Accounting for internal variation in nationalist mobilization: unofficial referendums for...

Accounting for internal variation innationalist mobilization: unofficialreferendums for independence in

Catalonia (2009–11)

JORDI MUÑOZ* and MARC GUINJOAN**

*Departament de Ciència Política i Dret Públic,Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

**Departament de Ciències Polítiques i Socials,Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT. Between September 2009 and April 2011, around one-half of theCatalan municipalities held unofficial referendums on independence from Spain, inwhich more than 800,000 citizens took part. However, the participation rates wereunevenly distributed across Catalonia. In this paper, using an original data set, we aimto respond to two relevant questions: first, why in some municipalities the referendumtook place and in others it did not occur. Second, why did the referendum achieve highrates of turnout in some localities and much lower participation in others. We find thatthe resources available to the movement, the intensity of the mobilization efforts, theparticipatory tradition of the municipalities and the size of the nationalist ‘sentimentpool’ in each locality explain to a great extent the internal variation in nationalistmobilization in Catalonia.

KEYWORDS: Catalonia, mobilization, nationalism, participation, referendums,secession

Introduction

Claims for holding a referendum on independence in Catalonia go back intime. In recent years, demands for a legal and binding plebiscite on secessionin this autonomous community within Spain have increased, but the SpanishConstitution does not leave room for secessionist groups in Spain, as it grantslegal authority to organize referendums exclusively to the Central government.The Spanish Constitutional Court restated this principle in 2008 when itdeclared illegal the proposition made by the Basque regional government tohold a referendum in this autonomous community.

It is in this context of regional governments being completely disqualifiedfrom organizing a referendum when the possibility of arranging an unofficial,nonbinding plebiscite at the local level was conceived. In June 2009, the localconsistory of Arenys de Munt, an 8,000 person town near Barcelona, passed a

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NATIONS ANDNATIONALISM

Nations and Nationalism 19 (1), 2013, 44–67.DOI: 10.1111/nana.12006

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motion in favor of holding a referendum on independence. Three months later,on September 13, 2009, a nonofficial referendum organized mainly from thecivil society was held in this municipality, which asked citizens whether theyagreed that the Catalan nation should become an independent, democratic andsocial state within the European Union. Within a few months, what was initiallythought to be a local phenomenon became one of the main public expressions ofa social movement in favor of the ‘right to decide’, or self-determination inCatalonia.

In the Arenys de Munt referendum, more than forty-one per cent of thepopulation went to the polls and ninety-six per cent of those that voted favoredsecession. Because of the intense media attention on the Arenys de Munt vote,the phenomenon of unofficial referendums quickly started to snowball. OnDecember 13, 2009, only two months later, similar plebiscites were organizedin 167 municipalities throughout Catalonia, and in the months that followed,several waves of referendums were held. Nineteen months later 58.3 per cent ofthe municipalities, representing 77.5 per cent of the population, had heldunofficial referendums. The overall turnout was 18.1 per cent, and turnout inthe average municipality reached 32.5 per cent, although it was unevenlydistributed, with results ranging from a minimum five per cent of the popula-tion up to more than ninety per cent in some localities.

This uneven distribution of the occurrence and participation in the refer-endums poses two evident puzzles that are interrelated but nonetheless dis-tinct: What are the factors, if any, that determine the probability of a givenmunicipality to hold a referendum? Second, why did levels of participationdiffer between municipalities? In other words: How can we explain the internalvariation in nationalist mobilization within Catalonia?

These are the research questions we address in this article. They have broadimplications for our understanding of the internal variation in Catalannationalism, as well as for explaining the conditions for successful nationalistmobilization.

Relevance of the case

Why is the case of popular referendums in Catalonia an interesting case study?Why should we care about the factors that explain the variation in theiroccurrence and success across Catalonia? Our response is three-fold. First, weargue that the Catalan case allows us to further understand an often over-looked aspect of nationalist mobilization: The internal variation within theterritories in which the movement takes place. Second, the richness and reli-ability in the available data allows us to overcome some of the traditionalproblems of the literature on collective action, and the Protest Event Analysisin particular, to explain patterns of spatial distribution of mobilization.Finally, we contend that this case is relevant because it took place at a criticaljuncture in the evolution of Catalonian nationalism, which has increasingly

Unofficial referendums for independence 45


turned toward a pro-independence stance (Lluch 2009). This evolution has thepotential to become a turning point in a movement that is commonly regardedas moderate and not secessionist.

Intragroup variation in nationalist movements

Why were popular referendums not held across all of the municipalities inCatalonia? And why were there different levels of participation across munici-palities? Research addressing nationalism across countries or ethnic groupsabounds (Bates 1983; Brubaker 1996; Chinn and Kaiser 1996; Horowitz 1985;Laitin 1998; Rothschild 1981). This literature has most times sought to findvariation at the level of the whole ethnic group, often lying on the assumption– at least implicitly – that preferences are identical for all the members of thegroup or that they are randomly distributed (see Gorenburg 2000 for thiscritique of the literature). The consequences of assuming that preferences donot vary within the groups are the impossibility of ‘recognizing that, even in asociety where ethnicity has become a politically meaningful category, issuescan be framed in such a way that they generate heterogeneous preferenceswithin groups, common preferences across ethnic groups, and a constituencyof political moderates backing certain issues’ (Giuliano 2000: 299–300).

According to Lankina (2006), the origin of this assumption of homogeneitywithin ethnic groups or nationalist movements comes from the predominantunderstanding of the concept of the ‘nation’ as a ‘modern political interestgroup whose members share a desire to control their common destiny’ (Chinnand Kaiser 1996: 18). Therefore, the study of nationalist movements tradition-ally focuses attention on identifying the factors that account for differencesacross ethnic groups, as long as members from the same ethnic group share acommon destiny from which variation is not expected to be observed. Someauthors have denied the static character of these studies by introducing vari-ation in nationalist mobilization over time (see, among others, Bunce 2006;McGarry and O’Leary 2002). The argument is summarized by Bunce (2006: 3):‘the same minority in time one can accept the status quo and in time twopursue either moderate change or even secession from the state’.

