Party Elites in Referendum Campaigns: Involuntary Subjects or Skilful Puppeteers?

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Party Elites in Referendum Campaigns: Involuntary Subjects or Skilful

Puppeteers?

by

Marie-Catherine Wavreille (F.R.S.-FNRS Research Fellow)

[email protected]

Centre d’étude de la vie politique (CEVIPOL), Université libre de Bruxelles

&

Elwin Reimink (FNRS MIS Project ‘Electoral System Change in Europe’)

[email protected]

Centre d’étude de la vie politique (CEVIPOL), Université libre de Bruxelles

To be presented at the 2014 APSA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., August 28-31, 2014

Abstract

Existing referendum studies predominantly focus on a limited number of referendums, mostly

restricted to a specific country or subject. In this paper, we present a way of studying

referendums over time and political settings, focusing on the relation between elites’ and

voters’ position. Specifically, we focus on the prevalence of ‘electoral upsets’, in which voters

reject the position taken by an elite majority. Studying 450 referendums on the national and

subnational levels in seven countries, we come to the conclusion that electoral upsets are more

likely when the elite shows strong internal divisions. Tentative evidence is also found that

upsets become more likely when the elite advocates a change in the status quo, in settings

where referendums are relatively uncommon, when subjects related to institutional questions

are involved, and when subjects not related to the socio-economic debate are involved.

Introduction

Direct democracy has seen a remarkable rise in the last decades: countries which historically

never had any mechanism of direct democracy started to adopt institutions of direct

democracy, and countries which have already had direct democratic mechanisms intensified

and broadened its scope (LeDuc, 2003; Scarrow, 2001; Setälä, 1999). In the last 25 years,

voters have decided over a large array of issues. They have decided over whether countries

still exist (some, like Canada, indeed do; others, like Serbia and Montenegro, have

disappeared following the same route), over whether countries belong to international bodies

like the European Union (EU), the UN or NATO, over questions of republic and monarchy

(Australia in 1999) and over the introduction of gay marriages (California and Arizona in

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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2008). Even where referendums1 are rare events, they tend to decide over the most

fundamental matters of state. In the United Kingdom (UK), referendums have been a historic

oddity, but the referendums which took place were of a particular weight. In 1975, a deeply

divided Labour Party called a referendum over the continuation of the British membership in

the European Communities, which went on to become the EU (Curtice, 2013). In 1997,

referendums paved the way for decentralizing Westminster powers to Scotland and Wales,

including the Scottish and Welsh parliaments (Denver, 2002). The only Canadian nation-wide

referendum concerned the Charlottetown agreement, which was supposed to embody an

institutional framework in which Québec could remain part of Canada (Stein, 1997). The two

democratic-era nationwide Spanish referendums included questions on remaining within

NATO, as well as on the ill-fated EU constitution. Adding to this, most countries today

organize nationwide referendums. Of the 28 current EU member states, only three (Germany,

Belgium and Greece) did not hold any nationwide referendum over the last 25 years. At the

same time, this instrument is rarely used: only in four cases (Ireland, Italy, Lithuania and

Slovenia) did the number of referendums within this 25-year period exceed ten. Only in one

established democracy (Switzerland) the annual frequency of nationwide referendums is

higher than one. It seems that in most democracies, referendums are rare, yet existing. This

presents an obstacle to studying these ‘isolated’ referendums; due to their isolated nature,

within-country comparisons between referendums are often not possible. Between-country

comparisons, on the other hand, are limited by severe differences in political context, as well

as the ubiquitous nature of some referendum topics. This has thus limited comparative work

on direct democracy to comparative case studies (i.e. Sciarini and Listhaug, 1997), theoretical

studies (i.e. Hug, 2004) or studies limited to ‘usual suspects’ like Swiss referendums (i.e.

Kriesi, 2006) or US subnational referendums (i.e. Bowler and Donovan, 2002). In this paper,

we will present a framework to study countries over time, space and political settings, by

focusing on a few variables which are observable over diverse cases, and which are directly

related to some of the most salient and controversial characteristics of direct democracy.

Referendums2 are commonly most remarked (and remembered) when they are associated with

unexpected or dramatic results. In Europe, several EU treaties encountered sometimes

unexpected opposition in referendum votes. This started with the Maastricht treaty, which was

voted down in Denmark, only to be accepted in a second referendum after Denmark got

1 In this paper, we interchangeably use the term ‘referendum’ to cover both initiatives and referendums.

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several guarantees on its political sovereignty (Siune and Svensson, 1993, Franklin et al.,

1994, Svensson, 2002). The same scenario was seen in Ireland in 2001, concerning the Nice

treaty; and again, the treaty was eventually accepted by referendum after Ireland obtained

additional political guarantees (Gilland, 2002, Garry et al., 2005). Ireland witnessed the same

scenario (initial rejection, eventual acceptance) again in 2008 and 2009 with the Lisbon treaty.

Most dramatic was the early summer of 2005: in the course of four days, the French and

Dutch electorate rejected the European constitution, sealing the fate of the constitutional

project. Switzerland witnessed several controversial referendums in recent years; notably,

proposals to ban minarets (in 2009) and to limit immigration from EU countries (in 2014)

managed to obtain a majority of the votes. In the US, California is most noted for its culture

of constitutional referendums and initiatives. Proposal 13 (curtailing the state’s power to

impose taxes) and proposal 8 (nullifying the possibility of same-sex marriage) are two

examples of proposals which often find references in political analyses. All of these examples

we just mentioned share one particular aspect: in all cases, elites campaigned predominantly

for the losing side. In this respect, Crum (2008) reflects on the question whether the EU

referendums were a “failure of political representation”, given that the elites agreed to a text

which would eventually be rejected by the citizens they were supposed to represent. de Vreese

