Review article
REFERENDUM ABOUT JOINING SLOVENIA INTO EUROPEAN UNION: INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE VIEW
Damjan Lajh
; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Alenka Krasovec
; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
The article takes a comparative perspective to review the background
to campaign for and result of the Slovenian EU-accession
referendum. The authors describe the EU’s accession referendum
campaign in Slovenia as a ‘cat-and-mouse game’ since the ‘yes’
campaign was outstandingly well organised and synchronised in stark
contrast to the ‘no’ campaign which was poorly organised and came
across as the representative of a narrow set of interests. Irrespective
of this, the large victory (almost 90 percent) of the ‘yes’ camp was
unexpected as was the relatively low turnout (60,4 percent). Two of
the most important reasons for this high support shown at the EU
accession referendum can be traced to a broad consensus among political, social and economic elites and the reorientation of the most
exposed and well-known anti-EU actors towards the NATO accession
referendum that was held simultaneously. Thereby, the article also partially examines the Slovenian NATO-accession referendum but only to the extent that it influenced the campaign and result of the
EU referendum.
Keywords
referendum; Slovenia; European Union; NATO
Hrčak ID:
20833
URI
Publication date:
11.9.2007.
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