Proxy Politics, Economic Protest, or Traditionalist Backlash:
Croatia’s Referendum on the Constitutional Definition of Marriage1
Josip Glaurdić
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
Department of Politics and International Studies
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, CB3 9DT
United Kingdom
jg527@cam.ac.uk
+44-750-327-7011 (corresponding author)
Vuk Vuković
Lecturer
Department of Economics
Zagreb School of Economics and Management
Jordanovac 110
Zagreb, 10000
Croatia
vuk.vukovic1@gmail.com
1
The authors express their gratitude to Ms. Irena Kravos of the Croatian Electoral Commission, Ms. Ivanka
Purić of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, Ms. Mirna Valinger of the Croatian Tax Administration, and in
particular to Dr. Maruška Vizek of the Institute of Economics, Zagreb for invaluable help with data collection.
1
This article sheds light on the popular sources of opposition to the extension of gay rights in
Eastern Europe by analysing the results of the 2013 Croatian referendum on the constitutional
definition of marriage – the first referendum of this kind in Europe. Contrary to popular
interpretations, our aggregate-level analysis reveals that the referendum results primarily
reflected the pattern of support for the two principal electoral blocs, rather than communities’
traditionalist characteristics or grievances stemming from economic adversity. The article thereby
stresses the importance of embedding the issue of contention over gay rights in Eastern Europe
into the context of conventional political competition.
There is arguably no issue demonstrating the sociocultural rift between Europe’s East and West better than the
issue of same-sex marriage and gay rights in general (Štulhofer & Rimac 2009). Violence against gay activists
and gay pride participants in a string of East and Southeast European countries is perhaps only the most visible
aspect of that rift. No less significant, however, are the clear differences between East and West European states
in the legal treatment of gay rights, as well as the pervasive political opposition to change in this sphere of
human rights in Eastern Europe (Holzhacker 2013), which appears to be grounded in the persistent negative
popular attitudes toward homosexuality (Brajdić Vuković & Štulhofer 2012; Inglehart & Welzel 2005). In spite
of some valuable efforts at exposing the process of politicisation of (homo)sexuality in individual East European
states (e.g. Keinz 2011; Mole 2011; O’Dwyer 2012; Turcescu & Stan 2005), our understanding of the popular
sources of opposition to the extension of gay rights in the region is still limited. We attempt to change that by
analysing the results of Croatia’s 2013 referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage – a milestone in
the political battle over gay rights in Eastern Europe. Over the past decade and a half, referendums and ballot
initiatives have been used by conservative activists in more than thirty US states as a method of prohibiting
same-sex marriage (Lax & Phillips 2009). The Croatian referendum was the first of this kind in the European
context.2
2
Three referendums close in their subject matter to Croatia’s took place in June 2005 in Switzerland, June 2011
in Liechtenstein, and March 2012 in Slovenia. The Switzerland and Liechtenstein referendums were concerning
registered partnership laws. They were both approved: by 58% of the voters in Switzerland and 68.7% of the
voters in Liechtenstein. The Slovenian referendum was regarding the new Family Law which was to give
registered same-sex partnerships all rights of married heterosexual couples except adoption. The law was
rejected, with 54.5% voting against on a 30.3% turnout. Ireland was the second European country to hold a
referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage on 22 May 2015. The referendum question defined
marriage as a union between two persons regardless of sex. The measure passed with 62% of the votes.
2
On 1 December 2013, in a landslide referendum vote, Croatian voters supported the insertion of a
definition of marriage as a ‘life union between a woman and a man’ into the constitution. Their decision,
coming after a bitter campaign which pitted a politically savvy new conservative movement backed by the
Catholic Church on the one side, and the government, the largest media outlets, and the loose coalition of leftleaning NGOs on the other – offered more questions than answers. Was this merely a traditionalist backlash of a
deeply conservative Southeast European country against change coming from the European Union or the West
in general? Was it a form of an economic protest vote actually aimed at the disappointing performance of the
ruling centre-left government coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP)? Or was underneath all of this
– in spite of the fact that nearly all Croatian regions voted ‘yes’ and in spite of the pro-referendum activists’
seeming detachment from mainstream politics – the pattern of competition between the two principal electoral
blocs: the centre-left SDP and the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)? In other words, was the
referendum a form of conventional politics by proxy? Answering these questions is important not only because
it will shed a new light on the politics of gay rights in Croatia and the rest of post-communist Eastern Europe,
but also because it will give us a better understanding of the process of interaction between conventional politics
and popular demands for direct democracy in the region.
Our analysis is based on an original dataset which is comprised of referendum results, series of
economic and socio-demographic variables, as well as results of Croatia’s 2011 parliamentary elections – all
collected on the aggregate level of more than 500 Croatian municipalities. In that sense, it is comparable to the
studies of referendums in the American states which were based on county-level data (e.g. Camp 2008;
McVeigh & Diaz 2009). Each one of our three lines of inquiry – proxy politics, economic protest, and
traditionalist backlash – is represented by a set of independent variables, which are also supplemented with a
number of important controls. Data is analysed using the beta maximum likelihood estimation method, which is
supplemented with an examination of the comparative effect size of all independent variables.
The remainder of the article is organised as follows. We first provide an overview of the Croatian
referendum campaign, as well as the general political context in which it took place. Then we present our
principal hypotheses, which are derived from the literature on popular attitudes toward homosexuality and gay
rights, as well as the growing literature on same-sex marriage referendums in the United States. We structure
our review of these literatures according to their findings on the individual, social context, and political level.
We then present our data and methods, as well as results and interpretations of our findings. Our final section
3
concludes, while drawing parallels between the Croatian referendum and similar initiatives in various US states,
as well as providing implications for the future of politics of gay rights in Eastern Europe and the EU in general.
