Attitudes toward Europe and referendum votes: A response to Siune and Svensson

Abstract

In their article in Electoral Studies (Volume 12 Number 2) of June 1993, Karen Siune and Palle Svensson argue that, during the run-up to the Danish referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in May 1992, the development of opinion leading to the ultimate rejection of the treaty was due to the Danish people’s reluctance to follow the advice of their usual party ‘if this advice is contrary to their own point of view’ (1993, p. 106). This is an important finding, for it suggests that the public is more knowledgeable, attentive, and informed than is generally assumed, even about issues that are outside what is generally considered to be their sphere of competence. Although the suggestion is in line with recent fmdings that the ‘minimalist’ view of the quality of public opinion was overdrawn (Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock, 1991) and that public opinion can change in quite rational ways as circumstances change (e.g. Carmines and Stimson, 1989; Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992; Wlezien and Goggin, 1993), it takes us beyond what has so far been established. However, before we conclude that a new level of rationality was shown by the Danish public in 1992, we should consider the possibility of a more prosaic explanation. In domains of low salience, such as foreign policy, we might expect opinions to be coupled to those in domains of high salience, such as governments’ handling of the economy. Indeed, this expectation was spelled out in regard to European attitudes by Ronald Inglehart as long ago as 1971 when he suggested that opinions about Europe would be easily overlaid by short-term national considerations (Inglehart, 1971). Perhaps, after all, the Maastricht referendum in Denmark was really a referendum on the performance of the national government. Table 1 shows the relationship between government approval and support for the Maastricht treaty in all three countries in which referendums were held in 1992, * We are grateful to Roland Cayrol, Andrew Appleton, and Torben Worre for providing us with French and Danish opinion poll data.