the
majority of them defecting to the other side. However, although many
commentators have located the chief cause of the French ‘Non’ in the
divisions within the PS, one may wonder whether it is realistic to expect the
opposition to shoulder the responsibility for a positive referendum outcome.
Indeed, had the government parties been able to sway their own followers
to the same extent as their Spanish or even their Luxembourg counterparts,
the majority would have been within reach regardless of the performance of
the opposition parties.
The Dutch referendum reinforces the argument that EU referendums
eventually have to be won by government parties. In this case the poor
performance of the government parties stands out, with their followers being
almost evenly divided. The main opposition party, the Labour Party (PvdA)
saw almost two-thirds of its followers defect to the ‘No’ camp so, given the
effectiveness of the anti-Constitution campaign of the protest parties, the
referendum was bound to go to the ‘No’ side.
Conclusion
On the basis of party data from the 10 countries that were committed to a
referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty and the results in the four
countries where a referendum actually took place in 2005, this article has
examined the factors that drive political parties to choose sides in referendum
campaigns and the extent to which these choices condition the impact
they can have on the eventual outcome. Theoretical considerations led me to
focus in particular on the position taken by opposition parties, because they
are likely to be torn between ideological inclinations and strategic considerations.
Furthermore, whichever way the opposition decides to go determines
very much the voters’ perception of the options on offer. If the opposition
sides with the government – what I have called the Collusive Model – the
mobilization of the ‘No’ side is left to protest parties. If, however, the opposition
chooses to oppose the government – the Competitive Model – the
central divide in the referendum campaign coincides with that between the
main parties.
A first finding is that, whereas one might expect certain tensions between
ideological and strategic inclinations, in practice ideology predominates when
parties determine their stance in the referendums on the EU Constitution.
Parties that are defined as being part of the pro-integration ideological core
(social democrats, liberals and Christian democrats) support the EU
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Constitutional Treaty regardless of whether they are in or out of government.
This hypothesis has been confirmed as we found the Collusive Model obtaining
in 7 of the 10 countries that were set to have a referendum and where the
opposition is dominated by social democrats and/or Christian democrats and
liberals. It is notable that, in the three cases where the Competitive Model
occurs, the opposition is dominated by parties at the conservative end of the
centre–right.
Interestingly, these findings suggest that the centre of gravity for support
of the Constitutional Treaty has to be located to the left of the political centre.
Another way to interpret this finding is that the Constitutional Treaty is less
associated with economic integration than with political integration (see
Marks et al., 2002). One implication of this is that, when the opposition is
dominated by social democrats, the articulation of Euroscepticism will be left
in the hands of anti-establishment parties. The experiences with the Constitutional
Treaty referendums suggest that the issue of further European integration
is likely to divide the political mainstream only when the opposition
is dominated by right–conservatives.
The second hypothesis concerned factionalism and suggested that this
is particularly likely among opposition parties that side with the ‘Yes’ camp.
The French Socialist Party might figure as a very strong case in support of
this thesis. However, although factionalization was indeed found only
among opposition parties, joining the ‘Yes’ camp as a social democratic party
was neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for it. Among the other
social democratic opposition parties endorsing a ‘Yes’ vote (in Denmark,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland) we find few signs of factionalization.
On the other hand, the competitive strategy of the centre–right opposition
in Poland and the Czech Republic did cause factionalism strains.
Furthermore, inter-party became particularly visible among Green parties
that switched from opposition to previous European treaties to support for
the Constitutional Treaty.
Although opposition parties exposed to contradictory pressures may thus
be able to prevent factionalism, the contradictions are much harder to suppress
when it comes to the party electorate. Centre–left opposition parties are
particularly vulnerable in this regard, because their ideological inclination is
to join the ‘Yes’ camp whereas their followers tend to oppose a ‘Yes’ that is
championed by a (centre-)right government. These problems of the major
opposition parties stand in stark contrast to the success of protest parties in
swaying their followers to vote ‘No’ on both ideological and strategic grounds.
