Referendum Campaign Research Articles

Symbiosis or Dissonance? – about the Dilemmas of Combining Election with Referendum

Article 90 of the Act on the Nationwide Referendum, last amended on July 7, 2023, allows for nationwide elections and a referendum to be held on one day. However, the regulation contained in Art. 90 of the mentioned Referendum Act is incomplete, constitutionally questionable, and therefore highly imperfect. As practice has shown, the situation of simultaneous holding of elections and a referendum not only poses significant organizational challenges for the electoral administration, but above all does not guarantee compliance with the basic constitutional principles and standards of electoral law, for example it reduces the level of guarantee of the implementation of the electoral right (which includes the element of the need to take into account the vote of every voter), the principle of secrecy of voting, or transparency of financing of the election campaign and the separation of the election campaign from the referendum campaign. In this article the author tries to answer the question of what changes to Art. 90 of the Referendum Act should be introduced to ensure compliance of simultaneous votes ordered on its basis with the standards of free and fair elections.

Introducing the RefCFRI: A continuous indicator comparing referendum campaign finance regulation in 143 countries

As referendums become an increasingly defining feature of global democratic practice, a normative debate centres around the importance of campaign finance regulations in ensuring fair and democratic procedures that avoid biasing their outcome. Understanding how different countries approach this issue can shed light on the impact of varied regulatory approaches, as well as whether they reach their intended policy goals. Scholarly work has therefore attempted to capture this cross-national variation in comparative measures, and this study attempts to build on these efforts by expanding their scope and depth to provide a global, inclusive and methodologically robust comparative measure of referendum political finance regimes. As such, it focuses on the design and compilation of the Referendum Campaign Finance Regulation Index (RefCFRI). We depart from a novel dataset detailing the presence/absence of 39 referendum campaign finance regulations in 143 countries as of April 2024. Using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), we deliver empirical evidence for the existence of a singular dimension along which countries can be compared, namely the ‘level of regulation’. This dimension forms the RefCFRI, a continuous indicator that, together with our dataset, has the potential to contribute to political finance and referendum studies, as well as informed decision-making by policy-makers.

The Role of Eurosceptic Tabloids in Building Awareness of the British People Ahead of the Referendum on UK Membership in the European Union in 2016

The research aimed to explain the role of the leading British tabloids in the 2016 referendum campaign and to show that tabloid populism practised by selected press titles, using several methods and tools, skilfully influenced the formation of public opinion. The study, which was essentially based on content analysis, examined the three most opinion-forming tabloid daily newspapers: “The Sun”, “The Daily Express”, and “The Daily Mail”, which, according to the observers, were and remain populist newspapers. The article is only a contribution to undertaking broader research, the subject of which should be the instrumental role of the British press in shaping attitudes and social opinions hostile to the European Union during Great Britain’s membership in this organization.

Poland in the Process of European Integration: Conditions and Course of the Campaign before the Accession Referendum

The aim of this article is to analyze the main entities and course of the campaign before the accession referendum in Poland. The subjects of the analysis were legal acts, documents (including programs of political parties and various public entities and speeches of leaders), statistical data, and scientific studies. The research process involved in-depth analysis of documents and critical content analysis. The article was divided into several parts relating to Polish society’s attitude towards EU accession; the Polish political scene after the parliamentary elections in 2001; assumptions of the information campaign; the legal basis of the referendum campaign; referendum campaigns conducted by the president, government, Democratic Left Alliance, Labor Union, Civic Platform RP, Law and Justice, Citizens’ Initiatives and Movements, League of Polish Families, Self-Defence RP, and Polish People’s Party.

Scaring for the greater good? Discursive construction of fear appeals in the brexit referendum campaign

Scaring for the greater good? Discursive construction of fear appeals in the brexit referendum campaign

Direct democracy and party behaviour in the Republic of Ireland: a campaign finance perspective

ABSTRACT Studies on the Irish referendum experience have generally accepted that political parties play a fundamental role in the direct democratic process. While this is rarely problematised, parties often campaign in referendums in order to steer them towards outcomes that are strategically beneficial. Contemporary research on Irish referendums has delved into how parties shape their campaigns to achieve these goals, but a more preliminary question is still to be addressed: to what extent do parties participate in referendum campaigns? This paper attempts to do so by examining campaign expenditure, which offers a concrete quantitative indicator for party engagement vis-à-vis referendums. Departing from theory on party behaviour and referendum instrumentalization, the article takes into account Irish regulations on campaign finance before offering a descriptive and explorative comparison of the expenditure of Irish political parties in recent referendum campaigns. Several patterns within the data are then discussed in light of potential influential factors identified in previous scholarly work. Results suggest that a referendum’s topic and its salience in the public sphere, as well as a party’s financial resources and government status, could explain party behaviour in Irish referendum campaigns, and a set of congruent hypotheses for future research are formulated in the conclusion.