The referendum campaign and the Croatian political context
When it comes to gay rights and popular attitudes toward homosexuality, Croatia was no regional outlier in
early 2013. It had its share of violent outbursts against gay pride marches (Bronic 2012). Its legislation on samesex partnerships (Zakon o istospolnim zajednicama) was curt and limited to certain financial and inheritance
rights (Hrvatski sabor 2003b) and its Family Law (Obiteljski zakon) actually already defined marriage as a ‘life
union between a woman and a man’ (Hrvatski sabor 2003a). Croatia’s centre-left government, which came to
office in December 2011, paid lip-service to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, but did little
to change this legislative situation. The public opinion on homosexuality also fit the general East European
pattern, though it was somewhat less homonegative than in the rest of Southeast Europe (Brajdić Vuković &
Štulhofer 2012). In other words, there seemed to be no particularly ‘special’ reason why a conservative
movement pushing for a referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage surfaced in Croatia in early
2013. Not least because Croatia’s referendum legislation was actually rather restrictive, with a requirement of
supporting signatures by 10% of all registered voters (about 450,000 signatures) which were to be collected
within a 15-day period (Hrvatski sabor 2001). Indeed, until 2013, Croatia held only two national referendums –
the independence referendum in 1991 and the referendum on accession to the EU in 2012 – both of which were
requested by the president and the parliament. The referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage was
thus the first referendum in Croatian history which was organised due to popular demand.
For careful observers of the politics of gay rights in Eastern Europe, however, the emergence of the
campaign for the constitutional definition of marriage in Croatia was less surprising because it took place almost
concurrently with the country’s 1 July 2013 accession into the EU. This followed a similar pattern found in the
rest of the region. Although recognition of same-sex marriage was never part of conditions for EU accession,
EU institutions have pushed East European accession candidates to start treating LGBT rights as human rights
(Kollman 2009). However, rather than an improvement in rights and liberties of the LGBT population, the
immediate effect of EU accession in a number of new member states was a significant political and social
backlash (O’Dwyer 2012), leading some to consider the impact of EU conditionality in this policy area as
‘Potemkin harmonisation’ (O’Dwyer & Schwartz 2010). The emergence of a conservative social movement at
4
this particular historical juncture in Croatia’s political life was, thus, arguably a product of its interaction with
the process of Europeanisation mandated by the European Union.
The referendum was successfully lobbied for by a citizens’ initiative called ‘In the Name of the Family’
(U ime obitelji) which had the support of the leaders of all religious communities (IKA 2013) and a decisively
strong backing of the Croatian Catholic Church.3 The initiative was officially founded in March 2013, though it
had its roots in the conservative civil activist groups and right-wing political parties which had earlier led a
highly visible campaign directed against the health education curriculum proposed by the Croatian Ministry of
Education. One of the principal bones of contention was the curriculum’s supposed ‘promotion of
homosexuality’ and ‘homosexual propaganda’ (AZOO 2013; GROZD 2013). Joined together under the
umbrella of ‘In the Name of the Family’, these conservative activists cited the French movement ‘Mayors for
Children’ (Maires pour l’enfance) as a direct inspiration for their new initiative. Unlike France, where there was
an ex post negative popular reaction to a new law granting marriage rights to same-sex couples, with many
mayors refusing to marry same-sex couples in their constituencies – leaders of the Croatian movement claimed
they wanted to react ex ante, i.e. before any similar change in the status of same-sex partnerships was
implemented by the Croatian government. They wanted the legal definition of marriage as outlined in the
Croatian Family Law to be transferred into the constitution, thus conceivably preventing any future moves
toward the equalization of marital rights between homosexual and heterosexual couples.
‘In the Name of the Family’ presented itself to the public in April 2013 and started an intensive
campaign with crucial organisational and logistical support from Catholic clergy. It also cultivated transnational
ties with conservative activists in the United States. The initiative claimed to finance itself mainly via donations
and to rely on the work of over 6000 volunteers. Their full sources of financing, however, remained unknown,
as they repeatedly refused to publicly disclose their donors’ identities (HRT 2013a). The legally required
collection of referendum signatures took place between 12 and 26 May 2013 on more than 2000 locations across
Croatia, many of which were local churches. During that period there were multiple reports of verbal, and at
times also physical, abuse against the pro-referendum activists by individuals in mostly urban areas (e.g. Korljan
2013). In spite of such outbursts of public disapproval, and in spite of stark opposition to the referendum arising
from civil society associations representing the LGBT community, as well as the generally negative attitude
toward ‘In the Name of the Family’ by the mainstream media and the government, the initiative managed to
3
In the immediate run-up to the referendum, the Jewish community withdrew its support for the campaign of ‘In
the Name of the Family’ (Kovačević Barišić 2013).
5
collect 749,316 signatures which were turned over to the Croatian Parliament on 14 June 2013. This completed
the first step in their push for the referendum. What remained was for the government to check the validity of
the signatures, and for the Croatian Parliament to either challenge the constitutionality of the proposed
referendum question in front of the Constitutional Court or to set a date for the actual vote.
The summer that followed was dominated by various procedural challenges to the referendum initiative
by the members of the governing Kukuriku Coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP).4 None of these
challenges, however, came to fruition. The signature count confirmed that their number indeed satisfied the
legal requirement.5 And the governing coalition was forced to opt against a constitutional challenge – most
likely because it would have been nearly impossible to argue the unconstitutionality of the referendum question
which merely restated the already existing legal definition of marriage from the Family Law (that was drafted,
no less, by the SDP-led coalition in 2003). On 9 November the Parliament thus called for the referendum to be
held on 1 December. And on 14 November the Constitutional Court issued its opinion that a possible victory for
the ‘yes’ camp carried immediate legal effect, while also suggesting that the issue of constitutionality of the
referendum question was misplaced because of a lack of parliamentary challenge (Ustavni sud 2013). The
intervention of the Constitutional Court was the final confirmation that the pro-referendum activists managed to
outmanoeuvre their opponents in the government and the NGO sector.