Indeed, the four referendums held in 2005 confirm the expectation that
positive outcomes cannot be staked on opposition voters. Because protest
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voters and some of the opposition’s followers are bound to turn against the
EU Treaty revisions, it is up to the government parties to win the referendum.
This is where the Spanish and the Luxembourg government parties
succeeded. In the Netherlands, in contrast, the pulling power of government
parties turned out to be negligible. The French government parties performed
better, but they fell far short of mobilizing the majority on which they had
come to power.
It is tempting to reflect upon the counterfactual scenario if the opposition
parties in France and the Netherlands had adopted a competitive strategy. For
one thing, such a strategy certainly would not have prevented factionalism,
as is indicated by the deep divisions that the internal party referendums
revealed in France. It probably would have meant that an even larger share of
the opposition vote would have gone to the ‘No’ camp. The key question,
however, is whether, with the referendum adopting more of a ‘second-order’
character, the centre–right government parties would have been able to tighten
their grip on their own followers. Thus one may doubt whether opposition
parties did the government a service by joining its side. Unfortunately, we lack
empirical evidence for contrasting cases in which the main opposition party
did adopt a competitive stance.
Obviously, other factors too may influence the degree to which parties
can hold sway over voters’ choices in referendums. In particular, one may
want to examine how party–voter relations are affected as EU referendums
become more frequent. There are strong indications that party influence
decreases when the knowledge and saliency of EU issues increase (Ray,
2003a). At the same time, Steenbergen et al. (in this issue) suggest that referendums
are conducive to party–voter congruence, not so much because they
increase the impact of parties on voters but rather because they ‘force party
elites to pay closer attention to their supporters’. To test these theses it would
have been particularly interesting to analyse the referendums in Denmark
and Ireland, where parties and voters have much more experience with EU
referendums than do the countries analysed here (see Svensson, 2002; Garry
et al., 2005). Such analyses would become of particular value if the tendency
to employ referendums in the ratification process persists and if indeed there
are further Treaty revisions in the future.
Notes
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Workshop on ‘Debating the
European Constitution’, chaired by Renaud Dehousse, at the 2005 epsNet Plenary
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conference, 17–18 June 2005 in Paris and at the Conference on ‘Euroskepticism –
Causes and Consequences’ organized by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, 1–2
July 2005 in Amsterdam. I am grateful for the stimulating comments received at
both these occasions.
1 One may also want to consider the reverse effect of (anticipated) voting
preferences on party positioning. Indeed, the two effects do not necessarily
exclude each other (Steenbergen et al., in this issue). However, given the focus
on party stances in this paper and the fact that chronologically these are
disclosed prior to the casting of the votes, here only the impact of party
stances on voting behaviour is considered.
2 Kriesi (in this issue) reviews the possible determinants of party factionalization
in the context of recent national election campaigns in six West
European countries, confirming the importance of tensions between party
role and EU stance for party factionalization. However, his findings suggest
that this tension is ‘more dangerous for Eurosceptics joining the government
than for pro-European oppositions colluding with the government’.
Although I have no reason to challenge these findings as such, two qualifications
are in order. First, national election campaigns, in which the EU issue
generally plays a rather secondary role, constitute a rather different context
from EU referendum campaigns. Secondly, in contrast to the anti-European
parties in government – of which there have been very few so far (particularly
in Western Europe) and about which I would hesitate to generalize –
pro-integration opposition parties are a much more general phenomenon
with great actual relevance, as is also shown by the analysis below.
3 The analysis is limited to those parties that secured at least 4% of the popular
vote in the most recent elections for the national parliament (as at June 2005).
This implies that all government parties are included and also the main opposition
parties, but only the most prominent of the protest parties are included.
An additional consequence is that parties only (or mostly) active in elections
to the European Parliament (Denmark) have been excluded. In total we are
looking at 20 government parties and 37 opposition parties in the 10
countries, representing more than 90% of the total number of votes cast in
the most recent elections for the national parliaments.
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About the author
Ben Crum is a lecturer in political science, Department of Political
Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Fax: + 31 20 598 6820
E-mail: BJJ.Crum@fsw.vu.nl
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