(2006) described the role of political parties in these same referendums, arguing that the lack

of issue ownership on EU issues by traditional parties makes it harder for these parties to

convince their supporters to follow their lead. The phenomenon is, however, not limited to EU

referendums: in other circumstances, and concerning other topics, the same dynamics can

sometimes be observed. Studies on the specific interaction between elites and voters in

referendums have, however, by-and-large limited themselves to cases concerning EU

referendums (Siune and Svensson, 1993; Siune et al., 1994; Franklin et al., 1994 ; Franklin et

al., 1995 ; Marsh, 1998 ; Ehin, 2001 ; Franklin, 2002; Svensson, 2002; Garry et al., 2005;

Hobolt, 2006 ; de Vreese, 2006; Crum, 2007, 2008; Lubbers, 2008; see, however, Pammett

and LeDuc, 2001). Moreover, the literature on EU referendums (which envisages a limited

ability of parties to dominate and influence the voting process) stands somewhat in contrast

with the observation by Kriesi (2006, 2005) that parties tend to dominate referendum

processes in Switzerland. First, there is a gap in the literature: only a limited number of

referendums have been studied from the perspective of elite-party dynamics. Second, the

literature which is already published does not converge on a common perspective:

explanations with wildly different implications can be found. To fill this gap, we present a

research framework which enables us to compare referendums over topics, countries and

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political circumstances. For each referendum we study, we start out by taking the result of the

referendum (which serves as a measure of the voters’ attitude towards the proposal), the

attitude of the executive towards the proposal, and the attitude of each party represented in the

legislature. As a default, we would expect voters and elites to converge on the same position.

Elites are expected to represent the electorate, and would rather spare themselves the

humiliation to be defeated by the voters in a direct face-off at the polls (Schneider and

Weitsman, 1996). Voters, for their part, are expected to have only limited information on the

proposal and to have to rely heavily on elite cues (Christin et al., 2002; Lupia, 1994, Hobolt,

2007). Our main dependent variable will be the presence, and more prominently, the absence

of such convergence. Under which circumstances do voters and elites diverge? This will be

the main question of this study. In the following parts of this paper, we will briefly review the

existing body of research on elite’s and voters’ behavior in referendums. From there we will

outline our hypotheses before moving on to the presentation of our method of data collection.

In the results section, we will present some descriptive statistics, as well as some preliminary

analyses. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the research, as well as possibilities to

broaden and extend the study presented in this paper.

Past Research

Political Elites Take Public Stands in Referendum Campaigns

Initiative and referendum politics do not operate outside party and elite politics. Yet early

works on elite involvement, and this is particularly the case in the literature which studies

referendums in the American states, maintained that these campaigns are immune from

political involvement. Studying initiative campaigns in the United States, Gerber and Lupia

(1999) contend that partisan cues are usually absent from initiative campaigns. These

campaigns are rather sponsored and run by groups falling beyond the reach of political parties

(Gerber and Lupia, 1995:290). In a chapter on political parties in direct democracy, Budge

(2001:77) maintains that the cases are rare when direct party involvement takes place in state

initiatives in America. He points out the inability to agree on a compromise as an indicator for

their non-participation in many initiatives. In addition, Magleby (1984:174) contends that

partisan organizations refrain from engaging in the initiative process because “the success or

defeat of an initiative rarely translates into any payoff to the electoral fortunes of the party

candidates in the election”. Other scholars claim that the participation of parties may be linked

to the subject matter of measures put on the ballot. In their study of California initiatives,

Donovan et al. (1998:93) find candidates and political parties dominating the campaign

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discourse in majoritarian contests, that is, “the most visible, and controversial, measures on

the ballot”. Bone and Benedict (1975:350) studied initiatives and referendums in the state of

Washington and found parties to take stands on few measures, but they suggest that measures

dealing with welfare, taxes, and government reform are more likely to have significant

partisan overtones. These studies do provide insight into where the voter may expect to find

party involvement. The more recent literature on referendum and initiative politics in the

United States (Ch vez, 1 ; asen, ; Schrag, ; Smith and olbert, 1; Smith,

2005a) comes to a similar conclusion as works pertaining to campaigns in Europe have for a

long time showed (Lutz, 2006; Marquis and Bergman, 2009; Uleri, 1994): political elite and

party organizations get involved in referendum campaigns. And they have various reasons to

do so (see for instance (Budge, 1996; Kriesi, 2012; Morel, 2001; Müller, 1999; Smith and

Tolbert, 2001; Smith, 2005b): because elites want to gain visibility and attention (Müller,

1999), because they want to bridge over matters on which they cannot agree internally, but

also because they want to avoid to undermine the legitimacy of the policy. Studying

referendums in Italy between 1946 and 1993, Uleri (1994) showed that even though interest

groups were present in initiative campaigns, parties successfully mobilized their supporters

and publicized their position. Similarly, political parties and groups with strong partisan

connections have controlled Swiss campaigns (Lutz, 2006:50; Marquis and Bergman,

2009:63). From this review, two conclusions can be drawn. On the one hand, it seems that

elite involvement may be expected to fluctuate in regards with the geographical context

considered. On the other hand, studies have shown that the subject matter of the measures

may be an indicator of elite involvement.

Cue-taking: Voters Following Elites

Referendums can be seen as policy choices: at referendums, voters are able to choose between

two distinct policy alternatives. From a rational-choice spatial perspective, we might expect

voters to simply choose the alternative which offers a marginal benefit over the other

alternative. This idea is criticised by Lupia (1994), who asserts that voters would need an

almost prohibitively large (‘encyclopaedic’) knowledge on the topic at hand in order to make

such a choice. Instead, Lupia argues that many voters use cognitive shortcuts in order to make

up for this lack of knowledge. In order to do so, voters only have to identify the broad topic of

a referendum and the vote recommendation of an elite actor of whom they know the general

position on the topic. Lupia asserts that through following this procedure, voters with

relatively limited information can ‘mimic’ more informed voters. Not all studies did,

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however, find such a strong effect for cue-taking. Trechsel and Sciarini (1998) find that, on a

macro-level, voters often follow elites in their vote recommendations on Swiss referendums.