The campaign, however, only intensified in the run-up to the vote. President Ivo Josipović, Prime
Minister Zoran Milanović, and most cabinet ministers from the SDP and its coalition partners openly supported
the ‘no’ campaign, as did the majority of the mainstream media (Tportal.hr 2013; Klančir 2013). Almost all
major newspapers and news portals published editorials opposing the referendum and inviting readers to vote
‘no’ (e.g. Mijić 2013; Pavičić 2013). On the other hand, the principal opposition party – the centre-right
Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) – officially expressed support for the referendum initiative and called on its
members to vote ‘yes’ (HDZ 2013). Although this led prominent members of the ruling coalition to suggest that
the referendum was an HDZ ploy aimed at destabilising the government (Dnevnik.hr 2013), the referendum
initiative actually presented a significant challenge for the HDZ. The party was in the midst of internal
ideological and power struggles following the 2011 electoral defeat, as well as facing criminal proceedings for
4
The coalition was named after the Kukuriku Hotel near Rijeka where the constituent parties (Social
Democratic Party (SDP), Croatian People’s Party (HNS), Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS), and the Croatian
Pensioners’ Party (HSU)) signed their coalition agreement.
5
The final confirmed number of valid signatures was 683,948 (Hrvatski sabor 2013).
6
illegal party financing dating back to the era of the disgraced former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader who had been
sentenced to ten years in prison for corruption. ‘In the Name of the Family’ was thus threatening to hijack the
right side of the political spectrum and to step into the HDZ’s space. HDZ rank and file, as well as party local
leaderships, actively supported the referendum and campaigned for its success, but the national bosses took a
somewhat detached role in an effort to ‘clip the wings’ of the movement’s most prominent leaders. The ruling
social democrats, on the other hand, took a diametrically opposite approach. Their national leadership vocally
criticised the referendum, but they failed to offer any meaningful grassroots support for the ‘no’ camp.
An additional catalyst of political conflict in the run-up to the referendum was the simultaneous
campaign of various war veterans’ organisations, united in the association ‘Centre for the Defence of the
Croatian Vukovar’ (Stožer za obranu hrvatskog Vukovara) for the limitation of the use of Cyrillic script only to
communities where Serbs constituted a majority. Croatia’s Constitutional Law on the Rights of National
Minorities guarantees equal use of minority script and language in areas where minority population exceeds one
third of the total population, rather than a half, as demanded by the Stožer (Hrvatski sabor 2002). The
government’s attempt to implement this law in the town of Vukovar – site of the greatest battle of Croatia’s war
for independence, where the 2011 census showed the Serbs now constituted 34.9% (i.e. over one third) of the
population, however, resulted in a series of protests during the fall of 2013, with the activists mounting a drive
for another national referendum.6 Government officials and the mainstream media thus strongly campaigned for
the ‘no’ vote on the marriage referendum not only because they viewed it as a discriminatory manipulation of
the constitution, but also because they were afraid of a dangerous precedent being set which could plunge
Croatia into a spiral of constitutional instability (Patković 2013).
The government’s efforts, however, were to no avail. On 1 December, the ‘yes’ camp recorded a clear
victory with 65.9% of the votes, though on a somewhat disappointing turnout of only 37.9%. Nineteen out of 21
Croatian counties voted ‘yes’, with only the westernmost Istria and Primorje bucking the trend. The press – in
Croatia and throughout Europe – saw the result either as a sign of a conservative revolution backed by the
Catholic Church or as backlash against the government which failed to spark Croatia’s economy out of its deep
recession (Economist 2013; Radosavljevic 2013). The referendum certainly did not seem to have any immediate
political consequences. Although the HDZ supported the referendum, particularly at the grassroots level, a
public opinion survey done immediately after the referendum showed no change in popular support for the
6
The proposed referendum question was proclaimed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in August
2014.
7
opposition or the coalition government (HRT 2013b). In spite of speculation about the HDZ’s co-optation of the
highest leadership of ‘In the Name of the Family’ (Puljić-Šego 2014), this did not materialise. A number of
high-profile referendum activists actually led the formation of a new right-wing electoral bloc called Alliance
for Croatia (Savez za Hrvatsku), which wanted to challenge the HDZ as the dominant party of the right, but soon
fizzled out. Moreover, in July 2014 the governing coalition passed a new Law on Same-Sex Life Partnerships,
which de facto equalized same-sex partnerships with marriage in all matters except adoption (Hrvatski sabor
2014). The referendum, therefore, failed to halt the expansion of rights of same-sex couples in Croatia, which
are today arguably at the highest level in Eastern Europe.7 The issue seems to have disappeared from the public
scene without any real understanding of the foundations of Croatian voters’ choice.
Attitudes toward homosexuality and support for gay rights: deriving hypotheses
Research on popular attitudes toward homosexuality and gay rights has a long history. It has been reinvigorated
and pushed into new directions with the issue of same-sex marriage becoming a major subject of political
contention in the United States over the past decade and a half. Researchers have attempted to embed the wave
of same-sex marriage ballot initiatives and referendums which have taken place in more than thirty American
states into the general stream of research on US electoral politics, with special attention given to the effect of
conflicts over same-sex marriage on voter mobilization, transformation of traditional party cleavages, and the
supposedly deepening cultural gulf between liberals and conservatives. When it comes to research on the
attitudes toward homosexuality and the politics of gay rights outside the context of US referendums, we can
identify two general strands – one concentrating on values and demographic characteristics of individual voters
and their families, and the other focusing on the impact of the larger social context, such as community
openness, tolerance, equality, as well as economic performance.
Individual-level research has shown virtually every demographic characteristic – such as race, class,
gender, family status, age, education, income, and religion – as significant in determining attitudes toward gay
rights. A number of studies have demonstrated that, when it comes to homosexuality in general, men tend to be
less tolerant than women (Brajdić Vuković & Štulhofer 2012; Britton 1990; Yang 1997), older people tend to be
less tolerant than younger people (Inglehart 1990; Loftus 2001), blacks tend to be less tolerant than whites
7
Of the post-communist East European states, only Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Slovenia – in
addition to Croatia – have provisions for same-sex partnerships, but their legislation is more limited than the
Croatian Law on Same-Sex Life Partnerships.
