Contesting the European Union? Why the Dutch and the French Rejected the European Constitution

The process of establishing a constitution for Europe came to an end when voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the proposal. Analyzing both media coverage and survey data, this article seeks to disentangle the reasons why a majority of voters rejected the European Constitution. The authors’ findings suggest that the campaign played an important role in priming certain attitudes and that vote choices, in turn, were driven by specific issue concerns rather than general dissatisfaction with the European Union or national governments. These findings have implications not only for our understanding of direct democracy in Europe but also for the study of campaign effects.