At the same time, however, they find only a very weak effect for actual opinion formation

during referendum campaigns. The logic of Lupia (1994) hinges on voters learning during the

campaign: if this is not happening, it might be the case that some other effect is causing the

macro-level agreement between voters and elites. A same doubt is expressed by Christin et al.

(2002): again looking to Swiss ballots, they observe that partisan cues play a strong role in

some referendums and initiatives, but hardly a role in other referendums and initiatives. The

authors speculate that this might be due to the relation between citizens and the endorsing

elites, and whether the elites are perceived as having common interests with citizens. Hobolt

(2007), for her part, finds solid evidence for the Lupia thesis when studying the 1994

Norwegian referendum on EU membership: less informed voters show the same patterns of

voting as more informed voters, but only when amply exposed to elite cues. Moreover, she

finds that these cues can guide the voting choice, but do not have a general ‘enlightening’

effect. Hobolt also warns that other referendums might not show the same patterns as the

referendum she studied: she argues that the structured campaign helped to ‘channel’ voters

through partisan cues. Vowles (2013), however, finds that partisan cues hardly had any effect

in the 2013 UK referendum on Alternative Vote, even while parties got strongly involved in

the campaign. One can thus say that the established literature on cue-taking in referendums is

somewhat double-edged. On the one hand, the studies by Trechsel and Sciarini (1998) and

Kriesi (2006) show that voters rarely diverge from elites in referendums. On the other hand,

several micro-level studies cast doubt on the universality of voters taking elite cues: the effect

of these cues might well be strongly conditional on the settings of the referendum.

Hypotheses

Trechsel and Sciarini (1998) study the link between elite consensus (as measured by the

percentage of yes-votes expressed in the lower house of parliament) and the fate of

referendum measures in Switzerland. Their results show that in the case of both mandatory

referendums and popular initiatives, an enhanced intra-elite consensus increases the

probability of popular acceptance. This result does not hold for optional referendums where

the authors find no relation between elite consensus and the result of ballot measures.

Similarly, Kriesi (2006) examines the impact of the political elites on the outcome of 210

ballot measures in Switzerland between 1981 and 2004. While he measures elite consensus

based on the recommendations formulated by parties and not on the votes in the lower house

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as Trechsel and Sciarini (1998) have done, he likewise finds that all referendum measures

passed in case of an elite consensus (that is, all parties are reunited behind a project). In

addition and consistent with the second hypothesis drawn by Kriesi according to which “more

fragmented the issue-specific dominant coalition, the less likely it will be that citizens adopt

its decision in the popular vote” (Kriesi, 2006:602), the results show that in cases where one

of the government parties opposed the proposition, the risk of defeat increases considerably.

Besides, de Vreese (2006) shows in a study on Danish and Dutch referendums that the most

successful parties in getting their voters to follow the party recommendations do campaign

with a consistent party message (de Vreese, 2006:589).

In other referendum campaigns, internal divisions within parties induce elite to send

conflicting cues to their voters (Leduc, 2002). Prominent figures from the same political party

may be found actively campaigning on opposite sides of the issue. For instance, Proposition 8

– a measure put on the ballot in California in 2008 which aims to eliminate the right of same-

sex couples to marry – was opposed by the Republican Governor but the Republican Party

leadership supported it. In still other referendum campaigns, parties do not provide any firm

recommendation on how to vote (de Vreese, 2006, p. 582). We therefore expect the degree of

consensus among elites to have an impact on voter decisions:

H1: In referendum campaigns where there is an intra-elite consensus in favor or against

a particular ballot proposition, we expect a convergence between the political choices of

both elites and voters.

In the context of American primary elections, previous research has shown that voters appear

to have a default strategy of preferring better-known to less-known candidates when other

factors are equal (Bartels, 1988). In the context of referendum campaigns, Bowler and

Donovan (1998:35) suggest that voting ‘no’ is analogous to preferring the better-known

candidate in electoral races, as it preserves the status quo when the alternative is uncertain.

Uncertainty in referendum campaigns is present at two levels: first, the goals of the measures

are uncertain but also the unintended consequences of these measures are uncertain (Christin

et al., 2002:764). Accordingly, Christin et al. (2002) suggest that, as voters are generally risk

averse (Bowler and Donovan 1998:33), they will systematically tend to favor the status quo.

The status quo strategy consists in saying ‘no’ to whatever proposal voters are presented with.

The research by Christin et al. (2002) on referendum voting in Switzerland distinguishes

informed from uninformed voters and finds the latter to vote overwhelmingly against a

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particular ballot measure for which they have little knowledge. Hence, for any referendum in

which elite refrain from positioning, we hypothesize that voters would, on average, favor the

status quo and vote against the measure:

H2: In cases where elite abstains from positioning and the cues provided by partisanship

may not apply, voters tend to favor the status quo and vote against the ballot measure.

Swiss voters, at the national level, and American voters, at the sub-national level, remain the

unchallenged champions in voting in initiatives and referendums (Trechsel and Kriesi, 1996).