8
(Abrajano 2010), those who are married with children tend to be less tolerant than those who are not (Dejowski
1992), and those who could be considered working class tend to be less tolerant than the so-called professionals
(Andersen & Fetner 2008). Whereas findings on the effect of income have been more varied (Gaines & Garand
2010), education has been consistently shown as a crucial predictor of liberal attitudes toward homosexuality –
leading some to attribute the recent rise in support for gay rights largely to the increase in the proportion of
people pursuing university education (Herek & Glunt 1993; Loftus 2001; Treas 2002). Ultimately, however,
variables reflecting traditional values and religious identities have been demonstrated to have a decisive impact
on attitudes toward homosexuality in general, as well as same-sex marriage and gay rights. Prejudiced attitudes
toward homosexuality have thus been shown to be correlated with support of traditional sex roles (CottenHuston & Waite 1999; Polimeni, Hardie & Buzwell 2000), whereas support for gay rights has been shown to be
lower among those who subscribe to traditional moral values (Brewer 2003; Campbell & Larson 2007; Wilcox
et al. 2007). Similarly, when it comes to religious identity, more homonegative attitudes have been found among
Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and evangelical Protestants than among Catholics (Brajdić Vuković & Štulhofer
2012; Campbell & Monson 2008) as well as among those who consider themselves religious or attend religious
services more often (Brewer 2003; Haider-Markel & Joslyn 2005; Wilcox et al. 2007).
Studies examining the impact of social context on attitudes toward homosexuality and on political
decisions regarding gay rights have also made important contributions. Just like the proponents of contact theory
convincingly demonstrated that people with gays or lesbians among their personal contacts have more tolerant
attitudes toward homosexuality (Barth, Overby & Huffmon 2009; Cullen, Wright & Alessandri 2002),
researchers have also found aggregate levels of tolerance to be higher in larger and more open communities, as
well as in communities with higher proportions of same-sex couples (Gaines & Garand 2010; Overby & Barth
2002; Stephan & McMullin 1982; Štulhofer & Rimac 2009). On the other hand, areas where traditional gender
roles and marriage patterns prevail (and particularly where communities are weak) have been shown to be less
supportive of gay rights (McVeigh & Diaz 2009). More intriguingly, research has also shown the level of
tolerance of homosexuality and acceptance of gay rights to be positively correlated with the level of economic
development, economic equality, as well as economic performance in general (Andersen & Fetner 2008;
Hodges Persell et al. 2001; McVeigh & Diaz 2009; Uslaner 2002). In other words, economic adversity and
inequality likely have a negative effect on social trust and tolerance.
When it comes to referendums on same-sex marriage, individual attitudes toward homosexuality and
gay rights (with critical influence of various aspects of the social context) obviously get channelled through the
9
more or less regular political process. In many ways, they are projected through the lens of the already existing
political competition, with parties and individual political players taking various stances on the issue of samesex marriage based on their own electoral calculus. When it comes to the United States, those stances and the
resulting policies more often than not reflect the general public opinion, with some bias in favour of preferences
of religious conservatives due to their very well organised and powerful interest groups (Lax & Phillips 2009).
Aggregate-level research in the American context has indeed shown voting patterns in state referendums to be
significantly related to voting patterns in regular elections, with more Democratic counties and states tending to
be more in favour of same-sex marriage (Camp 2008; McVeigh & Diaz 2009).8 This is evidently a partisan
issue, even if the mainstream parties are not always – or even most times – setting the public agenda when it
comes to referendums and ballot initiatives regarding same-sex marriage. The agenda is most often set exactly
by those well organised religious conservative groups which have used this issue not only to effect real policy
change, but also to mobilise their largely evangelical base and to implicitly shift the foundations of support
within the Republican Party (Camp 2008; Campbell & Monson 2008).
Considering these findings in the literature and considering the idiosyncrasies of the Croatian
referendum campaign, we decided to structure our inquiry around three (sets of) hypotheses – dealing in turn
with the possible effects of political allegiances; economic performance; as well as traditional values, gender
roles, and marriage practices on referendum results.
H1: Level of support for the constitutional definition of marriage has a positive relationship with
the level of support for the HDZ and a negative relationship with the vote for the SDP-led
coalition.
H1a: Voter turnout in the referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage has a positive
relationship with the level of support for the HDZ and a negative relationship with the vote for the
SDP-led coalition.
As already discussed, in the US context researchers have generally found a strong connection between party
affiliation/vote share and support for same-sex marriage on the aggregate level (Camp 2008; McVeigh & Diaz
2009). In the Croatian context, levels of support for the HDZ and the SDP-led coalition are basically proxies for
the principal left-right line of political division, as these two players have consistently captured between two
thirds and four fifths of all votes, as well as about 90% of parliamentary seats in the last decade and a half. Our
past research has also shown that the cleavages between these two parties/blocs have remained remarkably
8
But see Gaines & Garand (2010) for conflicting individual-level evidence.
10
stable during this period (Glaurdić & Vuković 2015b). Studies examining the referendums and ballot initiatives
restricting same-sex marriage in US states have, furthermore, found these initiatives to have a somewhat
complex mobilizing effect on voters, with evangelical Republicans coming out to the polls in droves and the
secularists – Republican and Democrat – demobilising (Camp 2008; Campbell & Monson 2008). In spite of this
complex US dynamic, we hypothesise that in the Croatian context the marriage referendum was a mobilising
event for the HDZ voters and a demobilising event for the voters of the ruling SDP-led Coalition.
H2: Level of support for the constitutional definition of marriage has a negative relationship with
the level of economic performance.
While economic development has been consistently shown to be a solid predictor of positive attitudes toward
gay rights and same-sex marriage (Brajdić Vuković & Štulhofer 2012; Kelley 2001; Štulhofer & Rimac 2009),
the impact of economic performance variables such as income, unemployment, or reliance on social welfare has
been more mixed (Gaines & Garand 2010; McVeigh & Diaz 2009). Nevertheless, consistent with the literature
suggesting that economic hardship can lead to a decline in social trust and tolerance (Hodges Persell et al.