But some recent literature has argued that we are mistaken in understandingcollectivities, and among them ethnic groups and nationalist movements, assubjects with ‘clearly defined interests as a coherent group, and also that theseinterests or grievances will lead to organized action’ (Lankina 2006: 7). Hetero-geneous opinions and strategies not only arise between groups of peopleconsidering themselves distinct from one another, but also within singulargroups (Gorenburg 2000; Tilly 2005: 7–8). As Giuliano (2000: 303) summarizes:

[I]ntragroup heterogeneous preferences may form among ethnic communities becausepreexisting demographic, religious, or other social cleavages can either lay a ground-work for different intragroup preferences [. . .].

In line with this later set of arguments in favor of the existence of a plurality ofpreferences within ethnic groups or nationalist movements, we propose a

46 Jordi Muñoz and Marc Guinjoan


detailed analysis of the Catalan case that contributes to this recent andgrowing body of literature that favors the existence of a plurality of prefer-ences within ethnic groups or ‘stateless nations’.

Methodological relevance: protest event analysis, beyond media bias

Although the phenomenon of popular referendums on the question of inde-pendence had a Catalonia-wide reach, the organization of the referendumswas primarily a local event in each municipality where they took place. We donot imply that the individual referendums were completely independent orisolated events, and we will further discuss and model contamination anddiffusion effects, but our observations are local. Therefore, we model (a) theoccurrence, and (b) the success – in terms of participation – of the popularreferendums in each municipality. By using this modeling strategy, we areable to integrate our study with protest event analysis, one of the main toolsused by the literature on social movements to systematically analyze protestpolitics. By means of collecting and coding information on protest events,researchers have been able to build data sets in order to test and, in some cases,invalidate, theoretical propositions on the causes and consequences of protest(Fillieule and Jiménez 2003; Koopmans 2004). In this respect, protest eventanalysis has emerged as one of the most relevant methodological advances ofprotest politics literature. However, these studies have all been based on news-paper reports and therefore subject to a relevant and pervasive methodologicalchallenge, which is by no means easy to overcome, as newspaper reports raiseserious concerns about potential sampling biases. Our study does not rely onsecondary reporting of protest events, but on actual participation-rate data,which was publicly collected by organizers with a standardized protocol and,often, the presence of external observers. Usually, the organizers of protestevents have an incentive to overreport participation, but in this case theorganizers’ goal was to imitate the terms and procedures used in officialreferendums. Therefore, it was in the organizers’ interest to collect and providereliable data on participation in the referendums. Not even critics of thesecessionist movement questioned the reliability of the data, even as theytended to dismiss the turnout levels as insignificant.

The unique feature of primary data in our case puts us in a privilegedposition to systematically analyze the occurrence and success of these particu-lar protest events.1 Our analysis will in turn shed light on the patternsof territorial spread and organizational capacity of the Catalan pro-independence movement as well as more generally on the patterns of territorialdistribution of collective action in Catalonia.

Political relevance: Catalan nationalism and the spread of secessionism

Finally, this case is relevant because it exists within a context of deep trans-formation of Catalan nationalism. Even if Catalan nationalism has been all



but a homogenous movement – conservative and leftist, moderate and radicalversions of it have alternatively been hegemonic in different periods (Balcells1996) – the most common portrayal of it describes the movement as moderateand ‘pactist’ (Conversi 2000; Hargreaves 2000; Keating et al. 2003), oftencontrasted with an allegedly more radical and secessionist Basque nationalism.

Indeed, the moderate nationalist party Convergència i Unió (CiU), whichheld power from 1980 to 2003, did not make of the issue of secession a matterof debate (Keating 1997). The strategy of mainstream Catalan nationalismsince the restoration of democracy in 1978 had been to ask for more powerwithin the Spanish state rather than turning toward secession.

But at the turn of the twenty-first century, support for independence withinCatalonia began to increase. Survey data from the past decade evidences aclear trend toward increasing support within Catalonia for secession fromSpain. Figure 1 shows the series of surveys conducted by the Catalan govern-ment official survey institute (Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió) between 2006 and2011: In six years, the share of respondents who support an independent statehas more than doubled, from 13.9 per cent in 2006 to 28.2 per cent in 2011.2

Parallel to the growing support for secession, the pro-independencemovement also took on an increasing public presence, and led severalmass demonstrations in Barcelona. Preexisting groups experienced expandedmembership and many (often ephemeral) organizations emerged during this

Figure 1 Preferred constitutional arrangement of Catalonia, 2006–2010.



period. The new movement was forged under the umbrella of the newlyadopted slogan of the ‘right to decide’, which came up with a more inclusiveand democratic discourse, in contraposition to the traditional more culturallybased secessionism.

Although establishing the causes behind the spread of Catalan secessionismis outside the scope of this article, moments of constitutional reform can fuelchanges within nationalist movements (Lluch 2009), and the process ofreforming the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (the Catalonia basic law), thatlasted from 2003 to 2010 (Keating and Wilson 2009; Orte and Wilson 2009) isindeed widely regarded as providing a favorable context for a public discussionof Catalonia’s relationship to Spain and for the Catalan secessionist move-ment to gain public support.

