Europinių referendumų poros: kampanijų veikėjai kintančioje struktūrinėje aplinkoje ; Pairs of European Referendums: Campaigning Actors within a Changing Structural Environment

Abstract

Politics of the EU frequently use referendums to legitimise fundamental decisions. Naturally, attention is usually focused on those that end in a NO vote. Historically, governments have always had ways to circumvent such decisions by calling another referendum on a slightly reworded question, e.g. the Maastricht Treaty in Denmark or the Treaty of Nice and the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland. The qualitative comparative analysis showed that these pairs of referendums are distinct and comparable to study the result inversion phenomenon. Hence, the research aim was widened: employing the theoretical approaches of rational choice and new institutionalism, to explore the behaviour of actors participating in campaigns of European pairs of referendums within a changing structural environment. Paired referendums pose new challenges to actors of the institutional level (governments, parties and stakeholder groups). It was observed that governments tend to manipulate formal rules of referendums and aim to influence the process of second referendums. Next to the rational choice aided by the new institutionalism, the change in positions of YES and NO camps was registered by reconstructing constantly changing political discourses for each specific moment. This revealed that during second referendums and despite the participation of same actors, the voting is no longer on the same issue but on a differently presented and perceived treaty, i.e. the structural environment is essentially changed.