2001), and in order to test a popular interpretation of the Croatian referendum as a form of economic backlash
against an incompetent government, we hypothesise that lower levels of economic performance led to a higher
‘yes’ vote and a lower ‘no’ vote.
H3: Level of support for the constitutional definition of marriage has a positive relationship with
the level of prevalence of traditional gender roles and marriage patterns, as well as religious
identification.
As discussed earlier, individual level studies have consistently shown family status, attitudes toward gender
roles, and various aspects of religious beliefs to have a strong relationship with attitudes toward gay rights and
same-sex marriage (Brewer 2003; Campbell & Larson 2007; Haider-Markel & Joslyn 2005; Olson, Cadge, &
Harrison 2006; Wilcox et al. 2007). These findings have also been confirmed on the aggregate level in the US
context, with the communities characterised by traditional gender roles and family structures, as well as
evangelical Christian beliefs, exhibiting strong opposition to same-sex marriage (McVeigh & Diaz 2009). We
thus expect to find something similar in the analysis of the Croatian referendum results. Our expectations
regarding the various control variables are discussed in the following section.
11
Data and methods
Our data has been collected on the level of Croatia’s more than 500 municipalities and was provided by four
institutions: Croatian Bureau of Statistics (DZS), Tax Administration (Porezna uprava), Croatia’s Electoral
Commission (DIP), and the Croatian Employment Service (HZZ). The focus of our analysis is on communities,
as represented by municipalities, rather than individuals – not only because of the availability of reliable data
with a national reach, but also because we believe attitudes toward issues such as same-sex marriage are
decisively formed through social interaction (McVeigh & Diaz 2009). There are obviously limitations to
drawing individual-level inferences from aggregate-level data, but the nature of the questions we are interested
in makes this methodological choice justified. The descriptive statistics of all the dependent and independent
variables are presented in Table 1.
[Table 1 about here]
We look at referendum results not as a simple binary yes/no choice because we believe that this would
not capture the voting process fully. In referenda voters actually have three choices: to vote ‘yes’, to vote ‘no’,
or to abstain from voting altogether. Our three dependent variables – Marriage Yes, Marriage No, and Marriage
Abstain – are, therefore, the proportions of voters who made those three choices: to vote for the constitutional
definition of marriage as a life union between a woman and a man, to vote against it, or to abstain from voting.9
Figure 1 shows these three variables mapped onto Croatia’s municipalities.
[Figure 1 about here]
Following our theoretical considerations and the discussion of the background to the Croatian
referendum, we cluster our independent variables into four groups: political, economic, traditional, and control.
Our two political variables, HDZ and Kukuriku Coalition, represent the shares of votes for the two largest
electoral competitors in the 2011 election: HDZ and the centre-left Kukuriku Coalition led by the Social
Democratic Party (SDP). As discussed earlier, these two political variables are basically proxies for the principal
left-right line of political division in Croatia akin to the Republican-Democrat division in the US. Considering
9
Looking at the referendum results in this more encompassing way raised the issue of Croatia’s problematic
voter rolls, which have been in administrative disarray for years. Considering the proximity of the 2011 census
to the referendum, and the fact that the census definition of adult residents was virtually identical to the legal
definition of a citizen with the right to vote, we used the census figures for adult residents of a municipality as a
superior measure of the number of voters than the electoral register figures. Furthermore, in our calculations we
considered invalid ballots (0.6% of those who voted) as abstentions.
12
our previously posed hypotheses, this means that in practical terms we expect the higher vote shares for the
HDZ to have a positive relationship with the variable Marriage Yes, as well as a negative relationship with the
variables Marriage No and Marriage Abstain, whereas the opposite should hold for the Kukuriku Coalition.
When it comes to economic variables, we include Unemployment (representing the average monthly
unemployment rate in 2013), Income p/c (monthly per capita net income in Croatian kunas in 2013), and %
Social welfare (proportion of the population receiving social welfare assistance according to the 2011 census).
Following from our second hypothesis, which was posed based on the literature suggesting that economic
hardship can lead to a decline in social trust and tolerance, this would mean that we expect the lower levels of
income per capita, as well as higher rates of unemployment and social welfare assistance, to lead to a higher
‘yes’ vote and a lower ‘no’ vote.
Capturing traditional values regarding family life on the aggregate level is challenging. Nevertheless,
we feel our set of four variables – all based on the 2011 census and past aggregate-level research efforts – offer
a solid foundation. The variable % Married thus measures the proportion of families in a given municipality
with couples in a heterosexual marriage; % Divorced measures the proportion of the adult population which is
divorced; % Workforce female represents the proportion of the municipality’s workforce which is female; and
finally % Non-believers represents the proportion of the municipality’s population not belonging to any
organised religion. Considering our third hypothesis, therefore, this would mean that we expect % Married to
have a positive relationship with Marriage Yes and negative with Marriage No, whereas the opposite should
hold for % Divorced, % Workforce female, and % Non-believers.
In addition to the political, economic, and traditional clusters of potential explanatory variables, we
also include six demographic controls which we find to be particularly important: Years of education, Average
age, Log settlement size, % Local born, % Croats, and War disabled per ‘000. Average age represents the
average years of age of the municipality’s population, whereas Years of education represents the average years
of education of the municipality’s population older than 15 years of age – both based on the 2011 census. We
include these variables because research has consistently shown the young and the better educated to have more
tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality and gay rights (Andersen & Fetner 2008; Inglehart 1990; Loftus 2001;
Treas 2002). The variable Log settlement size is our measure of the municipalities’ urban/rural character and we
include it because of the long line of research which has shown the size of locale to be positively related to
13
tolerance (Stephan & McMullin 1982).11 The variable % Local born, on the other hand, attempts to capture not
the size, but the type of communities these municipalities are made of. It represents the proportion of inhabitants
living in their municipality of birth. Our motivation for the inclusion of this variable comes from contact theory
which suggests that negative views of minority groups are based on ignorance, and – since isolation leads to
ignorance – contact can help change that (Allport 1954; Barth, Overby & Huffmon 2009). Although our variable
is by no means a perfect test of contact theory, we believe it captures the extent to which individual
municipalities are composed of insular communities.