International reputation and the Voice to Parliament referendum

ABSTRACT During the Voice to Parliament referendum campaign, ‘yes' advocates argued that a failed referendum would harm Australia's international reputation. To what extent did this occur? This article examines how the Voice to Parliament spoke to Australia's international reputation and why it matters for foreign policy. It maps the global producers of reputation narratives and theorises about which, when and why specific audiences might matter for how reputation affects foreign policy. Using a unique combination of materials collected from Meltwater and Global NewsBank databases, it tracks how the Voice to Parliament campaign and its results were interpreted by various international audiences, with a specific focus on global media. The implications for foreign policy are likely to be mixed while the result may be weaponised by other states and limit Australia's ability to make credible moral claims in international fora, geopolitical considerations are likely to reduce its overall effect on Australia’s international agenda.

Information and campaign effects in the 2023 Australian Voice referendum

ABSTRACT Referendums differ from general elections in the choices that are offered to voters and in the cues that are available to them to reach a decision. This difference makes the quantity and quality of the information that is available during a referendum campaign crucial to the outcome. This paper uses a unique panel survey to examine the role of the campaign in shaping the outcome of the October 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. We find that the political cues offered to voters – reflected most prominently in voters’ views about the major party leaders – were the most important campaign effects shaping the result. Interpersonal communication also mattered, but government-supplied information and mass media exposure had no effect. The findings highlight the central role that a campaign driven by elites plays in shaping the outcome of a referendum.

Travel for women rights: social movements and the construction of travel as activism in social media

ABSTRACT Globalized social movements often require travel, but travel as a symbolic form of transnational activism has only been examined in certain instances. This paper employs the notion of political travel and, through a qualitative content analysis of social media posts during the 2018 pro-choice Irish referendum campaign, it shows how travel can be approached as a form of activism and resistance from a critical feminist angle in the context of a global campaign mediated by social media. Inspired by assemblage theory [De Landa, M. (2016). Assemblage theory. Edinburgh University Press.], our findings show how different elements; people, spaces, objects are assembled to construct the framing and narrative of a social movement that fights for women rights. The individual accounts of travel experiences in social media contributed to the overall ‘aestheticization’ of the social movement. Also, the study offered insights into the meanings that, predominantly female, travellers, assign to their political travel, which are in turn shaped by personal and historical concerns.

Transforming anger into resilience: The Zagreb Pride LGBTIQ NGO and stigmatized youth in Croatia

After an intensive marriage referendum campaign in 2013, organized by the ‘In the Name of Family’ organisation (Cro. U ime obitelji), the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman was included in the Croatian constitution. At the time of the campaign, the participants in this research were young people, most of whom were in elementary or secondary school. Considering most of them had not come out to their immediate social circle, they were particularly vulnerable because of the visibility that was imposed on them.This article will introduce the results of ethnographic research on the Zagreb Pride LGBTIQ non-governmental organisation, as part of which we conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with former and (at the time) current members of the organisation. We focused on three different issues: 1. How the marriage referendum campaign affected young LGBTQ individuals and their social engagement; 2. Why they saw their identity as an expression of political activism; 3. How they transformed their initial negative feelings into resilience and political activism.The results show that the marriage referendum campaign had a significant impact on young LGBTQ people, transforming their initial feelings of anger and fear into resilience. Considering the political and social context in Croatian society at the time, our participants noted that they thought about their coming out as a political act. Consequently, this inspired them to further mobilise and take part in political activism.

Business as usual like never before! Continuity, rupture and anxiety management in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign

Ontological security-seeking has traditionally been considered to rest upon the stability and continuity of core auto-biographical narratives and everyday routines. ‘Critical situations’ which fundamentally destabilise these foundations of ontological security have thus hitherto carried a negative valence. Constitutional referenda proposing a radical re-organisation of collective political identities and daily life, therefore, are intriguing. A source of severe consternation for some, for others, potential change is positive, even thrilling. This article investigates this puzzling contrast, drawing on Ontological Security Studies’ (OSS) recent recentring of Existentialist thought and debates exploring the heterogenous potential of anxiety, and utilising the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence and the strategies for anxiety management embedded in the pro-independence ‘Yes’ campaign. Through analysis of dominant discourses grounding the argument for independence, findings demonstrate the simultaneous deployment of contradictory anxiety management strategies: independence was framed as a pathway to escape the instability and uncertainty of the status quo; as a pathway to continuity; and as a chance to embrace anxiety, to relish the opportunity and excitement of change. This article thus contributes to the prevailing critique of OSS’ over-privileging of stability and continuity in ontological security-seeking, yet problematises ‘either/or’ approaches to understanding anxiety management in critical situations and beyond.

