The recent French and Dutch referendums on the proposed EU constitution were quite different from the first Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty in at least two ways.
The first difference was the turnout - 69 per cent in France and 63 per cent in the Netherlands, compared to 35 per cent in Ireland.
A second notable difference is the higher level of underlying knowledge both of EU affairs and of the provisions of the proposed constitution that prevails in France and in the Netherlands.
For example, in a recent Eurobarometer, France ranked 12th and the Netherlands ranked 6th on a scale of knowledge of the provisions of the proposed constitution, while Ireland ranked 24th. All of this makes it much more difficult to go back to the French and the Dutch electorates to ask them to think again. The reaction might well be "What part of the word No do you not understand?" and the answer might well be a more emphatic No.
This sharpens the dilemma facing the European Union heads of government as they meet on Thursday evening to ponder the implications of the revolt of the masses. Should they, as some political leaders have hinted and many commentators (and many opponents of integration) have advocated, abandon the ratification process or should they see it through to a final popular assessment of the proposed constitution based on the totality of referendums and parliamentary votes that have occurred or are scheduled to occur in all member-states?
Pragmatism as well as principle will influence Thursday's decision and part of the pragmatic calculation will be based on estimates of the state of public opinion in each country. The Irish Times/TNSmrbi poll conducted last Tuesday and Wednesday provides a timely snapshot of Irish opinion. On the issue of holding a referendum, Irish opinion is narrowly supportive - 45 per cent say that the referendum should go ahead, while 34 per cent say it should not and 21 per cent don't know.
Working out the implications of these preferences requires knowing where each side is coming from. Cross-tabulating preference regarding the holding of a referendum with intention to vote Yes/No shows that a majority of those who do not want a referendum would vote No if one were held. However, a significant minority (one-quarter) of those supporting the holding of a referendum would vote No, presumably reflecting a view that the best way to really kill off the constitution is to have a vote and vote it down.
But what of the voting intentions of the electorate as a whole? If the EU leaders were to agree to proceed with the ratification process and the Irish referendum were to go ahead, what would the outcome be?
It is obvious that, at this stage, prior to the launch of a campaign, one cannot predict the outcome. What one can say is that, were the referendum to be held tomorrow and on the basis of the current attitude and state of knowledge of the electorate, the proposal to adopt the new EU constitution would in all likelihood be defeated. One can also note that the balance of current voting intentions - 30 per cent for, 35 per cent against and 35 per cent don't know - is considerably more negative than the balance of voting intentions in the final Irish Times poll prior to the first Nice referendum.
It should be emphasised again that, because it cannot take into account the impact that a campaign would have (and we know from Nice 2 that the campaign can be crucial), this is not a prediction. What it does tell us is that the campaign would be an uphill one that would have to reverse the current negative balance of voting intentions.
As to the targets of such a campaign, the evidence points to males, farmers and older people as the ones who are currently most negative in their attitude to the proposed constitution. Of the supporters of the political parties, the surprising finding is that Fine Gael supporters are the second most negative - second to Sinn Féin supporters and just a shade more negative than Green Party supporters.
It is highly probable that the current balance of opinion in Ireland is partly due to a contagion effect stemming from the French and Dutch decisions. It is quite possible that this will have worn off by the time an Irish referendum is held. However, if the Irish referendum were to be held in the autumn, there would be the risk of additional contagion stemming from a possible No vote in the Danish referendum scheduled for September 27th.
The magnitude of the challenge facing supporters of the constitution is further indicated by a glance at the trend in Irish attitudes as measured by the "unite fully" versus "protect independence" question used in the series of Irish Times polls to track underlying attitudes to integration over time. Chart 1 shows that, at 45 per cent, support for the protect independence option is higher in the current poll than at any previous time.
This is not to say that all of those who favour protecting independence would vote No to the new constitution. As the chart shows, support for the protect independence option was about the same in the last Irish Times/TNSmrbi poll of the Nice 1 campaign as it was in the last poll of the Nice 2 campaign but the outcome in each case was very different. On the other hand, the deficit in support for more integration relative to the protect independence option now stands at 9 percentage points. The deficit is 23 percentage points among those living in rural areas and 26 percentage points among farmers.
Paradoxically, the one thing that might encourage the Government as it ruminates over whether to hold a referendum on the EU constitution is the low level of knowledge that, as noted above, Irish people have of the constitution and of EU affairs generally. The silver lining arises here because knowledge is related to attitudes - the more people know, the more supportive they are of integration and the more likely they are to vote Yes - and knowledge can be improved. As Chart 2 shows, people's sense that they understood at least something about the Nice treaty improved substantially between Nice 1 and Nice 2. However, the current poll shows that people's state of knowledge of EU treaty and constitutional issues has reverted to the unimpressive level that obtained at the end of the Nice 1 campaign. The difference of course is that, as of now, the referendum campaign has not even begun. Assuming a referendum goes ahead, supporters of the new constitution will be hoping that a vigorous campaign will succeed in informing the electorate and in securing their assent.
The question of whether the referendum (and by implication the remaining processes of ratification in other member-states) should proceed raises the fundamental issue of popular participation in what is essentially part of the complex process of international relations. The traditional view (at national and European level) was that these matters were best left to the elite and indeed to an elite within the elite.
The problem for the EU is that this option has passed it by. Partly because of the times we live in, partly because of the decision of the EU (then the EEC) to go down the route of direct elections to the European Parliament, and partly because so many countries have voluntarily or involuntarily set the precedent of directly consulting their electorates, the process of building Europe cannot be disentangled from the process of popular participation.
European leaders may buy some time (aka "a period of reflection") on Thursday but the price will include an eventual encounter with European electorates in which the issue of building Europe will be subject to renewed and intensified popular scrutiny.