Changing the game?National referendums and the politicization of Europe

Swen Hutter

Workshop ‘How national referendums are challenging the EU’,EUI, January 26-27, 2017

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1 Introduction

Scholars and politicians expect that the opening-up of the direct-democratic arena boosts the politicization of Europe and constrains the strategic capacity of (mainstream) party elites to control the process

strong claims but …

Very few comparative studies of public debates aroundnational referendums on European integration

Existing comparative research is rather outcome-oriented and focused on why governments choose (or avoid) to hold a referendum

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1 Research questions of my study

• How do national referendums influence the quantity and quality of politicization in public debates?

• Main conclusions:Referendums do significantly increase the level of politicization and theyare also related to changes in the ‘quality’ of political conflict!

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2 Conceptualizing politicization

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3 Expectations

• The institutional setting affects the discursive opportunities and constrainsfaced by the different actors involved in public contestation

• Referendums …

a) direct public attention on EU issues,

b) empower challengers from within and outside of the party system &

c) lead to more intensive framing contests over a constrained set of issues(shift to identity politics)

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Level of politicizationH1: Referendums on European integration are associated with

higher levels of politicization in public debates salience, polarization, and actor expansion

ChallengersH2: Referendums on European integration are associated with an

increasing visibility of challengers in public debates civil society, parties, radical parties, intra-party dissent

Issue competitionH3 Referendums on European integration are associated with a

change in the logic of EU issue competition in public debates issue contraction, framing contestation, cultural logic

4 Research design

• Comparative study of 87 domestic debates

• on 18 integration steps (membership, treaty reforms, single issue)

• ranging from First enlargement to Brexit

• in 6 West European countries (France, Germany, Britain, Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland)

• Including 12 debates with ratification by national referendum

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4 Method and data

• Public debate as reported in the media

• Relational content analysis of newspaper articles

• One quality newspaper per country

• Coding unit: actor-relation-object (actor or issue)

• All articles on the topic published around ‘critical dates’ during the integration step (initiation, beginning of negotiations, signing of agreement, national ratification)

• N (domestic subjects): around 20,700 statements and 11,400 frames

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4 Two types of comparisons

Across-debates: Comparing debates on integration steps with or without referendums (cross-national or within-country variations)

Within-debates: Comparing developments over time (especially drafting of treaty and national ratification in referendum)

e.g., Statham & Trenz (2013), Hurrelmann et al. (2013) Grande & Hutter (2016), Hoeglinger (2016)

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5 Empirical results

The top-10 debates in terms of the level of politicization (index) (N=87)

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1 UK: Brexit 2.22 FR: Maastricht 1.93 FR: First enlargement 1.54 AT: Membership 1.45 CH: EEA membership 1.36 AT: EEA membership 0.97 CH: Bilateral Treaties II 0.98 UK: Membership 0.89 AT: Lisbon 0.810 Sweden: Membership 0.7

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Across debates: levels

Index Salience Actor expansion Polarization0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

without referendum with referendum

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Across debates: challengers

Civil society Parties Radical parties Intra-party dissent0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

without referendum with referendum

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Across debates: issue competition

Issue diversity Frame diversity0

0.5

1

1.5

2

without referendum with referendum

Cultural frames0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

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“Discursive constraints” for mainstream partieswithin-campaign comparison = rel. differences of pre- and referendum phases

The size of the dashed circles indicates the relative increase in the salience of the debate

6 Conclusions

National referendums boost the politicization of Europe

Elites face more discursive constraints as they are not the only voices beingpublicly heard on EU issues and as the type of issue competition changes

However, we also observe striking variations across referendum campaigns In comparative terms, the final weeks of the campaign seem less ‘constraining’ if

referendums are embedded in a sequence of votes and/or a relatively high level of politicization in the national electoral arena

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Thank you!

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Level of politicizationSalience: Average number of coded articles per selected dayPolarization: Index of polarization (range 0 to 1)Actor expansion: Share of non-governmental actorsChallengersParties: Share of non-governmental party actorsRadical parties: Share of non-governmental radical left and right party actorsIntra-party dissent: Weighted standard deviation of party positionsCivil society: Share of civil society actors (incl. NGOs, SMOs, experts)Issue competitionIssue diversity: Shannon’s H entropy score (six issue categories)Frame diversity: Shannon’s H entropy score (ten frame categories)Cultural framing: Share of cultural frames

Indicators

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Outcome Expected relation

Pre-referendum

Referendum How many cases fulfill

expectations?

Domestication + Index + Salience +Polarization +Actor expansion +

Within debates (N=12)

Outcome Expected relation

Pre-referendum

Referendum How many cases fulfill

expectations?

Domestication + 0.50 0.76 10 Index + 0.50 3.33 12 Salience + 0.72 3.40 12Polarization + 0.18 0.26 6Actor expansion + 0.52 0.73 10

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Outcome Expected relation

Pre-referendum

Referendum How many cases fulfill

expectations?

Political parties + 0.38 0.45 8Radical parties + 0.10 0.15 10Civil society + 0.13 0.28 11Intra-party dissent + 0.33 0.49 9

Issue diversity – 1.13 0.74 10Frame diversity + 1.77 1.70 5Cultural frames + 0.36 0.33 4

Within debates