Referendums from below: some reflections

This book has examined how referendums from below serve as opportunities that are particularly conducive to broadening participation as well as enhancing political engagement and understanding among the electorate. Using the campaigns in Scotland, Catalonia and Italy, the book has provided evidence that referendums offer social movements the chance to make a decisive contribution to issues of substantial political importance. By analyzing these movements' resource mobilisation, appropriation of opportunities, and capacity to develop resonant frames, the book has shown how movements have shaped political debates. This concluding chapter summarises the book's main ideas and contributions and considers how some of the traits and patterns identified in the Catalan, Scottish and Italian cases hold in two additional settings: the Icesave referendum in Iceland and the consultation on the Troika's ultimatum in Greece.

The context of the referendums from below: a tale of three crises

This chapter examines the context in which the Catalan and Scottish campaigns for independence developed. It explains how the referendum campaigns were initiated and by whom, arguing that both cases unfolded as the result of a concatenation of three coexisting crises: territorial, democratic and socioeconomic. First, Catalonia and Scotland suffered from a long-term crisis of territorial consolidation. Second, the Great Recession has brought about austerity policies, tightened government budgets, cuts in public spending, and dramatic increases in unemployment, inequality and poverty, while working conditions have worsened. Third, a crisis of democratic legitimacy has developed hand in hand with the socioeconomic turmoil. These three dimensions have resulted in two parallel mobilisation campaigns due to two key mechanisms: grievance formation and appropriation of opportunities. The chapter shows how electoral de-alignment and availability of allies facilitated the transformation of latent potential into concrete actions in the Catalan and Scottish referendums from below.

Referendums from below: an introduction

This book examines how social movements exploited windows of opportunity offered by institutions of direct democracy, in particular through referendums ‘from below’, and the ways in which the socioeconomic and political crisis of neoliberalism affected the referendums' dynamics and results. It considers events that have been either promoted or appropriated by social movements, such as the referendums in Scotland, Italy, Iceland, and Greece, and the consultation on independence in Catalonia. It also discusses the transformative impact of participation from below on the organisational strategies as well as the framing of the referendum campaigns. This chapter provides an overview of normative conceptions of democracy, social movements, and referendums; how referendums presented opportunities for movements; contentious referendum campaigns; issues surrounding the framing of referendum campaigns; and two cases of consultations that involved social movements in Scotland and Catalonia.

Expanding the comparison: the water referendum in Italy

This chapter examines the 2011 water referendum in Italy, focusing on the appropriation of opportunities, resource mobilisation, and the framing of the campaign by social movements and civil society organisations. It shows that some of the characteristics of the referendums from below that were observed in Scotland and Catalonia also fit the Italian case. In terms of appropriation of opportunities, the referendum against the privatisation of water supply was far from a single-issue campaign, instead emerging from long-lasting struggles that made use of a multiple and varied repertoire of contention, including institutional and unconventional forms of action. The chapter also discusses how the closing down of opportunities at the national level and the availability of political allies at the local level prompted the use of forms of direct democracy. Finally, it demonstrates how the provision of water became a symbol of resistance to neoliberalism and austerity policies in Italy.

The organisational strategies of movements in referendums from below

This chapter examines the organisational aspects of the referendums from below in Scotland and Catalonia and the participation of various social movements in those campaigns. It first considers the role of pro-independent political parties and their interactions with the relevant movements before looking at some of the most significant movement organisations active in campaigns around the issue of referendums in the Catalan and Scottish cases. In particular, it discusses the organisational structures and repertoires of contention of the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) and Women for Independence (WFI) in Scotland, and the Plataforma pel Dret a Decidir/Platform for the Right to Decide (PDD), the Assemblea Nacional Catalana/National Catalan Assembly (ANC), and the Òmnium Cultural in Catalonia. The chapter shows that two factors impinge on the nature of the organisational strategies adopted by movements in referendum campaigns: the issue of time and the prevailing political culture in the two nations.

Framing strategies in referendums from below

This chapter examines the framing strategies in referendums from below in Scotland and Catalonia. It considers how the current context of economic austerity, along with the crisis of political legitimacy, have paved the way for the emergence of social justice and democratic-emancipatory frames with higher potential for resonance across audiences (and, therefore, for mobilisation) — to the detriment of other types of frames: the national-identity frame, the socioeconomic frame and the political frame. It shows that the Catalan and Scottish social movements have strategically avoided the traditional nationalist frame in order to expand the movement and avoid being assimilated with other national European movements. It also highlights how the campaigns for self-determination in Catalonia and Scotland shifted their frames towards broader political, economic and social issues to legitimise their discourses, relating their arguments to the national-identity, socioeconomic and political frames.