In fact, Switzerland and the United States provide hundreds of examples of referendum

campaigns. Outside these two countries, Bowler and Donovan (2002:778) suggest that

“referendums are intense, high profile affairs that often concern fundamental matters of

identity or morality”. Applying the distinction between ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ issues provided by

Carmines and Stimson (1989), Bowler and Donovan (2002) argue that initiative campaigns in

the United States “present ‘hard’ issues that many voters have limited interest in prior to the

campaign” (Bowler and Donovan, 2002:779). These measures require “contextual knowledge,

appreciation of often subtle differences in policy options, a coherent structure of beliefs about

politics, systematic reasoning to connect means to ends, and interest in and attentiveness to

political life to justify the cost of expensive fact gathering and decisionmaking” (Carmines

and Stimson, 1989:11–12). Under this definition, the authors argue that ‘hard’ issues are the

special area of the most sophisticated and attentive voters. Moreover, Kriesi (2005:138) point

out that voters in Switzerland are likely to accumulate a set of habits allowing them to manage

the task of voting with a minimal amount of effort. We therefore expect voters in countries

where referendum votes take place more frequently to follow the recommendations made by

the political elites:

H3: Voters in the United States and Switzerland are inclined to follow elite cues due to

the high frequency of referendum campaigns.

With regard to the subject of the referendum, we can recognize three specific ‘groups’ of

subjects which might be associated with specific or diverging elite-voter dynamics. The first

is probably the best described: foreign relations. Schneider and Weitsman (1996) describe the

ratification of international treaties through (mandatory or non-mandatory) referendums as a

two-level game: an interplay between the international level, on which elites initially act, and

the national level, on which elites and voters subsequentially interact. Since international

treaties are generally rather complex and difficult to interpret, voters have to ‘trust’ the

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government to have negotiated the optimal, or at least an acceptable, package. As a

consequence, whether voters can rely on the government to do so becomes an important stake

of the referendum campaign. Moreover, parties outside the government have a certain

secondary interest to campaign against the government (or at least to abstain from

campaigning actively in favor), because a disappointing result would tarnish the image of the

governmental parties. Indeed, authors found, to different extents such dynamics for

referendums on EU treaties and EU accession (Hug and Sciarini, 2000; König and Hug, 2000;

Ray, 2003; Garry et al., 2005; Gabel and Scheve, 2007). In the Swiss case, referendums on

foreign relations are usually accompanied by exceptional campaign activity, influencing the

dynamics of the vote (Sciarini and Marquis, 2000). Sciarini and Listhaug (1997), for their

part, suggest that international relations might provoke elite-voter splits because they rekindle

‘hidden cleavages’ in the political landscape. This leads us to expect that referendums

involving international relations are more likely to be accompanied by elite-voter splits than

other referendums:

H4: In general, referendums on the subject of foreign relations are more likely to lead to

‘electoral upsets’ than other referendums.

The model of responsible party government would lead us to expect that parties represent the

views of their voters (Ranney, 1954). Since voters tend to relate their vote in elections to their

evaluation of the incumbent government (Stokes, 1963), governments have an incentive to

stay as close to voters’ preferences as possible, so as to minimize the number of arguments

which can possibly be turned against government. Esaiasson and Holmberg (1996) describe

‘responsiveness’ (representatives reacting to popular preferences) as an indispensable part of

political representation, while Mansbridge (2003) describes political representation as a mix

of voters approving political platforms and voters judging representatives on their

representative work. From this ‘perfect’ perspective of political representation, we would

deduct that the results of representative democracy and direct democracy would (nearly)

always overlap: political elites which tend to stray too often from popular opinion will be

electorally punished and eventually be replaced by more responsive elites. In which cases,

then, would we expect elite positioning and popular opinion to diverge? One of these cases

might be when elites’ direct interests are in play. In the 1990s, legislators in several US states

were confronted by movements to impose term limits for federal offices (Karp, 1998). While

these term limits appeared to be widely popular and got approved in several states (Karp,

1995), they were clearly detrimental to the officeholders (hence, the political elites)

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themselves. In these cases, we can expect political elites to prefer a certain alternative even

when faced with a sceptical electorate. We can extent this logic to political institutions in

general: for example, Andrews and Jackman (2005) find that elites that have recently won

elections are averse to changes in electoral rules. Katz and Mair (1995) go even one step

further: they expect political parties in general to collude to maintain or promote rules which

are favourable to them. Since political institutions regulate the relation between elites and

citizens, we therefore expect more discord when institutional issues are involved:

H5: In general, referendums on the subject of political institutions are more likely to

lead to ‘electoral upsets’ than other referendums.

In an article on the nature of referendum campaigns, Leduc (2002) describes how these

campaigns can range from very stable (and very much alike general election campaigns) to

very volatile and unpredictable. One of the factors associated with campaign volatility is the

subject of the referendum: according to LeDuc, topics which are not habitually part of the

general political debate are more likely to lead to volatile referendum campaigns. He presents

the 1995 Québec referendum on independence as an example of a referendum with a topic

which strongly resonates with existing political cleavages. The 1992 France referendum on

the Maastricht treaty (which almost led to a major upset for then-president François

Mitterrand) is presented as a very ‘volatile’ referendum. This resonates with a more general

argument made by Lau and Redlawsk (2001) about voter cue-taking: voters might be

confused rather than lead by cues if the cues relate to an unusual choice which is outside the

habitual structure of political choice sets. Hobolt (2007), continuing on this line, hypothesizes

that partisan cues play a stronger role when referendums concern “left-right” issues, since

voters are used to perceive parties within this particular schema. Since left-right issues are

most commonly associated with socio-economic questions, we would expect slightly

different, and more predictable, campaign dynamics when socio-economic issues are

involved:

H6: In general, referendums on the subject of socio-economic issues are less likely to

lead to ‘electoral upsets’ than other referendums.

Data Collection and Method

Countries included

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As mentioned in the introduction, most democratic countries have witnessed referendums in

one way or another over the last decades. Due to constraints in time and energy, we were not

able to include all of these countries in the analysis. We started with a dataset on elite

positioning in 246 Swiss nation-wide referendums and initiatives from 1981 to 2010, which

professor Hanspeter Kriesi at the European University Institute generously shared with us3.

