Awakening the sleeping giant? The displacement of the partisan cleavage and change in government-opposition dynamics in EU referendums

Abstract

This article considers party system effects and change in government-opposition dynamics in EU referendums. Relying on the analysis of party stances, party-voter alignments and campaign dynamics in 12 EU referendums in France, Ireland, Great-Britain and Spain, it shows that EU referendums tend to interfere with traditional party system dynamics in majoritarian democracies. By clearly manifesting a pro-European convergence between incumbent and mainstream opposition parties, they constitute a fertile ground to awake the ‘sleeping giant’ under certain conditions. EU referendums favor the temporary displacement of the partisan cleavage, create recurrent tensions for mainstream opposition parties and consistently reinforce the role played by protest parties. The recurrent intra-party factionalism or the limited mobilizations of pro-European opposition parties in referendum campaigns are thus not so linked with their ideologies or with endogenous factors, but are rather largely induced by their specific party system ‘situations’.