Accounting for internal variation in nationalist mobilization: unofficial referendums for independence in Catalonia (2009–11)

Abstract

Between September 2009 and April 2011, around one‐half of the Catalan municipalities held unofficial referendums on independence from Spain, in which more than 800,000 citizens took part. However, the participation rates were unevenly distributed across Catalonia. In this paper, using an original data set, we aim to respond to two relevant questions: first, why in some municipalities the referendum took place and in others it did not occur. Second, why did the referendum achieve high rates of turnout in some localities and much lower participation in others. We find that the resources available to the movement, the intensity of the mobilization efforts, the participatory tradition of the municipalities and the size of the nationalist ‘sentiment pool’ in each locality explain to a great extent the internal variation in nationalist mobilization in Catalonia.

Secessionist Urges in Catalonia: Media Indoctrination and Social Pressure Effects

“…There was, in addition, a noticeable concordance between the turnout distribution in the consultation of the 9 th November 2014 16 , and the map of turnouts built by Muñoz and Guinjoan (2013) from the series of unofficial referendums for independence held across Catalonian municipalities, in the period 2009-2011, as a warming up of the secessionist wave. 58.3% of Catalan municipalities representing 77.5% of the whole population organized these unofficial referendums.…”

“…Muñoz and Guinjoan (2013) showed that differences in turnout across municipalities and counties were explained by local factors: the resources of the secessionist movement, activism intensity and the magnitude of the nationalist "sentiment pool" in each locality. Media attention, size of locali-ties and origin of the citizenry were also important.…”

Marrying European and Domestic Politics? The Marriage Referendum in Croatia and Value-Based Euroscepticism

“…Empirically, we examine the European dimension of the marriage referendum at the level of cities and municipalities, following common practice in referendum research (on marriage referendums see, e.g., Glaurdić and Vuković 2016;McVeigh and Diaz 2009; for other types of referendums see, e.g., Charnysh 2015;Muñoz and Guinjoan 2013). By linking the marriage referendum to the previous (2012) EU referendum and the 2013 European Parliament elections, the article explores whether there is evidence of a relationship between the Croatian marriage referendum and anti-EU politics, and thus whether referendum voting behaviour is associated with value-based Euroscepticism in Croatia.…”

Promoting participation at a time of social and political turmoil: what is the impact of children’s and young people’s city councils?

“…A phase of intensive nationalistic-separatist mobilisation had begun in 2010 and probably reached its climax in 2014. It can probably be best understood as a coming together of popular movements and political and cultural elites (Crameri, 2014;Gillespie, 2015;Prado, 2014) in which various methods are used (Muñoz & Guinjoan, 2013). A general election was held in autumn 2011 with highly charged contributions to debate.…”