Ethnic politics and party realignment in African constitutional referendums: Understanding Kenya’s ‘industry of insults’

Abstract Kenya’s constitutional referendums in 2005 and 2010 stand out for their continuity with the national elections that followed both polls. During campaigns for and against the draft constitutions, politicians attempted to leverage their popularity amongst co-ethnics to signal their viability as coalition partners or ‘formateurs’ in subsequent general elections: rather than nuanced debates on constitutional issues, the campaigns became personal contests that one observer dubbed an ‘industry of insults’. A decade later, this process was repeated as the country’s political class considered further revisions to the constitution. Kenya’s referendum campaigns thus reflect a layer of strategic behaviour that has not been recognized in much of the contemporary literature on democratization and constitutional change in Africa. While the substance of the country’s constitution matters to Kenyan elites, referendum campaigns have added value to leaders independently of the outcomes of the polls themselves. The prominence of ethnicity as an organizing feature in Kenyan politics combined with high levels of party volatility produces an environment in which referendum campaigns serve as opportunities for Kenyan politicians to renegotiate political coalitions and realign party politics in between election cycles. In this way, the country’s referendum politics are a distinct byproduct of its historical and political circumstances.

Être libre et sans roi ? Nationalisme et antimonarchisme au Québec et en Écosse

Independence, as a political quest for nationhood, does not sit well with the existence of a monarch in whom such sovereignty resides. The Scottish reality, however, is more nuanced in this respect. This article analyses anti-monarchist arguments in the Quebec (1980 and 1995) and Scottish (2014) referendum campaigns, through the prism of the functions associated with the monarchy as a symbol of unity, as the embodiment of a national history, as the guardian of liberal democracy and a certain notion of equality, of a moral and religious order redefined as a collective ethos to better suit the course of modernity. The analysis shows every function of the monarchy is targeted by nationalists. This is true of its symbolic dimension, seen as a mere accessory, but also of its position in the institutional architecture, where its role as guardian of social unity in the face of the division inherent in democracy is turned against it. It is then described as fundamentally inegalitarian and responsible for the injustices perpetrated against Francophones in Canada. However, the monarchy is treated very differently in the two territories, ranging from indifference and disdain in Quebec to an intimate relationship that is difficult to question in Scotland.

Être libre et sans roi ? Nationalisme et antimonarchisme au Québec et en Écosse

Independence, as a political quest for nationhood, does not sit well with the existence of a monarch in whom such sovereignty resides. The Scottish reality, however, is more nuanced in this respect. This article analyses anti-monarchist arguments in the Quebec (1980 and 1995) and Scottish (2014) referendum campaigns, through the prism of the functions associated with the monarchy as a symbol of unity, as the embodiment of a national history, as the guardian of liberal democracy and a certain notion of equality, of a moral and religious order redefined as a collective ethos to better suit the course of modernity. The analysis shows every function of the monarchy is targeted by nationalists. This is true of its symbolic dimension, seen as a mere accessory, but also of its position in the institutional architecture, where its role as guardian of social unity in the face of the division inherent in democracy is turned against it. It is then described as fundamentally inegalitarian and responsible for the injustices perpetrated against Francophones in Canada. However, the monarchy is treated very differently in the two territories, ranging from indifference and disdain in Quebec to an intimate relationship that is difficult to question in Scotland.

Brexit as a constitutive force in the Commonwealth: Constitutional identities and the withering Sovereign

Britain’s accession in 1973 to what is now the European Union marked a decisive turn in the British Commonwealth of Nations. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the status and value of the Commonwealth in global affairs was firmly reduced to the fostering of Britain’s soft power: common democratic values, championing civil society, and maintaining historic ties – the carefully preserved ruins of the British Empire. Yet, in 2016 the Commonwealth took on added significance during the European Union referendum campaign. Under the banner of “Global Britain”, the prospect of bringing a formal end to Britain’s membership of the European Union became much more certain after the Brexit wing of the Tory party won a large majority in the general election on December 12, 2019. For some Brexiteers, the Commonwealth is an important plank in Britain’s reassertion of its place in the world through trade and selective migration. To the extent that Brexit instantiates a crisis of constitutional identities in Europe, this is but a more recent episode in the narrative of Europe and her Other, a Europe to which Britain took refuge to reconstitute her relationship with her former colonies, which now make up the bulk of the Commonwealth. This essay centres the intellectual synergies of James Bryce, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, and Shridath Ramphal to assess the constitutive force of Brexit in the Commonwealth. It is argued that, as a matter of constitutional identity, Britain’s anxiety about the constitutional order of the European Union has its current constitutive ground in the British Empire-turned-Commonwealth. Further, as precipitated by radical decolonial republicanism, this persistent constitutive force defines the British Crown’s imaginary exercise of sovereign power in the Commonwealth through a peculiar kind of presence, one that is performed through strategic absence.