In 2003, the moderate, center-right nationalist coalition CiU, which hadbeen in power since 1980, lost the Catalan government to a leftist coalition ofthree parties, ranging from federalist Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC,the Catalan branch of the statewide Socialist Party) to the overtly pro-independence Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). The coalition wasformed upon the promise of a new Statute of Autonomy that would substan-tially increase the Catalan government’s powers and autonomy. A few monthslater, the conservative Popular Party (PP) lost the 2004 Spanish electionsin favor of the socialist PSOE, which had promised to approve inthe Spanish legislative chamber the same Statute of Autonomy passed by theCatalan Parliament (Martínez-Herrera and Miley 2010; Requejo 2010). Thenew Statute was eventually approved by the Catalan Parliament at the endof 2005. However, it was subject to harsh negotiations before the SpanishParliament, which culminated in the passage of a much more moderate versionthan the original Statute approved by the Catalan Parliament. In June2006, Catalonia held a referendum on the new Statute, and even though thesecessionist parties and organizations called for a negative vote, it waspassed with seventy-four per cent of affirmative votes (turnout below fiftyper cent).

The Spanish right-wing party (PP) also opposed the reform on the groundsthat it would grant excessive autonomy to the Catalan government, andimpugned it before the Spanish Constitutional Court in July 2006. The deci-sion to impugn the new law kept the issue of Catalan autonomy at the top ofthe political agenda, and the positions both at the secessionist and unitarianistends of the spectrum radicalized. The Constitutional Court did not release itsdecision, which eventually declared several articles of the Statute unconstitu-tional, until June 2010, when most of the popular referendums had alreadytaken place. However, in the meantime, the tension created by this judicialprocess clearly favored the pro-independence movement.

All in all, the openness of the system that enabled a Statute reform, theintensity of the counter-reform campaign led by the Spanish conservatives aswell as changes in the alignment of the elites associated to the reform process,contributed to a favorable structure of political opportunities from which the



Catalan pro-independence movement could benefit (Kriesi 2004; Tarrow 1994:84–7).

Descriptive analysis: a case of uneven mobilization

The increased level of support for pro-independence stance made up a suitablecontext for the emergence of the first popular referendum in Arenys de Muntand its subsequent spread throughout the rest of the territory. The proposal tohold a popular plebiscite in Arenys de Munt had been passed by the localconsistory in June 2009. At first the decision attracted the attention only of someCatalan media, but when the Spanish media brought it to light, public opinionwas stirred up by the event and several consequences followed. The Spanish viceprime minister launched threatening declarations to the organization; thepublic prosecutor lodged an appeal to the consistory’s decision and a tribunaleventually declared the collaboration of the local government with the plebisciteillegal; and last, but not least relevant, the minority fascist organization FalangeEspañola organized a demonstration in Arenys de Munt for the same day of thepopular referendum. All in all, on September 13, thousands of people in favorof secession from all over Catalonia gathered in Arenys de Munt, and forty-oneper cent of its citizens took part in the referendum.

The referendum in Arenys de Munt established both a climate and aninstitutional framework for the organization of new plebiscites in othermunicipalities. In the following months, many local consistories passedmotions in favor of a referendum in their township, while at the same time thatin numerous municipalities arose organizations from the civil society whoseunique goal was to organize a popular referendum. Even in certain munici-palities where the local consistory rejected the motion the civic society carriedon with the project and decided to organize as well a plebiscite in the township.A coordinating committee for all the forthcoming referendums was created,and December 13 was established as the date for the first wave of popularreferendums.

The task of each of the local platforms was to promote the referendum withinthe municipality. The rules for voting were very clear and they were shared by allthe municipalities: Every person who was at least 16 years old on the Referen-dum Day and who was registered in the township where the plebiscite was beingheld could vote by simply showing an official document where the place ofresidence was specified. Notably, in order to be able to vote, it was not necessaryto be a Spanish citizen but only to be a resident in the township where thereferendum was held. Therefore, both foreign residents and people between 16and 18 years old, who in official elections are not allowed to vote, were entitledto cast their ballot. This expansion of enfranchisement, which often ran counterthe interests of the organizers in terms of turnout figures, was intentionally putin place to illustrate the ‘radical democracy’ agenda adopted by the movement.Indeed, local platforms were constantly calling for participation in the



referendum instead of asking for positive or a negative vote on it. Debates wereorganized in several municipalities with supporters of both alternatives andpropaganda explicitly avoided the use of nationalist symbols.

All in all, the results from the first wave of referendums confirmed whathad happened in the first plebiscite in Arenys de Munt: Although the refer-endum was designed from a neutral point of view, those who went to thepolls were mainly secessionist citizens. In the following months, several ref-erendums took place all over Catalonia. Table 1 presents the results obtainedin each wave of referendums, the percentage of participation achieved, thepopulation enfranchised in the municipalities called into referendum, and thenumber of municipalities included in each wave. The municipalities that heldtheir referendum in isolation are under the ‘other’ category.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of referendums throughout Catalonia andthe participation obtained in each municipality in Catalonia. From the map, itcan be derived that neither the organization of popular referendums nor theregistered turnout are consistent across Catalonia. In the central area, highernumbers of referendums were organized and levels of participation also seemto be higher.

Our research focuses on the existence of variation in both the locationswhere the referendums were held and in the differing levels of participationachieved. Indeed, the distribution of turnout rates across municipalities nearlyconforms to a normal distribution, as shown by the histogram in Figure 3. Inwhat follows, we address the empirical analysis of this research, whose mainobjective is to answer the two questions we presented at the beginning: Whichmunicipalities held popular referendums? And what are the factors thatexplain the differing levels of participation?

Hypotheses

As we have already discussed, our case of study demonstrates a substantialamount of variation in the levels of secessionist mobilization within one givencase, which has up until now usually been treated as substantially homogene-ous. The variation, as shown, exists at two different levels: While we havemunicipalities in which the referendum did not take place, we also have a fairamount of variation in the turnout levels within those municipalities in whichthe referendum was, indeed, held.