Finally, we include the variables % Croats and War disabled per ‘000 because our previous research
has shown them to be the most important determinants of the pattern of voting and turnout in Croatia (Glaurdić
& Vuković 2015b). The first of those two variables represents simply the proportion of Croats in the
municipality’s 2011 population, with higher values consistently leading to higher turnout and disproportionately
higher vote shares for the HDZ. The second variable is based on the number of disabled persons whose cause of
disability was the 1991-1995 war, as tallied in the 2001 census. This variable attempts to capture the effects of
the Croatian 1991-1995 war for independence on individual municipalities, and our past research has shown it to
be the foundation of the strongest electoral cleavage in Croatia, with the communities which suffered more in
the war disproportionately going for the HDZ. We include it in our analysis here in part due to the drive for a
referendum on the use of the Cyrillic script led by the war veterans’ associations, which took place almost
simultaneously to the drive for the referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage.
Since our dependent variables are all proportional variables, distributed narrowly around the mean on a
0 to 1 interval, we were unable to use the ordinary least squares (OLS) method as this would violate the linearity
assumptions of the conditional expectation function. Instead we apply a maximum likelihood estimation with a
11
Log settlement size in our case actually represents the log of the weighted average settlement size in a given
municipality:
Log settlement size = log
where
is the population of a settlement
and
∑
∑
is the number of settlements in a given municipality. Since
each municipality consists of a number of settlements – villages, towns, cities – taking the log of a full
population of a given municipality as a proxy measure for the possible effects of the urban-rural cleavage would
not be methodologically sound. Our measure, we believe, more accurately captures the experience of
municipalities’ inhabitants of living in locales of particular size.
14
beta redistribution (Ferrari & Cribari-Neto 2004; Paolino 2001), deemed appropriate given our sample size and
dependent variables which do not include borderline values of 0 and 1 (Kieschnick & McCullough 2003). We
use the Ferrari and Cribari-Neto (2004) reparameterization of a regression model for a beta distributed
dependent variable and apply a maximum likelihood estimation using the statistical program STATA to estimate
our parameters. We describe the advantages of applying the beta maximum likelihood estimation in greater
detail in Glaurdić & Vuković 2015a. In our estimation we control for heteroscedasticity by applying a robust
estimation of standard errors and test for possible problems of multicollinearity by computing variance inflation
factors (VIF) for all independent variables. We find their values well below the maximum recommended value
of 10 (Marquardt 1970), with the mean value of 2.74.
Although multicollinearity is not an issue, parsing out the effects of our three clusters of explanatory
variables can be difficult. This is particularly the case when it comes to the political cluster, which could be
deemed as causally ‘shallower’ than the traditional or the economic (Kitschelt 2003). To alleviate some
concerns in this regard, prior to employing the full model which includes all our explanatory variables, we test
the impact of each of the three clusters on the referendum outcome independently. While this does not expose
the causal mechanism behind the observed pattern of voting (for example, communities’ traditional values might
be impacting their political allegiances which might in turn impact their referendum vote), it does help us
understand the foundations of this pattern and the comparative explanatory power of the three sets of variables.
Moreover, we should also note that our past research (2015b) has shown that in the Croatian context the pattern
of communities’ party allegiances is not particularly ‘shallow’, but has actually exhibited a great dose of
stability over the past decade and a half. Our full model, employing all three clusters of variables, therefore,
does not merely serve as a ‘technical implementation of Ockham’s razor’ (Kitschelt 2003, p. 63). Rather, in
combination with the other three models, it allows us a fairly comprehensive explanation of the pattern of voting
in Croatia’s referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage.
Results and interpretations
The results of our analysis are presented in Table 2. The columns depict each of the three main dependent
variables as the three possible choices for voters in the referendum (‘yes’, ‘no’, or abstain) within our four
models. In that respect the three columns within each model should be observed simultaneously when
interpreting the effects of an individual explanatory variable on the predicted voting outcome. Instead of the
usual log odds obtained via maximum likelihood estimation, we report average marginal effects primarily
15
because of a more useful and easier interpretation. Average marginal effects predict the change in the dependent
variable as a unit change of the independent variable (for further discussion, see Angrist & Pischke 2009, pp.
103-106). For goodness of fit, we apply the usual R2 statistic and the standard Wald test. We also report the log
likelihood for each of the regressions tested. Here it would be worth mentioning that, as a form of a robustness
test, we performed the same analysis using the OLS method and achieved nearly identical results.
[Table 2 about here]
The most striking results presented in Table 2 are obviously those related to our two political variables
HDZ and Kukuriku Coalition. The findings from both Model 1 and the full model (Model 4) fit perfectly with
our Hypotheses 1 and 1a. Coefficients are in the expected direction and both variables are statistically
significant at the 1% level in eleven out of twelve cases. Moreover, goodness of fit measures in Model 1 are far
superior to those in Models 2 and 3. In fact, they are marginally lower than those in the full model. It is clear
that this referendum was a very partisan event. If we look at the figures in the full model, an extra percentage
point in the 2011 vote for the HDZ brought a net gain at the referendum for the ‘yes’ camp of more than 0.6
percentage points. Similarly, an extra percentage point for the Kukuriku Coalition brought a net gain of nearly
0.5 percentage points for the ‘no’ camp. What is equally interesting, our results suggest that the referendum –
although generally characterized by low turnout – disproportionally brought out the voters in areas of higher
HDZ support, just as we predicted. One extra percentage point in HDZ support implied the rate of abstention
was about 0.6 percentage points lower, whereas one extra percentage point in support for the Kukuriku
Coalition implied the rate of abstention was about 0.1 percentage points higher. Considering these findings, one
could even view Croatia’s referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage as a ‘second-order election’ in
which voters’ choice is a proxy for a vote of confidence in the national government (Reif & Schmitt, 1980).
