Cope with Two-Dimensional Cleavage Structure: Party Politics in Referendums on European Integration

This paper is built on two arguments. First, the referendum application often involves a specific issue dimension for political actors. Second, the issue dimension of EU referendums is not always compatible with domestic political cleavages. As a result, in EU referendums political parties faces a two-dimensional political space in which the integration cleavage cuts across the domestic political cleavage. Party behaviour within such a two-dimensional political space is then analysed deductively by a two-player game-theoretic model as well as empirically via the recent Irish referendums on the Nice Treaty. Note: This is a paper still in progress. Comments are extremely welcome!