Theoretically, one could argue that both the occurrence or not of a refer-endum, and the turnout levels achieved are expressions of the same underlyingvariable (i.e. the intensity of nationalist mobilization in a given municipality)but that would amount to treating the municipalities in which there was not areferendum as cases of zero participation, which seems highly unrealistic.Actually, we do not know what turnout levels would have been if thesemunicipalities had held a referendum, but presumably they would all havebeen different from zero.



Tab

le1

Pop

ular

refe

rend

ums

inC

atal

onia

,200

9–20

11

13S

epte

mbe

r20

0913

Dec

embe

r20

0928

Feb

ruar

y20

1025

Apr

il20

1020

June

2010

10A

pril

2011

Oth

erT

otal

Yes

96.2

%94

.9%

92.0

%92

.5%

88.6

%89

.7%

91.2

%91

.7%

No

2.3%

3.2%

4.8%

5.0%

8.2%

8.6%

6.2%

6.0%

Whi

te1.

1%1.

5%2.

8%2.

3%2.

2%1.

5%2.

3%1.

9%N

ull

0.4%

0.3%

0.3%

0.3%

1.0%

0.2%

0.3%

0.3%

Tur

nout

41.0

9%27

.39%

21.5

5%17

.38%

13.9

4%17

.70%

11.1

2%18

.12%

Vot

esca

st2.

671

190.

642

62.3

6023

0.92

667

.571

267.

595

62.3

5888

4.12

3P

opul

atio

nen

fran

chis

ed6.

500

696.

032

289.

338

1,32

8.92

048

4.76

81,

512.

025

560.

675

4,87

8.25

8L

ocal

itie

s1

167

7921

248

2223

552

Sou

rce:

Ow

nel

abor

atio

n.D

ata

from

http

://w

ww

.dec

idim

.cat

.



Therefore, it makes more sense to treat the occurrence or not of a referen-dum, and the participation level achieved as separate dependent variables,with overlapping but nonetheless (partially) different explanatory factors.Indeed, holding a referendum or not is a strategic decision adopted by theactivists of the movement or its organizations, while turnout depends on theindividual decisions of many citizens, who have much less information and,presumably, demonstrate less strategic behavior. We rely on the literature oncollective action and political participation, as well as on specific features ofthis case, to derive a set of arguments that aim to explain variation in theexistence and eventual success of the popular referendums.

Accounting for the occurrence of referendums

How can we explain the occurrence or not of a popular referendum in a givenmunicipality? Why did they take place in 552 municipalities, while 395 others

44.8 to 90.5 (112)35.2 to 44.8 (106)27.5 to 35.2 (111)20 to 27.5 (111)5.4 to 20 (110)

Figure 2 Popular referendums for independence: celebration and turnout.



did not hold one? We argue that three factors can explain this variation: theresources available to the movement in each municipality, the movement’scalculations about the prospects for its success and a contamination/diffusioneffect.

Literature on social movements and protest politics has often stressed therole played by resources as a key explanation of mobilization. It is commonlyaccepted that the availability of resources enhances the likelihood of collectiveaction (Cress and Snow 1996; Zald 1992). Among them, ‘human time andeffort along with money [. . .] [are] the most widely appreciated kindsof resources [. . .] more or less available to collective actors’ (Edwards andMcCarthy 2004: 116).

In this case, we are dealing with a costly type of protest event, whichpresumably posed important challenges of resource mobilization for themovement. The organization of the popular referendums was a quite complextask that required coordinating volunteers, setting up technical protocols andprocedures to ensure the transparency of the process and an intense mobili-zation effort to reach as much people as possible. Therefore, we can expect theresources available to the potential organizers in each municipality to play acentral role in explaining the occurrence of the event. What are the resourcesthat played a relevant role in determining whether a referendum was organized

Turnout

Loca

litie

s

0 20 40 60 80 100

020

4060

80

Figure 3 Popular referendums for independence: turnout.



in a given municipality or not? Basically, material resources and volunteers.The preexistence of organizations and volunteers linked to the nationalistmovement seems to be the most obvious response (H1.1). In this case, themobilization process perhaps went beyond the traditional activist groups, butthere is little doubt that these played a relevant role in initiating the endeavor.Moreover, the involvement of the town council was also a valuable resourcefor the organizers (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Verba et al. 1995), becauseit could provide locations for polls, ballot boxes or some access to the munici-pal register (H1.2).

Besides material and human resources, we expect that the potential organ-izers had calculated the success prospects of an eventual referendum. Both themedia focus, and the primary goal of the organizers was the turnout rateachieved rather than the percentage of affirmative votes. Therefore, our expec-tation is that in those municipalities in which a low turnout rate was expected,the odds of a referendum being organized would have been lower. This is nota deterministic argument, as the referendum was organized in some munici-palities in which the previous expectations were low. Nonetheless, we expectthe probability of a referendum to have been lower in municipalities whereorganizers expected a low turnout rate. Of course, organizers could not knowprecisely what the turnout rate would be, but we contend that they usedavailable cues to base their expectations. These cues are related to the ‘senti-ment pool’ available in each municipality, which is defined as the ‘aggregate ofindividuals who share common grievances and attributional orientations’(Snow et al. 1986: 467). In this case, the ‘sentiment pool’ could be derived fromprevious electoral results (H1.3).

Finally, there is a clear process of diffusion that has to be taken into accountin any attempt of modeling the occurrence of these events. The processes ofdiffusion of collective action are considered an important explanatory variableby part of the literature on protest events that has left aside the previousassumption of spontaneous or random spread of protest to systematicallyanalyze it (della Porta and Kriesi 1999; Goertz 1994; Koopmans 2004;McAdam and Rucht 1993; Soule 2004). Diffusion is nowadays understood asa process of contamination that takes place over short periods of time and/orin geographically connected territories, which enables collective action orprotest events to spread. It seems clear that we should not treat the referen-dums as completely independent from one another, because they progressivelyspread across the Catalan territory (H1.4).