On the other hand, our results show more limited evidence for the economic backlash hypothesis. Out
of our three economic variables, we only see statistical significance on the 1% level for Income p/c and 10%
level for Unemployment in the No column, as well as on the 10% level for Income p/c in the Abstain column of
the full model. An extra percentage point in the average rate of unemployment thus implied a very modest
decrease in the ‘no’ vote of 0.026 percentage points, whereas 100 Croatian kunas of additional monthly net
income per capita implied an increase in the ‘no’ vote of 0.11 percentage points. These figures are stronger in
the pared down Model 2, with the three economic variables reaching statistical significance at the 1% level in
seven out of nine cases. Interestingly, however, whereas the coefficients for Income p/c and Unemployment are
here in the expected direction, that is not the case for the variable % Social welfare, casting doubt on our
16
Hypothesis 2. Moreover, the goodness of fit measures in Model 2 are substantially lower than in the other three
models. Our finding regarding the impact of income on the level of support for a constitutional definition of
marriage does follow findings on county level in US states which had similar referenda (McVeigh & Diaz
2009). Nevertheless, considering the overall weakness of the findings for all three variables, we would be
reluctant to suggest that our figures demonstrate the referendum results were primarily driven by sentiments of
economic resentment, frustration, or perception of economic threat from the lifting of discriminatory barriers
against homosexual couples.
Our variables capturing traditional gender roles and family structures, as well as religious affiliation, on
the other hand, seem to offer more promise. Our two variables concerned with family structure – % Married and
% Divorced – reach statistical significance in three out of six cases in the full model and five out of six cases in
the pared down Model 3, though with one important difference: in the pared down model % Married seems to
lead to higher ‘no’ vote, whereas in the full model it leads to higher ‘yes’ vote. In spite of this twist, we can
relatively safely say that, just as US counties characterised by traditional family structures demonstrated
opposition to same-sex marriage in various ballot initiatives and referenda (McVeigh & Diaz 2009), so was the
case with Croatian municipalities. Our proxy for traditional gender roles, % Workforce female, on the other
hand, exhibits statistical significance only for the ‘no’ vote in Model 3. This is possibly owing to the fact that in
the post-socialist context gender makeup of the workforce might not be the best way to capture traditional
gender roles. Nevertheless, since we tested our model with several alternative variables (representing the
proportion of female population that is inactive, proportion of housewives among adult women, and the level of
gender segregation in educational fields) all of which were inferior to % Workforce female in improving our
model and also failed to achieve any statistical significance, we are comfortable concluding that traditional
gender roles did not play a part in determining the voting pattern in Croatia’s marriage referendum. However,
judging by the figures for our variable % Non-believers, it seems that religion did play a significant role. As
discussed earlier, leaders of all religious communities expressed support for the referendum and the ‘yes’ camp.
Moreover, measuring religiosity or church attendance on the municipal level was not possible. Our variable %
Non-believers is, therefore, arguably the best possible for capturing religious differences among communities.
And, as the figures in both Model 3 and 4 in Table 2 show, it had a highly statistically significant effect on both
turnout and the ‘no’ vote. An extra percentage point in % Non-believers led to a nearly 0.7 percentage points
lower level of voting abstinence and a 0.1 percentage points higher ‘no’ vote. Interestingly, whereas referenda
on same-sex marriage in the United States led to a demobilization of secularists (Campbell & Monson 2008), in
17
Croatia the opposite seems to have been the case for more secularist communities. As promising as these
findings are, however, we have to note the substantially lower goodness of fit figures for Model 3, as compared
to Models 1 and 4.
Finally, our control variables also yielded some important results. As discussed earlier, past individuallevel research has consistently shown the young and the better educated to have more tolerant attitudes toward
homosexuality and gay rights (Andersen & Fetner 2008; Inglehart 1990; Loftus 2001; Treas 2002). Our
aggregate-level analysis did not produce comparable results. As the full model figures in Table 2 show, Average
age counterintuitively had a negative relationship with the ‘yes’ vote and a positive relationship with the ‘no’
vote. Additional years of education, on the other hand, led to nearly equally higher values for both Marriage Yes
and Marriage No, primarily because they led to higher turnout. When it comes to our measure of the urban-rural
cleavage Log settlement size, we get contradicting results in the first three pared down models, but ultimately
find that it only had a mildly negative effect on Marriage Yes in the full model. Our variable capturing the
openness of the municipalities’ communities, however, did have a statistically significant – though very modest
– relationship with the ‘no’ vote in the full model. One extra percentage point in the variable % Local born
resulted in a 0.025 percentage point decrease in the ‘no’ vote. In other words, residents of municipalities with
more insular communities were less likely to vote ‘no’.
However, arguably the most notable findings when it comes to our control variables are those related to
% Croats and War disabled per ‘000. As Table 2 shows, the variable % Croats consistently led to higher ‘yes’
vote and higher turnout in all four of our models. In the full model, one extra percentage point of Croats in the
municipality’s population implied the rate of abstention was 0.24 percentage points lower and the proportion of
‘yes’ votes 0.28 percentage points higher. Put differently, in areas with higher proportions of minority voters,
the turnout was disproportionally lower – as was the vote ‘yes’. This dynamic can be visually observed on the
lowest map in our Figure 1. The darkest patches – signifying the greatest level of abstention – roughly
correspond to the territory occupied during the Croatian war for independence by the Krajina Serbs. This
territory is today inhabited by both Croats and Serbs and the referendum turnout there was low in both ethnic
communities. Nevertheless, it was exceptionally low in communities with a Serb majority, with figures in some
villages going as low as 2%. We observed a similar dynamic in Croatia’s referendum on EU membership
(Glaurdić & Vuković 2015a). Since there were no reports of any organised boycott or efforts at vote suppression
in either referendum, we can only repeat the conclusion we made in the case of Croatia’s vote on EU
18
membership: low turnout in these municipalities may be seen as evidence of the deeply ingrained post-war
political marginalization of the Serb community which is likely both institutional and self-imposed.
