Summary: What Ends Justify the Means? Explaining Party Campaign Spending in European Referendums

Abstract

Over the past century, referendums have become a key feature of democratic practice in Europe, as they are being used more frequently (Qvortrup, 2021) and for an increasingly wider range of topics and issues (Silagadze & Gherghina, 2020). Research has shown that this is driven primarily by instrumentalization efforts by political elites (i.e. parties and their politicians), who often initiate referendums (Gherghina & Silagadze, 2021) and do so mainly to achieve institutional, organizational, or electoral goals (see for instance Gherghina, 2019; Hollander, 2019). Yet, only limited scholarly work exists on how these elites engage with referendum campaigns, even though the literature has hinted at their strategic importance. They are considered more influential than electoral campaigns due to a more volatile information context (de Vreese & Semetko, 2004), within which political parties play a key role as information providers (Hartliński, 2019) that can shape referendum outcomes by providing strong and clear cues (see for instance de Vreese, 2006; McAllister & Biddle, 2024). As such, a referendum’s campaign can play a key role in achieving the goals that initially motivated its initiation (Gherghina et al., 2024).