Accounting for variation in the turnout levels

We have argued that the key factors explaining the presence of a referendumin a given municipality were the resources available to the potential organizers,the expected level of turnout and the contamination/diffusion effect. But whatfactors explain the variation in turnout levels achieved by the popular refer-endums in each municipality? How can we explain the fact that turnout in



some municipalities reached up to ninety per cent, while in other places par-ticipation fell below ten per cent? We argue that beyond certain structuralfeatures of the municipality, which either facilitated or impeded the participa-tion in the referendum, the key factors to consider are the sociopoliticalcomposition of the electorate, the mobilization efforts carried out by theorganizers and media attention.

Structurally, municipalities have some features that might foster or hinderthe success of such an event. We expect two of them to be especially salient:size and the percentage of foreign-born population. Size has been shown to bean important factor explaining variation in the levels of civic involvement(Haspel and Knotts 2005; Oliver 2000). The mechanisms are diverse, though,and affect both the supply side (organizers) as well as the demand side (citi-zens). First, in small municipalities the cost and difficulty of reaching the wholepopulation via grassroots-based campaigning are considerably lower than inbig towns or cities. Second, from the citizens’ point of view, the social pressureto participate might be higher in small villages and towns. And third, citizensmight have more of an incentive to participate in a small village or townbecause the marginal impact of a citizen’s vote in a small township is moredecisive in the final outcome than in big municipalities (Downs 1957; Rikerand Ordeshook 1968) (H2.1).

The importance of the percentage of foreign-born population is related tothe conscious choice made by the organizers to extend the enfranchisement toforeign residents that in official elections are not entitled to vote. We expectforeign residents, who are unevenly distributed across Catalonia, to havelower participation rates in these referendums (H2.2). There are severalreasons for this expectation: First, most foreign residents arrived in Cataloniain the last decade, and therefore their level of sociopolitical integration withinthe host society is still weak (González-Ferrer 2010; Morales et al. 2010).Second, foreigners are not officially enfranchised and therefore lack votinghabits, and third, they have fewer reasons to be concerned with the claims anddemands of the pro-independence movement. We can also expect Catalancitizens born in the rest of Spain to be less likely to participate in a referendumabout secession from Spain than those citizens born in Catalonia (H2.3)because they are more likely to either oppose secession or to not consider theissue to be an important one.

The sociopolitical composition of the municipality, or the sentiment pool, isalso an obvious factor to consider. It is well known that the penetration ofCatalan nationalism is uneven across Catalonia. While in certain parts ofCatalonia, nationalism has been the hegemonic political force for a long time;in other places, it does not have a strong presence. The reasons for thisdisparity are diverse, and have been linked to the birthplace of the population(in some areas there are high percentages of citizens born in other regions ofSpain) or local political history. In any case, we can expect the uneven distri-bution of nationalism to be reflected in the participation levels of the popularreferendums (H2.4).



Apart from the penetration of Catalan nationalism, there are a number ofcompositional factors that make the population of any given municipality moreprone to participate in politics. Well-known variables in the political participa-tion and turnout literature are age, education, social class and urbanization,among others (Brady et al. 1995; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Shields andGoidel 1997; Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980). Moreover, in Catalan elections,factors such as language or national identity have also been shown to be relevantpredictors of turnout (Fernández-i-Marín and López. 2010; Lago et al. 2007;Riba 2000). In this case, our expectation is that those municipalities with higherpatterns of participation in the past (both in elections and other forms ofpolitical participation) will register higher turnout levels in the popular refer-endums (H2.5).

Beyond the characteristics of the municipality, the intensity of the mobi-lization effort on the part of the organizers has to be taken into account(Verba et al. 1995). While a given population can have a certain predisposi-tion to take part in collective action, the role of activism and campaigning,and as well as conscious mobilization efforts also explain a population’seventual decision to participate (Gerber and Green 2000; Hillygus 2005;Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). Everything else being equal, the more intensethe mobilization campaign prior to the referendum, the higher the expectedturnout (H2.6).

Finally, the last explanatory factor that we consider is media attentionreceived by the event. The most intense media attention was to be found at thebeginning of the period, with the first waves of referendums occupying frontpages in Catalan newspapers and plenty of time in the main TV stations.Media attention subsequently faded and later referendums received much lessintense coverage, except for the last wave, which included a referendum in thecapital city of Barcelona that garnered extra attention.3 Therefore, our expec-tation is that, everything else being equal, those referendums that receivedwider media coverage registered higher levels of turnout (H2.7).

Empirical Analysis: Data, Models and Results

In order to test the hypotheses discussed previously, we analyze a data set fromthe 947 Catalan municipalities that merges data from several sources.4 On onehand, it includes data on the occurrence and participation level of the popularreferendums in Catalonia over a nineteen-month period (September 2009–April 2011), provided by the organizing committees. On the other hand, wecompiled relevant variables from official statistics on Catalan municipalitiesgathered by the Catalan Statistics Institute and other Catalan governmentbodies (the justice department, the electoral authority and public TV station).Finally, we added information on the mobilization process that we obtainedthrough an online survey directed at the ones responsible in local organizingcommittees. The survey, which had a response rate of 58.5 per cent, or 323



committees, included questions on organization, campaign and resources usedduring the process of mobilization.5

We conducted the statistical analysis of the occurrence of referendumsthrough a set of logistic regression models in which the dependent variable isa dummy variable. We gave municipalities that did hold a referendum thevalue 1 and municipalities that did not hold a referendum the value 0.

