Regarding the Dutch ‘Nee’ to the European Constitution:A Test of the Identity, Utilitarian and Political Approaches to Voting ‘No’

In June 2005, 61.5% of the Dutch voted ‘nee’ in the referendum on the European constitution. In the present contribution I test hypotheses from the national identity, utilitarian and political approaches to explain this voting behaviour. I collected data in the Netherlands to test whether one of those approaches has been decisive in explaining the referendum outcome. I also provide information about whether specific EU evaluations from these approaches explain the voting behaviour, thus bringing in the discussion on the importance of domestic political evaluations (second-order election effect... Mehr ...