Winner–loser effects in contentious constitutional referenda: Perceptions of procedural fairness and the Brexit referendum
| Author | Jonathan Rose,Cees van der Eijk |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120932852 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120932852
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2021, Vol. 23(1) 104 –120
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120932852
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Winner–loser effects in
contentious constitutional
referenda: Perceptions of
procedural fairness and the
Brexit referendum
Cees van der Eijk1 and Jonathan Rose2
Abstract
This article addresses a critical gap in the literature on winner–loser effects that consists of the
lack of attention for highly contentious constitutional referenda. It uses unique multi-wave panel
data of over 13,000 people that is unrivalled in size and richness. We estimate causal effects
of the referendum on rarely studied but crucial public perceptions of the fairness of the way a
referendum is conducted. These perceptions pertain to the highly contentious 2016 European
Union (Brexit) referendum in the United Kingdom, which is an ideal-type example of a wider
class of referenda for which similar outcomes can be expected. We use difference-in-differences
methods and find winner–loser effects of a magnitude far greater than ever observed for general
elections. Moreover, we find that these effects not only persist, but even grow over time. The
findings have profound implications for the use of such referenda.
Keywords
2016 UK EU-referendum, 2017 UK general election, Brexit, constitutional referendum,
difference-in-differences, fairness of election, fairness of referendum, procedural fairness,
referendum, winner–loser effect
Introduction
The seminal contribution by Anderson and his collaborators (see for example, Anderson
et al., 2005; Anderson and Guillory, 1997; Anderson and LoTempio, 2002) sparked a lively
field of research on questions of losers’ consent and winner–loser effects. Almost without
exception, this research finds that those who see their preferred side win in elections are
more positive than those whose preferred side lose (cf., Anderson et al., 2005; Beaudonnet
et al., 2014; Blais and Gélineau, 2007; Delgado, 2016; Howell and Justwan, 2013; Martini
1University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
2De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Corresponding author:
Cees van der Eijk, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
Email: cees.vandereijk@nottingham.ac.uk
932852BPI0010.1177/1369148120932852The British Journal of Politics and International Relationsvan der Eijk and Rose
research-article2020
Original Article
van der Eijk and Rose 105
and Quaranta, 2019; Singh et al., 2011, 2012; Van der Meer and Steenvoorden, 2018).
While some disappointment among electoral losers may be expected, the winner–loser gap
can pose substantive challenges to political systems.
Such challenges are of at least two different kinds. The first concerns losers’ consent.
If the group that lost is sufficiently large, and sufficiently disaffected by having lost, the
normative basis of legitimacy of political systems that derives from the consent of the
governed (see for example, Franck, 1992; Locke, 1821 [1689]) may be eroded. The
widely subscribed belief that ‘a democratic political system cannot survive for long with-
out the support of a majority of its citizens’ (Miller, 1974: 951) does not specify how large
that majority should be, but it should be sizable. Losers’ consent can also be a challenge
at more mundane levels, particularly when it undermines voluntary compliance with the
law, collective decisions and policies (cf., Nagin and Telep, 2017; Scholz and Lubell,
1998). This may be the result of lack of diffuse support (in Easton’s terms, 1965). Such
diffuse support is particularly important for electoral ‘losers’. Simply put, it is easy to
support a system that is delivering preferred policies, but it is harder to acquiesce to a
system that is not. Diffuse support helps prevent dissatisfaction or disappointment leading
to rejection of, and refusal to comply with, policies and policy decisions or, in extremis,
rebellion and revolt. Much of the research on losers’ consent relates to diffuse support,
often operationalised by survey questions about satisfaction with democracy.
The second challenge to political systems that derives from winner–loser gaps relates
not to losers’ consent for substantive policies, but to their possible lack of confidence in
the impartiality of central procedures of democratic governance. Among these are the
electoral processes that determine parliamentary and executive power and in the case of
referenda, substantive political decisions. The focus here is on procedural fairness, which
is more specific than the somewhat nebulous but more commonly used focus on satisfac-
tion with democracy. Yet, procedural fairness is of crucial importance because it relates to
the democratic basis of the legitimacy of governments. Moreover, elections are supposed
to be processes that make inevitable inequalities of political power justifiable (Buchanan,
2002: 710). Thus, if citizens are systematically dissatisfied with elections, and consist-
ently see them as unfair, then there is a very great legitimacy problem indeed. Where
strong winner–loser gaps of this nature exist, it reflects not only doubts about legitimacy,
but a potentially even more severe problem for a democratic system of the politicisation
of legitimacy. Yet, this has been rarely studied, and even where studied is often done by
reference to data from module 1 of the CSES that is now some 20 years old (see for exam-
ple, Singh et al., 2011).
There are important understudied elements within the winner–loser literature. As indi-
cated, one of these involves procedural fairness. Also mostly ignored are winner–loser
effects in referenda (for a recent exception that focuses on a district-level referendum, see
Marien and Kern, 2018). The winner–loser literature almost always focuses on national-
level elections, especially those that decide a country’s executive. Yet, referenda are not
just another context to study winner–loser gaps, they are of major importance because
their outcomes will generally have an impact that lasts far longer than a regular electoral
cycle. Particularly, in the case of contentious referenda that seek to change the constitu-
tional settlement of a country, a referendum can be the most significant electoral competi-
tion for a generation, often carrying (ostensibly) irreversible consequences.
From the literature, it also remains as yet unresolved what kind of dynamics of atti-
tudes and perceptions are generated by being on the winning or losing side in an election,
let alone in the specific context of a referendum. Do winner–loser gaps originate from
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