The independent variables in these models try to operationalize the hypoth-eses presented previously. To measure the preexisting availability of resources,we use the density of members of the main Catalan nationalist cultural organi-zation (Òmnium Cultural) as a proxy for the presence of potential organizersor volunteers in the municipality (H1.1). Likewise, to capture the predisposi-tion of a given town council to collaborate with the organizers, we use adummy variable that takes the value 1 if the mayor belongs to a party thatofficially supported the referendums (CiU, ERC), and 0 otherwise (H1.2).Additionally, we include the size of the municipality as a proxy variable thatmight reflect to some extent the resources available to the potential organizers:It is our expectation that in very small villages, it will be less likely to meet thefixed cost of organizing the referendum in terms of the minimum pool ofvolunteers and expertise required. As the size of the municipality increasesbeyond a certain threshold, however, the probability of organizing the refer-endum should be less dependent on size. We introduce the log of size tocapture this nonlinear expectation.

We argue that the organizers’ calculations about the prospects for successwould have played a relevant role in their decision to hold a referendum. Weexpect potential organizers to have used previous electoral results as cues tobuild their expectations, and therefore, our model includes the share of voteof those parties that supported these referendums in the previous Catalanelections (H1.3).

The diffusion process is less straightforward to model. Probably, the diffu-sion mechanism is best represented by a clustering logic according to whichmunicipalities in certain areas have higher odds of organizing a referendumsimply because they are in an area with high prevalence of referendums. Tocapture such a mechanism, we follow two alternative strategies. First, wesimply introduce a set of geographical dummies, indicating in which of theseven geographical areas officially used in Catalan statistics the municipality islocated. We leave the ‘central Catalonia’ area as a reference category, becauseit is the region in which the most municipalities held a referendum (seventy-oneper cent). This operationalization might be problematic, because it does notmeasure the process of diffusion directly but rather geographical clustering,and it might present some problems of endogeneity, as the presence of areferendum in a given locality contributes (albeit marginally) to the value ofthe independent variable.

Therefore, we employ as an alternative, more direct operationalization ofdiffusion a variable expressing the share of localities of the same comarca(county, there are 41 in Catalonia) that held a referendum previously or



simultaneously to each municipality. By default, those municipalities that didnot hold a referendum have the highest value of their county, because theywere exposed to potential contamination effects until the end of the cycle. Thismight run counter to our ability to confirm the diffusion hypothesis. To takeit into account, we introduce a quadratic term for the diffusion variable. Thisoperationalization considers diffusion at a more micro level, and takes intoaccount the fact that diffusion can only occur by virtue of the events that tookplace previously or simultaneously.

Table 2 presents the results of the four logistic regressions we estimated, inwhich we progressively introduce the independent variables. The first oneincludes the variables that capture the role of the resources available to thepotential organizers; the second one incorporates the electoral composition ofthe municipality. The third one incorporates the variable diffusion at the microlevel, whereas the fourth model adds the geographical dummies to take intoaccount the geographical clusters.

The results from these models confirm most of our expectations. Regardingthe role played by resources available to the movement in deciding whether tohold a referendum in a given municipality, the first model indicates that,indeed, the size of the locality, the density of nationalist activism and a towncouncil governed by one of the two parties that explicitly supported the refer-endums are all relevant factors in explaining why some municipalities heldreferendums and others not. However, resources alone do not seem to explaina great deal of the variation, as indicated by the low pseudo-R2 (0.094).

Adding the other explanatory factors discussed previously enhances the fitof the models: If we take into account the electoral composition of the munici-pality, which we consider to be an important measure of the organizers’pre-referendum expectations of success, the pseudo-R2 increases to 0.19. Thehigher the percentage of votes obtained by ERC and CiU in previous elections,the higher the odds that a given municipality will hold a referendum. Therelationship is especially strong in the case of the pro-independence partyERC. However, when we consider these two parties’ support, the effect of themayor’s party becomes insignificant. Indeed, both factors are closely relatedand probably the effect of the mayor we identified in model 1 reflected not onlythe availability of municipal resources but the sociopolitical composition ofthe town as well. In any case, we can say that according to our models, theresources that are relevant to explain the decision to hold a referendum wererelated to the availability of activists and a minimum size of the municipality.

In model 3, we consider the effect of diffusion by introducing a variableexpressing the proportion of previous or simultaneous referendums in themunicipality’s county, as well as its quadratic term, as described previously.We can see how the main term does not have a statistically significant effect,but the quadratic one has a strong, positive effect. That result suggests aU-shaped distribution in which a contamination effect increases the probabilitythat a township will hold a referendum when a high share of localities in thecounty have already held one.



Tab

le2

Log

isti

cre

gres

sion

mod

els.

Dep

ende

ntva

riab

le:

cele

brat

ion

ofpo

pula

rre

fere

ndum

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Res

ourc

esE

xpec

tati

ons

Diff

usio

n1

Diff

usio

n2

b/se

b/se

b/se

b/se

Pop

ulat

ion

(log

)0.

45**

*(0

.05)

0.85

***

(0.0

7)0.

84**

*(0

.07)

0.89

***

(0.0

8)M

embe

rsÒ

mni

umC

ultu

ral

(per

1,00

0ha

b)0.

07**

*(0

.02)

0.05

***

(0.0

1)0.

05**

*(0

.01)

0.03

**(0

.01)

May

orE

RC

/CiU

0.39

***

(0.1

5)-0

.05

(0.1

7)-0

.03

(0.1

7)0.

12(0

.19)

ER

C,s

hare

ofvo

te0.

14**

*(0

.01)

0.14

***

(0.0

1)0.

16**

*(0

.02)

CiU

,sha

reof

vote

0.06

***

(0.0

1)0.

06**

*(0

.01)

0.05

***

(0.0

1)D

iffu

sion

-1.3

9(0

.95)

Dif

fusi

onsq

uare

d2.

