The misuse of referendums in post-communist Europe

Abstract

Referendums can be an efflective device of popular control only if a broad issue of principle is at stake, if the people clearly understand the issue, if they have strong and enduring views about it, and if the options on the ballot correspond to those views. In the early 1990s, referendums on the ‘civilizational choice’ facing Eastern Europe might have met those conditions. But by 2003, referendums on EU accession did not. The issue was no longer an issue of principle: it was about ‘deals not ideals’. For the public, the key criterion was the likely costs or benefits to their families – but almost half could not guess what the impact on their families would be. And the options on the ballot excluded the choice of the majority, which was to join later when the deal might be better, and the costs or benefits clearer.

Notes

A Latvian Facts Survey in May 2003 showed that 57 per cent of Latvian citizens, and only 36 per cent of non-citizens in Latvia, supported EU accession; non-Latvians constitute two-fifths of Latvia's population and half of them are excluded from citizenship or participation in the referendum: see Latvian Facts Survey, May 2003, p.8, accessible via <http://www.eip.gov.lv>.

For comparison with public support for the ‘first transition’, see James L. Gibson, ‘A Mile Wide But an Inch Deep'(?): The Structure of Democratic Commitments in the Former USSR’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol.40, No.2 (1996), pp.396–420.

This essay is based on an analysis of the Polish National Election Survey, Sept. 2001 – a random sample representative of the adult population of Poland (aged 18 and above). It was funded by a grant from the Polish National Science Foundation (Komitet Badan Naukowych) to the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, with additional funding from the UK ESRC under grant R000223685 to Glasgow University. Fieldwork, by CBOS, started on 29 October 2001 and ended on 11 November; 1,794 interviews were completed (the refusal rate was 22 per cent). The data set has been weighted by gender, age, educational attainment, place of residence and economic activity.

Paweł Wroński, ‘Tak Jesteśmy w Unii’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 9 June 2003, p.1; see also Colleen Barry, ‘Poland Celebrates Vote to Rejoin European Nations’, Herald (Glasgow), 9 June 2003, p.8.

Guardian, 22 Sept. 2003, p.13.

While ‘twentieth-century America has defined itself as a part of and, indeed, the leader of a broad entity, the West, that includes Europe’, according to Huntington, ‘nineteenth-century America defined itself as different from and opposed to Europe’ (our emphasis): Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Touchstone Books, 1998), p.46.

Economist, 30 Aug.–5 Sept. 2003, pp.19–20 (p.20).

Recalling de Gaulle's description of Britain as ‘America's Trojan Horse’, the French and German media devised the more abusive term ‘Trojan Donkey’ for Poland: see Martin Walker, ‘The European Problem’, National Review Online, 10 June 2003, p.2, accessible via <http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-walker061003.asp>; Nick Thorpe, ‘Why Poland Loves America’, BBC News Online, 30 May 2003, pp.2–3, accessible via <http://www.bbc.co.uk>; and TVP's interview with President Bush, 29 May 2003, p.1, accessible via <http://www.whitehouse.gov/g8/interview5.html>. For the Polish media's response to the term ‘kon’ trojański', see Krzysztof Darewicz, ‘Przydatna Umiejętność Manewrowania. Rozmowa ze Zigniewem Brzezińskim’, Rzeszpospolita, 30 April–1 May 2003, p.A6.

Although not quite comparable with each other, two questions in the Pew Center's 2002 Global Attitudes Project reinforce this point: 79 per cent of Poles had a ‘favourable’ opinion of the US, but only 48 per cent felt the EU had a ‘good influence’ on ‘the way things are going in Poland’; according to these Pew data, Poles were notably more pro-American and less pro-EU than the public in ‘old Europe’: Pew Center, Global Attitudes Project: What the World Thinks in 2002, Tables T48 and T37, accessible via <http://www.people-press.org>.

See Eurobarometer EB59 – CC-EB 2003.2 (published July 2003 – fieldwork May 2003), accessible via <http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion>, Annex B-98, B-99, B-83.

See ‘Pytanie Tygodnia: Kto Jest Bliższym Sojusznikiem Polski?’, Polityka, 7 June 2003, p.22.

Stephen Castle, ‘Bush Visit and EU Poll Test Divided Loyalties of Poles’, Independent, 30 May 2003, p.13.

Timothy Garton Ash, for example, opposed this almost normative division of Europe into ‘old’ and ‘new’: see Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Europa i Ameryka Są na Siebie Skazane’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 20 June 2003, accessible via <http://www1.gazeta.pl/ue/1,36136,1538890.html#dale>.

