Abstract
Referendums were historically and theoretically justified as a people’s veto. Do voters use them as such or are referendums merely second-order votes? This article aims to answer this question through a comparative study of all constitutional referendums around the world between 1980 and 2022 using a VP-Function model. The results indicate that the support for constitutional referendums follows a pattern in which compulsory voting, economic conditions and voter mobilisation are important. Contrary to findings in more generic studies of referendums, there is no indication of a ‘honeymoon’ period for constitutional referendums. Also, in contrast to other studies, the presence of emotive words and what may appear as ‘leading questions’ favour higher support, though this is not present in countries with compulsory voting. The results contribute to the study of referendums and to the wider debate about voters’ preferences by showing that political factors are more important than structural factors.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 352-370 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | West European Politics |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 12 Jan 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 23 Feb 2025 |
Bibliographical note
© 2024 the author(s). published by informa uK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Keywords
- Referendums
- constitutional change
- compulsory voting
- emotive wording