32**

(1.0

8)B

arce

lona

area

a-0

.46

(0.3

2)G

iron

aar

ea-0

.42

(0.2

7)T

arra

gona

area

-1.4

2***

(0.3

0)So

uthe

rnC

atal

onia

-3.9

9***

(0.5

4)L

leid

aar

ea-1

.70*

**(0

.28)

Pyr

enee

s-1

.13*

**(0

.34)

Con

stan

t-3

.24*

**(0

.38)

-10.

81**

*(0

.98)

-10.

58**

*(1

.00)

-10.

27**

*(1

.12)

Obs

erva

tion

s94

694

694

694

6P

seud

o-R

20.

094

0.18

60.

193

0.27

9

*P<

0.1,

**P

<0.

05,*

**P

<0.

01.

a Cen

tral

Cat

alon

iaas

are

fere

nce

cate

gory

.



Model 4 considers the geographic location of the municipality. Resultsindicate that, controlling by the impact of resources and expectations, thegeographical location of a municipality was an important factor in determin-ing whether a referendum would be organized or not. The results demonstratethat there is a central cluster of three areas (Barcelona, Girona and CentralCatalonia) in which the probability of holding a referendum is higher withrespect to the more peripheral areas of the West and Southern Catalonia. Allin all, model 4 has a pseudo-R2 of 0.28, which is considerably higher than theprevious models’ fit.

We now turn to our explanation of the variation in the turnout levelsreached across the municipalities in which a referendum was held.6 To opera-tionalize our hypotheses, we use the log of the population (H2.1), the percent-age of foreign residents in the municipality (H2.2), the percentage born in therest of Spain (H2.3), the share of votes reached by ERC and CiU (H2.4) as wellas the 2006 turnout level and the number of registered associations per 1,000inhabitants (H2.5). The intensity of the mobilization efforts (H2.6) is measuredby two variables: The number of volunteers who participated in the organiza-tion of the referendum as a percentage of the rest of the population, and anindex of campaigning that simply adds up how many different campaignactivities from a predefined list of 10 were carried out in a given municipality.We use the logarithm of the proportion of volunteers because we expect eachadditional volunteer to contribute a marginally decreasing return. The data onboth variables come from our own surveys of the organization. Finally, wealso consider a variable that measures the number of minutes devoted to theevent on the main Catalan public TV news the evening before and the after-noon of the referendum (H2.7) (Table 3).

As before, we estimate a set of models in which we progressively introducethe independent variables that correspond to the various hypotheses we haveformulated. Table 3 presents the results of a series of OLS regression models.The first model only considers the structural characteristics of the localities:the size and percentage of foreign residents. Both have a strong and significantdepressing effect on levels of turnout. In terms of turnout, the effect of the sizeof a given municipality is the reverse of what we observed when modeling theprobability of holding a referendum: In this case, the bigger the municipality,the lower the expected turnout. Small municipalities present obstacles to theorganization in terms of holding a referendum, but when these obstacles areovercome, collective action is proportionally more successful than in bigtowns. Additionally, as predicted, we can see that the higher the percentage offoreign residents, the lower the expected turnout, although the effect of for-eigners is weaker than that of municipal size. It is remarkable as well that thehigh fit of the model (R2 = 0.5) explains half of the variation in the turnoutrates with only two variables.

Mostly like the size of the municipality is capturing the effect of othervariables, given that in Catalonia municipal size is closely related to sociopo-litical composition. The penetration of Catalan nationalism is generally



Tab

le3.

OL

Sre

gres

sion

mod

els.

Dep

ende

ntva

riab

le:

Tur

nout

inpo

pula

rre

fere

ndum

s

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

b/se

b/se

b/se

b/se

b/se

b/se

Pop

ulat

ion

(log

)-5

.86*

**(0

.27)

-2.8

2***

(0.3

8)-2

.59*

**(0

.36)

-2.5

1***

(0.3

7)-2

.61*

**(0

.37)

-1.2

5**

(0.5

6)%

For

eign

resi

dent

s-0

.51*

**(0

.13)

-0.4

9***

(0.1

2)-0

.40*

**(0

.11)

-0.2

5**

(0.1

1)-0

.26*

*(0

.11)

-0.4

4***

(0.1

2)%

Bor

nre

stof

Spai

n-0

.79*

**(0

.07)

-0.3

8***

(0.0

9)-0

.08

(0.0

9)-0

.07

(0.0

9)-0

.00

(0.1

0)E

RC

,%vo

te20

060.

70**

*(0

.08)

0.62

***

(0.0

8)0.

60**

*(0

.08)

0.53

***

(0.0

8)C

iU,%

vote

2006

0.23

***

(0.0

6)0.

14**

(0.0

6)0.

14**

(0.0

6)0.

21**

*(0

.07)

Tur

nout

2006

0.66

***

(0.0

7)0.

65**

*(0

.07)

0.57

***

(0.0

9)A

ssoc

iati

ons/

1,00

0in

habi

tant

s-0

.06

(0.0

5)-0

.06

(0.0

5)-0

.01

(0.0

6)

Med

iaat

tent

ion

0.21

**(0

.09)

0.19

*(0

.11)

Vol

unte

ers/

popu

lati

on4.

24**

*(0

.67)

Inde

xof

cam

paig

nac

tivi

ties

2.59

(2.7

8)

Con

stan

t77

.56*

**(1

.98)

65.7

5***

(2.1

2)34

.09*

**(5

.15)

-7.3

4(6

.98)

-7.2

8(6

.96)

-16.

97**

(8.2

9)O

bser

vati

ons

550

550

550

549

549

298

R2

0.50

20.

587

0.63

60.

688

0.69

10.

781

*P<

0.1,

**P

<0.

05,*

**P

<0.

