Exploring the potential for common European politics: cross-national commonalities and differences in the European constitutional referendums

The European Union and especially European political integration have increasingly become subject to public contestation. The need to build consensus across different national polities severely limits elites' policy options. In this article we investigate the potential to build cross-national coalitions among the European public using data on the referendums on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE). We argue that existing cleavage structures should create both opportunities and hurdles for cross-national cooperation and investigate these patterns in all countries where referendums took place (Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Using binary logistic regressions we find that strong common patterns, especially along party-political lines, co-exist with country-specific factors. These results demonstrate some potential for a supra-national European political space and discourse and that political parties could play a central part in that process.