For a number of other countries, we included data we gathered ourselves. Specifically, we

gathered data on two US states (Arizona and California) with a relatively extensive use of

direct democratic instruments. We also gathered data on the cases of Ireland, the UK, New

Zealand, the German Länder and the Canadian provinces. For the two US states, we gathered

data over the period 2004-2013; for the other cases, we gathered data over the period 2000-

2013. This left us with in total 450 cases: 246 from Switzerland, 14 from Ireland, 3 from New

Zealand, 1 from the UK, 28 from Germany, 55 from Arizona, 97 from California and 6 from

Canada. Our ambitions do not stop here; we specifically aim to gather additional data from

continental European cases, as well as from some US states with a less intensive use of direct

democratic instruments. In maybe another step, we might branch out to other parts of the

world such as Latin America.

Data collection

We focused on a number of variables enabling us to unveil voter-elite relations in

referendums. We drew data on turnout and voting patterns from official electoral records. In

order to facilitate the analysis of Hypothesis 2, we coded the result of the vote as percentage

of votes in favor of changing the status quo4. For elite positions, we coded the position of the

head of government (in Europe and Canada) or the governor (in the US states), and the

position of the different parties represented in the lower house of the legislature, as well as the

relative size of the different parties involved in the lower house. We gathered some additional

data concerning the institutional background of the referendums. First, we coded the origin of

the referendum along five categories (obligatory referendum, optional referendum, facultative

referendum, direct initiative and indirect initiative; see Hug & Sciarini (2000) for more details

on the institutional background of referendums), as well as whether the result of the

referendum was legally binding or not, and whether referendums were held on the same day

as other elections or were held ‘separately’. We also coded the subject of the referendum

3 We want to thank dr. Kriesi specifically; without him, this study would not have been possible.

4 Not in all cases this was as self-evident as we might assume.

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along a division in eight categories initially developed by Kriesi (2005)5. In cases where we

judged that a referendum belonged to two categories, we assigned the referendum to both

categories. We drew on several sources to gather our data. For Arizona and California, we

first looked at the voter information guides compiled by the Secretary of State. Past research

(Bowler and Donovan, 1998, 1994; Dubois et al., 1991) has established that these guides are

commonly mentioned by voters as the most importation piece of campaign information. These

pieces of information were highly crucial as they contained arguments in favor or against

propositions written by political elites (e.g. governor, state senators and representatives). For

the other countries included in the analysis, we mostly relied on newspaper archives in order

to gather information on elite positions, as well as, in a few cases, on academic articles and

publications. Newspaper articles also allowed for complementing the data in the cases of the

American states. Most proposals appearing on the ballot in Switzerland were widely discussed

in the media with political parties intervening extensively in those campaigns (Christin et al.,

2002:766). Parties virtually always adopted endorsements which were often covered by the

media during the campaign and were reprinted in voter information booklets. This coverage

guaranteed a certain publicity for the recommendations (Kriesi, 2006).

After having collected the initial data, we recoded the data on a few accounts in order to

facilitate analysis. First, we checked whether there was an elite majority in the lower house (a

majority of seats explicitly supporting the proposal). We gave separate codes to majorities for

‘yes’ and ‘no’ respectively, as well as for the absence of a majority. In a separate variable, we

coded the nature of the elite position in five categories, inspired by the work of Kriesi (2006)

on direct democratic coalitions. Each referendum was distinguished as belonging to one of the

following categories: depolitisation (politicians and parties mainly refrain from positioning

themselves), (quasi)-unanimity (all or nearly all politicians and parties agree on the same

position), opposition from the flanks (main parties agree on their position, but minor parties

take the opposite position), dissent from one major party (one major party dissents from the

common view of the other major parties) and political division (there is no elite majority for

either option, or both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ attract robust multi-party coalitions). The coding was

slightly different for the American referendums and this difference is explained by the fact

that the American party system with its dominance by the two major parties is distinctive

from its counterparts in other democracies. On the one hand, the first two categories

5 The categories involved are institutional, fiscal, cultural/educational/legal, agricultural, foreign policy/military,

immigration, socio-economic and ecological.

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(depolitisation and (quasi)-unanimity) were coded similarly as for the other cases. Opposition

from the flanks and dissent from one major party were, on the other hand, coded differently.

In the first scenario, we coded referendums in which there was a strong majority composed of

bipartisan elites with legislators from one party opposing. In the second scenario, a similar

majority was found but the opposition came from both parties. Finally, we coded referendums

as ‘political division’ in the numerous cases where Republicans favored a measure while

Democrats opposed it, or vice versa. Additionally, we created a variable concerning elite-

voter congruency, containing three distinct categories: congruency, when elites and voters

agree on ‘yes’ or ‘no’, incongruency, when elites say yes but voters say no or vice versa, and

a third category containing all the cases without a political majority. This variable will serve

as the main dependent variable in our analyses.

We will go through three steps in analyzing our results. In the first step, we will present some

general descriptive statistics of the data we gathered. In the second step, we will test the six

hypotheses we presented earlier on one by one. In the third and final step, we will make a first

attempt towards a general model for explaining congruency and incongruency in referendum

outcomes.

Results

Descriptives

In total, we included 450 cases in our dataset. In Table 1, we summarized these referendums

by country and result.

[Insert Table 1 here]

As we can see, the number of ‘yes’-votes is about even with the number of ‘no’-votes. Most

of our cases (54.6 percent) are in Switzerland, but we managed to gather a relatively

reasonable number of cases from other jurisdictions. Table 2 infra summarizes the data from

the elites’ perspective.


Especially in the American cases, there is often no clear political majority. This is explained

by the high number of cases when Democrat and Republican elites are split on an issue. An

even higher rate (66.7 percent) of absence of elite majority is found in Canada. More

interesting, however, is that when there is a political majority, this majority advises ‘yes’-

14

votes far more often than ‘no’-vote. This is especially the case for the Irish referendums

included in the analysis.