01.



stronger in small villages or towns. Indeed, when we introduce the variablethat measures the percentage of residents born in the rest of Spain, the effectof municipal size is considerably weakened, dropping from -5.9 to -2.8, evenif remains strong and significant at that level. Introducing the vote share fornationalist parties in previous elections improves the fit of the model up to anR2 of 0.64. As expected, both ERC and CiU support have a positive andsignificant effect on the turnout rates, although it is clearly stronger for theformer (b = 0.7) than the latter (b = 0.23). If we consider the participatorytradition of the municipality, the fit of the model improves up to an R2 of0.69. However, only past turnout rates – and not the number of registeredassociations – have a statistically significant impact on participation in thereferendums.

It is interesting to see how the effect of the percentage of the populationborn outside Catalonia weakened (from -0.79 to -0.38) when we introducedthe electoral variables, and disappeared completely when we added pastturnout to the model. This can be interpreted as an indication that lowerturnout in municipalities with a higher proportion of citizens born in the restof Spain is not a direct effect of origin, but rather is due to political reasons,such as support for parties that oppose secession and weak political integra-tion in Catalonia.

We get mixed results regarding our last two hypotheses: the intensity ofmobilization efforts by the organizers and the media coverage. The number ofminutes of the Catalan public TV news coverage, as expected, had a positiveeffect on turnout, indicating that media coverage did indeed play a mobilizingrole. However, media coverage only contributes marginally to the fit of themodel. In the case of the effect of mobilization efforts, we see how the numberof volunteers does have a statistically significant return in terms of additionalvotes. We cannot say the same with respect to the index of campaign activities,which, after controlling for the other variables, does not emerge as a statisti-cally significant predictor of turnout. With these additional variables on vol-unteers and campaigning, the R2 rises up to 0.78, but this model is hardlycomparable with the previous ones, because the nonresponse to our survey(around forty per cent) decreases greatly the number of observations down to298.

In summary, our hypotheses are confirmed, albeit with some caveats. Theproposed explanatory factors account for almost eighty per cent of the vari-ance in the dependent variable, and therefore, we can be confident that ourproposed explanatory factors are the relevant variables in explaining whysome municipalities registered higher participation levels than others in thepopular referendums.

Conclusions

In this article, we have analyzed a case of nationalist mobilization, which hada great impact in Catalonia. The unofficial referendums on independence



allowed us to investigate the determinants of internal variation in the levels ofmobilization in Catalonia, taking advantage of a unique type of collectiveaction that produced detailed information on the levels of participation at thelocal level.

We have exploited the variation in the occurrence and success of thesereferendums to test a set of hypotheses about the uneven patterns of penetra-tion of the pro-independence movement across Catalonia, as well as about thedeterminants of success – in terms of participation – of these collective actionevents. Our results show that the resources available to the movement, com-bined with expectations of participation and contamination between munici-palities account for a substantial portion of the diffusion of the referendumsacross Catalonia. Regarding the turnout rates achieved, we have seen howthey can be explained by the intensity of the mobilization efforts, as well as bypre existing motivations and the participatory tradition of the municipality.

Our case study has clear implications for our knowledge about how andwhy protest events, and political participation spreads and reaches unevenlevels of intensity. One of the most salient elements that we could identify inthis respect is the strong effect of the size of the municipality. We can say thatin very small localities, protest events are less likely to happen, but when theyare organized, they reach ceteris paribus, higher rates of participation.Another interesting implication is the strong and positive association wefound between participation in official elections and participation in the –unofficial – referendums, indicating perhaps continuity between differentforms of participation.

The case study has also some relevant implications for our knowledge abouthow a nationalist movement’s strength and ability to mobilize the populationvary across its territory. We have seen that the penetration of the nationalistparties is a relevant factor, but is by no means sufficient in explaining thevariation of the mobilization levels. If we are to explain the observed internalvariation of nationalist mobilization, we need to refer to factors relevant to theliterature on political participation and protest, such as resources available tothe movement. Moreover, we have also seen that while the percentage of thepopulation born outside Catalonia was an important factor, its effect vanishedafter we took into account political factors (turnout and vote). This resultpoints to the fact that we should not conceptualize political differences amongdifferent origin groups as ‘essentially’ linked to the national or ethnic back-ground of each individual group, but rather related to party affiliation andtherefore contingent to the political process. An essentialist understanding ofCatalan politics would not explain our results.

Notes

1 To the best of our knowledge, before these referendums for independence took place in Cata-lonia, only Kosovar Albanians in 1991 had held an unofficial referendum, in which they voted



overwhelmingly for secession. A posteriori similar referendums have been held by South Tyroleansfor its secession from Italy (2011), and by the Serb minority in Northern Kosovo for its reinte-gration in Serbia (2012).2 There is some controversy on the formulation of the question, because results change dramati-cally when support for independence is asked via a dichotomous question (yes/no): in the fewsurveys that have used this dichotomous formulation so far, support for independence reachedthirty-five to forty-five per cent. The CEO figure, by July 2011 was 42.9 per cent in the dichoto-mous question.3 This is one of the reasons that explain the relatively high percentage of participation achievedin Barcelona (eighteen per cent) as compare with other important cities in Catalonia in terms ofpopulation. Other reasons were the functioning in local platforms and a very long and activecampaign to collect early votes.4 The database and the commands to replicate the data will be made available by the authorsupon request.5 In this article, we only use specific variables of the survey and integrate them into the dataset.For a full presentation and discussion of the survey results, see Muñoz, Guinjoan and Vilaregut(2011).6 The dependent variable in this second analysis is the level of participation rather than thepercentage of affirmative votes obtained, since our goal is to explain the success of the mobiliza-tion strategies. The variation in the percentage of affirmative votes obtained across municipalitiesis so low (mean 91.1 per cent, standard deviation 3.6 per cent) that if the same models are run usingthe number of affirmative votes to the total number of people enfranchised to vote in eachmunicipality the results are virtually the same.

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