Ian Taylor, ‘Poland Snubs EU by Buying US Jets’, Guardian, 19 April 2003, p.14.

Alison Chiesa, ‘Bush Outflanked Old Europe by Inviting Poland to the Victors' Table’, Herald, 12 April 2003, p.1; see also Jacek Żakowski, ‘Nasz Ciężki Kawałek Iraku’, Polityka, 17 May 2003, pp.28–32.

Foreign Minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, quoted in Ian Black, ‘Irritation Grows as Stubborn Poland Joins the EU's Awkward Squad’, Guardian Weekly, 13 Nov. 2003, accessible via <http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly>.

Clare McManus, ‘Poland and the Europe Agreements: The EU as a Regional Actor’, in John Peterson and Helena Sjursen (eds.), A Common Foreign Policy for Europe? Competing Visions of the CFSP (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

Oana Lungescu, ‘Poland Presses for EU Action’, BBC World News, 18 July 2003, accessible via <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/839162.stm>.

The importance of possessing a European identity while simultaneously retaining a regional and Polish identity has been discussed extensively in the Polish media by leading academics such as Professor Janusz Reykowski: see Wojciech Szacki in conversation with Janusz Reykowski, ‘Europejczyk Wielopoziomowy’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 19 Aug 2003, p.12; see also Piotr Sztompka, ‘My, Europejczycy’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 19 Aug. 2003, accessible via <wysiwyg://dol.232/http://www2.gazeta.pl…/htm/1626/a1626776.htm&tablica = DOCUMENT>; Clare McManus-Czubińska et al., ‘Understanding Dual Identities in Poland’, Political Studies, Vol.51, No.1 (2003), pp.121–43.

Aleks Szczerbiak, Referendum Briefing No.5: The Polish EU Accession Referendum (2003), p.1, accessible at <http//www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/SEI/oern/index.html>.

Ibid., p.6.

Concerns over the right of foreigners to buy Polish land after EU accession have been consistently debated in the Polish media: see Sylwia Szparkowska and Andrzej Stankiewicz, ‘Nie Wykupujś Polskiej Ziemi’, Rzeczpospolita, 22 April 2003, pp.A1 and A3.

However, EU funding will also be available to promote regional cooperation and to fight unemployment; for details of the amounts for which Poland may apply during its first years of EU membership (2004–06), see Jakub Jasiński, ‘Dla Regionów i Bezrobotnych’, Rzeczpospolita, 1 Sept. 2003, accessible via <wysiwyg://23/http://www.rzeczpospolita.pl/dodatki/plun_030901/plun_a_2.html>.

See ‘Lepiej za Parę Lat’, Rzeczpospolita, 2 Sept. 2003, accessible via <wysiwyg://162/http://www.rzeczpospolita…j/kraj_a_2.html?k = on;t = 2003082820030903>.

Szczerbiak, Referendum Briefing, p.7.

See, for example, Prime Minister John Major, Commons Hansard Debates, 29 June 1992, col.585; Attlee's phrase is regularly quoted in the British parliament by anyone opposed to a referendum.

For a brief summary of the case for and against the use of referendums, see David Butler and Austin Ranney, ‘Theory’, in David Butler and Austin Ranney (eds.), Referendums Around the World: The Growing Use of Direct Democracy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), pp.11–23.

Ian Traynor, ‘Abortion Issue Threatens Polish Admission to EU’, Guardian, 30 Jan. 2003, p.17.

Mikołaj Lizut, ‘Masoni Podrzucili Giertycha’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 23 July 2003, accessible via <http://www1.gazeta.pl/ue/1,36136,1590426.html>; see also ‘Giertych o UE z Zagranicznymi Dziennikarzami’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 3 June 2003, accessible via <http://www1.gazeta.pl/ue/1,42343,1511639.html>.

Szczerbiak, Referendum Briefing, p.7.

Stephen Castle, ‘Poland Backs EU Membership with a Resounding “Yes”’, Independent, 9 June 2003, p.8.

Marcin Kowalski, ‘W Unii Dzięki Papieżowi – Mowi Abp Henryk Muszyński’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 10 June 2003, accessible via <http://www1.gazeta.pl/ue/1,36136,1522826.html>.

Szczerbiak, Referendum Briefing, p.10.

For a generation that phrase, ‘settled will of the people’, characterized the moves towards devolution in the UK which culminated in the referendums of 1997: see, for example, its use in the speech of Secretary of State for Scotland John Reid, Devolution – a Partnership of Parliaments, 19 July 1999, accessible via <http://www.scottishsecretary.gov.uk>.