Looking, finally, at the position of the heads of government, we have first to note that, in

many cases, there is no data on the position of the government or head of government in a

majority of our cases. This is especially problematic for the Swiss case (in which data are

missing on the earlier referendums) and the US cases. The fact that we have limited data on

the position of the head of government has induced us to look, for the rest of the analyses,

uniquely to the position of the parties in the legislature. While a pragmatic choice, we also see

some more theoretical reasons to do so. First, between our cases, the position of the head of

government is starkly different: in the US case, it is an independent and strongly political

position for which separate elections are held. In the Swiss case, the government (composed

of seven members) always acts in unison and is strongly based on consensus amongst the

members. In most other cases, the head of government is a single person with a political

profile, but this person is not directly elected and accountable to the legislature. Second, the

legislature is, in the end, representing the population at-large, something which is true for all

the cases we incorporate in our study; it is also the legislature which forms the prime object of

the studies by Kriesi (2006, 2005), by which this study is inspired.

Testing the Hypotheses

The first hypothesis we test assumes that in referendum campaigns in which there is intra-elite

consensus, we expect elites’ and voters’ positions to be congruent. Table 4 shows the level of

congruency in four configurations. Both when elites are unanimous (elite unanimity) and

when a large majority of elites is united behind a particular measure (elite strong majority),

the results show that elites’ and voters’ positions are aligned in more than 80 percent of the

cases. This proportion drops to 76.5 percent in cases where an elite majority is found but with

opposition from one major political formation (elite majority). In contrast, the figures show

that incongruent outcomes are the most frequent outcome (65.5 percent of the cases) when

elites are divided on an issue.


The second hypothesis assumes that voters are expecting to favor the status quo and vote

against the measure in referendums where elite abstain from positioning. Our findings

15

confirm this expectation. As showed in Table 5, out of the 112 cases in which there is no elite

majority supporting or opposing a measure, 67 cases (or almost 60 percent) lead to a no-vote.

Besides, Table 6 depicts the trends for referendums in which elite cues do not apply. In the

first line, we present figures when elites abstain from taking position (depolitisation). Out of

the 15 cases in which elites abstain from taking a stand, 11 (or almost three out of four

measures) lead to a no-vote. Among these votes, eight were measures put on the ballot in

Arizona, two in British Columbia, and one in New Zealand. The four cases in which voters

supported the measure even though there were no elite cues available were measures put on

the ballot in both Arizona and California and aim at banning smoking in public places,

sentencing for drug possession, amending the justice courts and the business income tax. The

second line presents figures in cases where the elites are divided on a specific measure and

there is thus no clear majority in support or against the measure. In this situation, elite offered

cues but these cues are not clear. We consider voters to be left in a situation similar to the one

where elite abstain. In this situation, the results show, voters most likely (57.9 percent of the

cases) oppose the measure. As mentioned supra, voters are supposed to have limited

information on the ballot propositions (Christin et al., 2002; Lupia, 1994b). As a result, they

rely extensively on recommendations provided by political elite. Yet, when they are left with

no partisan recommendations, our results suggest that voters opt for the status quo with the

aim to avoid any undesired consequences.

[Insert tables 5 and 6 here]

Our third hypothesis examines the voters’ decision in contexts with an extensive use of

referendums. We expect voters in Switzerland and the United States, the two countries with

the most extensive use of referendums, to be more inclined to follow elite recommendations

due to voter fatigue and complex and lengthy ballot measures. Table 7 first looks at the

congruency between elites’ and voters’ positions among high- and low-frequency referendum

countries. Out of the 293 cases put on the ballot in Switzerland and the United States, 230

cases (or almost 80 percent) involve congruent results between elites and voters. This

confirms our hypothesis. When looking at cases in low-frequency referendum countries, the

proportion of congruent outcomes drops to 60 percent. These results suggest that Swiss and

American voters mimic elites and follow their cues in about three out of four cases.


16

Looking at Table 8, we can see the rates of outcome congruency for both referendums

involving foreign policy and other referendums. As shown, the percentage of incongruencies

does not differ much between referendums involving foreign policy and other referendums.

This is somewhat surprising, since the hypothesis was drawn from the theoretically well-

founded framework of Schneider and Weitsman (1996). However, at the same time, we have

to note that the number of referendums on foreign policy included in our dataset is limited

(37), and all but two concern the cases of Ireland and Switzerland. Yet, even if we only select

cases from these countries, the difference between foreign policy referendums and other

referendums remains weak. Indeed, the speculated singularity of foreign policy referendums

might well be more related to a few cases (mostly relating to the EU) which attracted a lot of

attention, but were not part of a structural pattern per se.


In Table 9, we checked for the relation between whether referendums include ‘institutional

issues’ and whether referendums lead to a rift between elites on the one hand and voters on

the one hand. Earlier on, we predicted that this might be the case, referring to theories of elites

pursuing self-interest and principal-agent theories. Our findings indeed confirm this

expectation. Of the 52 referendums on institutional issues where a clear elite majority was

formed, 1 (or more than percent) lead to a result which was contrary to the elites’

recommendations. By flipping a coin, we would expect 50 percent, underlining the weakness

of elite-voter linkage concerning this topic. Of the 286 other referendums with a clear elite

majority, on the other hand, only 60, or just over 20 percent, witnessed a same adverse

outcome. Chi-square was significant at .05, and jack-knifing procedures confirmed the

robustness of the result.


In Table 10, finally, we checked for our sixth and last hypothesis: whether elite-voter rifts

were less likely when socio-economic issues were involved. We argued that elites were more

likely to represent voters, and voters more likely to follow elites, due to the subject

corresponding to general lines of conflict in politics. As we can see, of the 126 referendums

on socio-economic issues on which elites took a clear position, only 21, or just short of 17

percent, saw a result which was contrary to the position of the elite majority. This is

significantly lower than the 28 percent observed for all the other referendums. Chi-square was

significant at .05, and results remained robust even while omitting either the Swiss or the

17

California and Arizona cases, indicating that this the observed relation indeed part of a

structural pattern.


