EU-sentiment predicts the 2016 Dutch referendum vote on the EU’s association with Ukraine better than concerns about Russia or national discontent
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165231157612 |
| Author | Koen Abts,Tom Etienne,Yordan Kutiyski,André Krouwel |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EU-sentiment predicts the
2016 Dutch referendum
vote on the EU’s association
with Ukraine better than
concerns about Russia or
national discontent
Koen Abts
Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven, Belgium
Tom Etienne
Department of Political Science and Annenberg School for
Communication,University of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia, PA, USA
Yordan Kutiyski
Kieskompas (Election Compass), Amsterdam, the Netherlands
André Krouwel
Department of Communication Science and Political Science,
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Abstract
This article utilises large-N panel data to compare two theories of referendum voting
behaviour in order to understand the ‘for’or ‘against’vote in the 2016 Dutch referen-
dum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. It studies the extent to which voting
behaviour was predicted by Eurosceptic attitudes and fear of upsettin g Russia (issue-
based theory), versus dissatisfaction with the Dutch government and general political
discontent (second-order theory). Our findings indicate that issue-based determinants
predict the referendum vote better than second-order predictors. However,
Corresponding author:
André Krouwel, Department of Communication Science and Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
De Boelelaan 1105, HV 1081, the Netherlands.
Email: andre.krouwel@vu.nl
Article
European Union Politics
2023, Vol. 24(3) 494–515
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165231157612
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Eurosceptic attitudes and government satisfaction both outperform concerns about the
relationship with Russia as a predictor. We thus provide evidence that the issue-based
and second-order approaches to explain voting in EU referendums are complementary,
but not equal in explanatory strength.
Keywords
Euroscepticism, referendum, Russia, the Netherlands, Ukraine, voting behaviour
Introduction
Since the early nineties, the ‘permissive consensus’about the European project has grad-
ually waned across Europe, culminating in a ‘constraining dissensus’in more recent years
(Hooghe and Marks, 2009). This is best illustrated by the ‘Brexit’vote in the UK, the vast
electoral support for Euro-critical parties across the continent, and the increasing public
disenchantment with European integration (Hobolt and de Vries, 2016). The Netherlands
–one of the six founding member states of the European Union (EU) –is a crucial case-
study in this sense. While the country has historically been characterised by overall posi-
tive public attitudes towards the EU, Euroscepticism prominently reared its head as early
as 2005 in the national referendum on the ratification of the European Constitution, which
was rejected by a majority of voters (Aarts and van der Kolk, 2006). Subsequent opinion
polls and elections continued to indicate growing discontent with the European project
(Lubbers and Jaspers, 2011), resulting in another national referendum in April 2016
initiated by grassroots anti-EU movements. While this referendum concerned a specific
association treaty between the EU and Ukraine (the EU-Ukraine Association
Agreement), the campaign focused more broadly on economic, cultural, geopolitical,
and sovereignty issues, with opponents of the treaty emphasising potential job losses,
mass-immigration, threats to national identity, provoking the President of Russia
Vladimir Putin, as well as the erosion of national sovereignty and self-determination –
issues that typically shape the pro/anti-EU debate (Hendriks et al., 2017).
This campaign’s framing allowed anti-EU political protagonists to tap into both gen-
eralized feelings of resentment and anti-EU attitudes. While both government parties (the
Party for Freedom and Democracy, VVD, and the Labour Party, PvdA), as well as most
major opposition parties in the political centre and on the left (Democrats 66, D66, the
Christian Democratic Appeal, CDA, Christian Union, CU, and Green-left, GL) were in
favour of the treaty, both the radical right (Party for Freedom, PVV) and radical left
(Socialist Party, SP, and Animal Party, PvdD) campaigned against the treaty. Their out-
spoken anti-elitist rhetoric placed particular emphasis on what they called the excessive
powers of the ‘bureaucratic’supranational EU-institutions and ‘corrupt’establishment
elites as well as on the negative impact of a potential free movement of labour from
Ukraine on the Dutch job market and social security. Moreover, the low salience of
the referendum’s technical content allowed the Eurosceptic parties to appeal beyond
their core electorates, as voters relied on party cues (van der Brug et al., 2018). In addition
Abts et al. 495
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