Irish English and national identity in the linguistic landscape of Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum

Abstract Ireland’s 2018 referendum on the Eighth Amendment, in which a majority of the Irish electorate voted to repeal the state’s quasi-total ban on abortion, saw important public discussions regarding Irish national identity in the twenty-first century. From a linguistic perspective, this begs the question of what role language played in the construction of national identity during the referendum campaign. This paper will examine Irish English features in the referendum campaign’s linguistic landscape and the extent to which they were used to index national identity. While there has been a significant amount of research on language ideologies connected to Irish, there has been little attention paid to Irish English and its relationship with national identity in the linguistic landscape literature. Drawing on a dataset of 1680 LL items collected from the 2018 referendum campaign (including campaign posters, placards, banners and stickers), this paper examines signs containing distinctive Irish English features, employing a qualitative, multimodal approach to the indexing of national identity. Specifically, it asks whether and under what conditions it is possible to claim that the use of Irish English features can be taken to index national identity.

Business power, right-wing populism, and noisy politics: lessons from Brexit and Swiss referendums

This article contributes to debates on business power, noisy politics, and right-wing populism. The populist right weakens strategies of quiet politics, which many suggest has led to a steep decline of business power. I challenge this view and argue that a combination of innovative strategies and ample financial resources allow business associations to exercise power in this environment. Drawing on new empirical evidence, the article makes three central contributions. First, I suggest that the failure of Remain business advocacy in the 2016 Brexit referendum resulted from the constraints of administrative legislation (the PPERA), weaknesses in campaigning strategies, and the CBI leadership’s decision to not register as a campaign organization. Second, while my regression analysis provides some support for Culpepper’s quiet politics argument, the Swiss business federation Economiesuisse has won 90% of the referendum campaigns it has led, including many referendums with high issue salience against right-wing populists. Third, Economiesuisse shows that business strategies of ‘loud voice’ can be successful. With money and innovative public-facing campaigning strategies, business organizations can win in noisy environments and against right-wing populists.

Who supports liberal policies? A tale of two referendums in Italy

We leverage a unique dataset at the municipality level in Italy to examine the factors that drive support for two separate referendum campaigns — one on the decriminalization of cannabis cultivation and the other on physician-assisted suicide. Using machine learning techniques, we identify key predictors of support for both referendums, including income, population density, and political leaning of the municipality. Our analysis also highlights that local economic conditions, such as the number of firms, and educational attainment, along with exposure to organized crime, are critical factors driving mobilization in favor of the cannabis referendum. In contrast, support for legalizing assisted suicide is more likely to be explained by religiosity.

No, It Is Not All About Selective Exposure: Information Selection Strategies in Referendums

This article presents an in-depth understanding of information selection strategies in referendums. It builds on the theories of motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance, information utility, and social identity to examine selective exposure in the context of referendums, and highlights how individuals select information, opting for either congruent and partisan (selective choice) or balanced and discrepant (enlightened choice) sources of information. Empirically, our study relies on two cross-sectional online surveys (N = 2,245; N = 735) that took place in a real referendum campaign on an Energy Act in Switzerland. We exposed respondents to different information contexts and measured whether they chose selectively or in an enlightened way. We conclude that individuals choose balanced or discrepant sources of information more frequently than the literature on selective exposure suggests. Moreover, attitude strength plays a twofold role: In a pre-campaign context, attitude strength motivates individuals’ enlightened choice; mid-campaign, however, it strengthens voters’ selective choice.

Analyzing image-based political propaganda in referendum campaigns: from elements to strategies

Due to the increasing prominence of social network services, political communication has experienced a paradigm shift. To communicate with internet users, politicians, candidates, and political organizations create fan pages. Initially, they provide text-only material on their pages; later, to increase engagement, they include photos, images, and videos. This paper investigates image-based political images in Taiwan for the first time during a nationwide referendum. Unlike an election, a referendum is a policy-based vote. We evaluate over 2000 Facebook images shared by the two most prominent political parties in order to comprehend the aspects of images and the tactics of political organizations. In addition, we examine the textual content, objects, and colors of the collected data. We find that the characteristics of propaganda materials vary between political groups. Nonetheless, the color strategies employed by both sides are equivalent, with each side utilizing its own representative colors for consolidation and the opponent’s colors for attacking.