Multivariate model

Finally, we ran a model to see if our hypotheses hold up when combined into one multi-

variate model (Table 11). Given the restricted statistical power of the data and the covariance

between some of our independent variables (notably the subject-related variables linked to

hypotheses 4 to 6), we might expect the results to be particularly weaker when put into a

multivariate model. We ran a generalized binary probit model with congruency as the

dependent variable; incongruency was taken as the response, while congruency was taken as

the control value. As independent variable, we included variables related to Hypothesis 3

(whether a referendum was held in a high-frequency or low-frequency environment), as well

as a four-value variable lining out whether the main topic was foreign policy, institutional,

socio-economic or another subject. These variables contributed to model 1 as well as model 2.

In model 2, we additionally included a variable on elite positioning.


As we can see, in the initial multivariate model, the effects of hypotheses 3, 5 and 6 remain

by-and-large standing, although they lose some statistical significance. In model 2, we can see

that the effect of the national/regional environment largely disappears when controlled for

elite positioning, which might indicate that different countries and regions are characterized

by distinctive patterns of elite positioning. he ‘substantial’ hypotheses 5 and 6, however,

retain their power, although we have to note that they remain statistically significant under

only the most flexible of statistical barriers. Moreover, we did not test the multivariate model

yet under multi-level assumptions, even while the problem we are confronted with is clearly

multi-level (referendums nested within countries). For now, we say that this is only a primary

attempt towards estimating a multivariate model, and that we will consider the complex

nature of the data involved more extensively in future versions of the research paper.

Conclusion

As referendums come and go, some political upsets every now and then seem inevitable. This

paper has, however, shown that upsets are to some extent foreseeable. Our findings point to

the conclusion that three factors might influence the probability of a political upset: elite

18

positioning, geographical context and the subject of the referendum. Patterns of elite

positioning were not uniform from one referendum campaign to the other. While voters in

Switzerland, the UK, and Germany were provided with clear elite majority in support or

against a specific ballot proposal in almost all of the cases considered in this analysis, this was

to an extent less the case in New Zealand, and even lesser the case in Canada and the United

States. We argued that absence of a clear elite majority has implications for voting behavior.

In fact, voters are expected to have rather limited information on the referendum and to rely

therefore on elite cues (Christin et al., 2002; Lupia, 1994). Previous research has emphasized

the importance of elite consensus for the outcome of the vote (de Vreese, 2006; Kriesi, 2006;

Trechsel and Sciarini, 1998). We found that voters closely followed elites in cases where the

latter were reunited behind a project. In cases where there was unanimity among elites and

where there was a large elite majority, congruent results between elites and voters were

secured in more than 80 percent of the cases. Congruency waned, however, where elites were

less united. Knowing that voters rely on elite cues to take a decision on referendum

campaigns, we expect voters to favor the status quo in referendums where elite cues are not

offered. We found that in the absence of elite cues voters tend to opt for a no-vote.

Additionally, we expected incongruency to be more frequent where referendums are less

frequent. We indeed found that outcome results in Switzerland and the two US states – the

two countries where referendums are very frequent - to be relatively more congruent than in

the other cases. We have to be careful with interpreting this result, however, since it is drawn

from only a few cases, and it seems to disappear in the multivariate model. Finally, we looked

at the relationship between elites’ and voters’ positions in referendums on specific subjects.

We found that the electorate’s vote on socio-economic issues was congruent with the elite

recommendations in higher proportions than on other issues. The level of congruency for

institutional matters was, to the contrary, lower than the general level of congruency.

Reflecting on our results, we can come to several provisional conclusions. First, referendums

and initiatives are comparable over time and political settings, if we focus on those aspects of

referendums which are common to most of the (widely varying) settings out there. This opens

the door to extending our dataset to even more cases. Several other US; states have direct

democratic institutions, although not as intensively applied as in Arizona and California.

Including more US states might broaden the scope of our research. Moreover, referendums

have simultaneously taken place in other contexts. France, the Netherlands, Denmark, for

instance, have held referendum on EU treaties. In Latin America, Uruguay is the leader

19

country in terms of the frequency of use of referendums and voters are found to widely follow

elite cues (Altman, 2012). They can be part of another analysis in which the scope of the data

will be extended.

Second, our study suggests that elite cues are not only important in the context of legislative

elections, but also in the context of referendum campaigns. Some studies of referendums have

addressed this (see, e.g., Christin et al., 2002; Lupia, 1994; Trechsel and Sciarini, 1998).

Other referendum studies to date, have either assumed that elite do not take positions in these

campaigns or if they do, it happens on rare occasions (Budge, 2001; Gerber and Lupia, 1995;

Magleby, 1984) or acknowledged the role of political elite in referendum campaigns but

ignored to encompass in a truly cross-national comparative perspective.

Third and finally, our research might lead to a rather upbeat conclusion: voters tend to follow

political elites, but they are able to resist elites in uncommon but substantial cases. This

implies that direct democracy is neither a means to rubberstamp elite decision, nor the venue

of a perpetual elite-voter conflict. Voters are able to reject elites’ positions, but do so with

moderation. Moreover, they tend to do reject elites’ positions more when they have good

reason to suspect elites’ interests (when institutional issues are involved) and when issues are

not part of daily political competition. We can interpret both dynamics as a healthy part of

political representation; direct democracy might have its perverse consequences in individual

cases, but from a bird’s eye view, all looks fine and well.

Appendices

Table 1: Referendum Results by Countries

‘Yes’ ‘No’ Total

Switzerland

119

48.4%

127

51.6%

246

100%

Ireland

9

63.9%

5

36.1%

14

100%

United Kingdom

0

0%

1

100%

1

100%

New Zealand

2

66.7%

1

33.3%

3

100%

Germany

(subnational)

20

71.4%

8

28.6%

28

100%

Arizona

26

47.3%

29

52.7%

55

100%

California

44

45.4%

53

54.6%

97

100%

20

Canada

(subnational)

1

16.7%

5

83.3%

6

100%

Total

221

49.1%

229

50.9%

450

100%

Table 2: Elite Majority by Countries

‘Yes’ ‘No’ No maj. Total

Switzerland

141

57.3%

94

38.2%

11

4.5%

246

100%

Ireland

13

92.9%

0

0%

1

7.1%

14

100%

United Kingdom

0

0%

1

100%

0

0%

1

100%

New Zealand

0

0%

2

66.7%

1

33.3%

3

100%

Germany

(subnational)

15

53.6%

12

42.9%

1

3.6%

28

100%

Arizona

17

30.9%

7

12.7%

31

56.4%

55

100%

California

20

20.6%

14

14.4%

63

64.9%

97

100%

Canada

(subnational)

2

33.3%

0

0%

4

66.7%

6

100%

Total

208

46.2%

130

28.9%

112

24.9%

450

100%

Table 3: Head of Government’s Position by Countries

‘Yes’ ‘No’ No opinion Total

Switzerland

52

18.7%

46

21.1%

148

60.2%

246

100%

Ireland

14

100%

0

0%

0

0%

14

100%

United Kingdom

0

0%

1

100%

0

0%

1

100%

New Zealand

0

0%

2

66.7%

1

33.3%

3

100%

Germany

(subnational)

17

60.7%

11

39.3%

0

0%

28

100%

Arizona

10

18.2%

2

3.6%

43

78.2%

55

100%

California

34

35.1%

13

13.4%

50

51.5%

97

100%

Canada

(subnational)

2

33.3%

0

0%

4

66.7%

6

100%

Total

127

28.2%

77

17.1%

246

54.7%

450

100%

21

Table 4: Congruent Outcomes between Voters and Elites When Elites are United

Incongruent outcome Congruent outcome Total

Elite Unanimity 14

18.2%

63

81.8%

77 (77)

100%

Elite Strong Majority 14

18.4%

62

81.6%

76 (77)

100%

Elite Majority 38

23.5%

124

76.5%

162 (163)

100%

Elite Division 15

65.2%

8

34.8%

23 (118)

100%

Total 81

24%

257

76%

338 (450)

100% Total number of observations (including cases without elite majority) in-between parentheses. Chi-Square = 24.2

(sig at <. 1). Kendall’s τ = -3.008 (sig at <.01).

Table 5: A Majority of Voters Oppose Ballots When No Clear Elite Majority Emerges

Support Oppose Total

No clear majority

among elites

45

40.2%

67

59.8%

112

100%

A majority favors the

measure

150

73.2%

55

26.8%

205

100%

A majority opposes

the measure

23

17.7%

107

82.3%

130

100%

Total 218

48.8%

229

51.2%

447

100% χ² = 1 . 1 (sig at <. 1). Kendall’s τ = 3.997 (sig at <.01)

Table 6: Voters Favor the Status Quo in Absence of Clear Elite Cues

Support Oppose Total

Elite Depolitisation 4

26.7%

11

73.3%

15

100%

Elite Division 40

42.1%

55

57.9%

95

100% Two-tail binomial P-value = .047.

Table 7: Voters Widely Follow Elite Cues in High-Frequency Referendum Countries


Low-frequency

referendum countries

18

40%

27

60%

45 (52)

100%

High-frequency

referendum countries

63

21.5%

230

78.5%

293 (398)

100%

22

Total 81

24%

257

76%

338 (450)

100% Total number of observations (including cases without elite majority) in-between parentheses. Yates’ cc = 6.35

(sig at <.05)

Table 8: Foreign Policy Referendums Do Not Differ Much from Referendums on Other

Topics


Foreign policy

referendums

10

27.0%

27

73.0%

37 (37)

100%

Other referendums 71

23.6%

230

76.4%

301 (413)

100%

Total 81

24%

257

76%

338 (450)

100% Total number of observations (including cases without elite majority) in-between parentheses. Yates’ cc = . 67

(n.s.)

Table 9: Institutional Referendums Draw More Incongruent Outcomes


Institutional

referendums

21

40.4%

31

59.6%

52 (77)

100%


21.0%

226

79.0%

286 (373)

100%

Total 81

24%

257

76%

338 (450)

100% Total number of observations (including cases without elite majority) in-between parentheses. Yates’ cc = . 6

(sig at <.01)

Table 10: Socio-Economic Referendums Draw More Congruent Outcomes


Socio-economic

referendums

21

16.7%

105

83.3%

126 (170)

100%


28.3%

152

71.1%

212 (280)

100%

Total 81

24%

257

76%

338

100% Total number of observations (including cases without elite majority) in-between parentheses. Yates’ cc = 5. 5

(sig at <.05)

23

Table 11: Multivariate Analysis

Model 1 Model 2

Constant -.340 -.773

Referendum in Switzerland or US (H3) -.413* -.173

Subject: foreign policy (H4) .117 .031

Subject: institutional (H5) .365* .392*

Subject: socio-economic (H6) -.271* -.305*

Subject: other .000a

.000a

Elite position: unanimity .000a

Elite position: opposition f/extremes .035

Elite position: one major party dissenting .273

Elite position: elite division 1.233***

N 338 338

Omnibus χ² 14.93*** 31.11***

McFadden R² .147 .306 (1=incongruent outcome, 0=congruent outcome).

a: serves as reference group. * is significant at the .10 level,

*** is significant at the .01 level.

24

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Party Elites in Referendum Campaigns: Involuntary Subjects or Skilful Puppeteers?

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