As discussed earlier, our past research has shown the legacy of Croatia’s war for independence – as
proxied by War disabled per ‘000 – to be the foundation of the strongest electoral cleavage in Croatia, with the
communities which suffered more in the war disproportionately going for the HDZ. We included this variable in
our analysis here due to the extremely polarising drive for a referendum on the use of the Cyrillic script led by
the war veterans’ associations. As the figures in Table 2 show, the variable War disabled per ‘000 had a strong
statistically significant effect on all three of our dependent variables in Models 2 and 3. Higher values led to
higher ‘yes’ vote, lower ‘no’ vote, and lower abstention. This would suggest a reinforcing effect of the
concurrent mobilization processes for the two referendums. The effect, however, washes out once we include
the political variables. In Model 1, the coefficients for War disabled per ‘000 even change directions, whereas in
the full model this variable seems to have a positive relationship only with Marriage Abstain. This would
suggest that voters in areas that were more exposed to war violence were also more inclined to abstain from
voting in the marriage referendum – once their political allegiances were taken into account. In other words, the
variables HDZ and Kukuriku Coalition are likely acting as crucial intervening variables here: they are picking
up the differences in the level of communities’ war exposure. Our findings suggest that popular interpretations
suggesting an ideological overlap between the two referendum drives – on the constitutional definition of
marriage and on the use of the Cyrillic script – need to be cautiously reconsidered and need to take political
parties (particularly the HDZ) seriously into account.
[Table 3 about here]
As illuminating as our beta maximum likelihood estimation results are, we wanted to go one step
further than the comparison of the four models and provide a sense of the comparative effect size of all our
independent variables. In order to do that, we estimated Eta-squared13 and partial Eta-squared14 values for each
of our independent variables. Eta-squared can be defined as the proportion of total variation in the dependent
13
Defined as:
=
, where
is the sum of squares of the effect of interest, while
is the
total sum of squares for all effects, interactions and errors in the ANOVA. The formula implies we needed to
use the standard OLS regression to calculate this effect. We felt confident doing that because our OLS results
were nearly identical to the results of our beta maximum likelihood estimation model.
14
=
, where
is the error variance attributed to the effect of interest.
19
variable attributed to an effect of a specific independent variable. The larger the value of Eta-squared, the larger
the effect a particular variable carries, or in other words, the higher the variance attributed to that particular
variable. We also report partial Eta-squared because with Eta-squared the proportion explained by a particular
variable decreases as more variables are added to the model, making it difficult to compare the effect of a
variable across samples. Partial Eta-squared solves this problem by including the unexplained variation in the
dependent variable (the error variance attributed to the effect) plus the variation explained by the independent
variable instead of the total variation in the dependent variable – meaning that any variation explained by other
independent variables is removed from the denominator.
The results of our analysis are presented in Table 3, with the three variables having the highest effect
values clearly marked in each column. As is obvious from our analysis, the two political variables had by far the
largest effects, with the variable HDZ in particular being decisive for both Marriage Yes and Marriage Abstain.
Municipalities’ vote shares for the HDZ were the primary determinants of referendum turnout and support for
the ‘yes’ camp. Turnout was also particularly strongly affected by % Croats and Years of education – variables
that likely had little to do with this referendum per se, but are merely the markers of greater overall electoral
participation. Only in the ‘no’ vote do one traditional and one economic variable – % Non-believers and Income
p/c – show up among the top-3 variables based on effect size, though even there Eta-squared and partial Etasquared values are not particularly high. This leads us to conclude that the referendum results were indeed
primarily driven by the underlying political loyalties – making the referendum a form of proxy political
competition between the two largest electoral camps with the victory not only in the actual result, but also in
mobilization, going to the HDZ.
Conclusions and implications
The Croatian referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage was a milestone in the political battle over
gay rights in Eastern Europe. After a string of referendums and ballot initiatives which succeeded in
constitutionally limiting same-sex marriage in more than thirty US states, this was the first referendum of its
kind in the European context. Conservative activists have mounted similar campaigns in a number of European
countries but only in Croatia have they thus far managed to alter the constitution through a referendum. Judging
by the bitterness of the referendum campaign, their direct democracy initiative intensified the nature of political
competition in Croatia for a period of time, and widened it to include cultural conflicts which were earlier either
absent or only fought on the margins. While it is too soon to pass a definite judgment on the long-term effects of
20
the referendum campaign on Croatia’s domestic politics, the analysis presented in this article does allow us to
draw several larger lessons for our understanding of political conflict over gay rights not only in Croatia, but
also in the rest of (Eastern) Europe.
First, our investigation permits us to draw important parallels with comparable cases in various US
states. Most obviously, a number of similarities could be identified in the patterns of referendum results, as for
example in the impact of income, religious identification, or traditional family structures on the level of support
for the constitutional definition of marriage. Contextual factors driving popular attitudes toward gay rights in
Croatia seem to be similar to those in the United States. Moreover, the very nature of the referendum campaign
in Croatia was in many ways a carbon copy of similar campaigns in the US – with a well organised conservative
group driving the agenda and pressuring not only the centre-left government, but also the centre-right opposition
into action. In other words, our discussion gives credence to those who see a migration of political contestation
over the issue of same-sex marriage and gay rights from the United States across the Atlantic.
Unlike the United States, however, where the conservative religious groups managed to translate their
political capital earned in referendum battles over same-sex marriage into influence over the Republican Party,
in Croatia conservative activists were pushed to the sidelines after the referendum and did not manage to
penetrate into the leadership ranks of the HDZ. Considering the results of our analysis, this was hardly a
surprise. Indeed, our strongest finding is that the pattern of results in the Croatian referendum on the
constitutional definition of marriage reveals that the referendum was a form of politics as usual – in spite of the
organisational strength of the conservative activists gathered by ‘In the Name of the Family’ and in spite of the
precarious state of the HDZ. Most popular interpretations of the outcome of the referendum considered the
landslide victory for the ‘yes’ camp either as a protest vote against the poor economic performance of the ruling
coalition, or as traditionalist backlash against a way of life imposed from above (or the outside). We have shown
that these factors were of secondary importance in determining the pattern of referendum results.
This, of course, could simply be a function of the strength of Croatian parties and the party system,
which have demonstrated resilience uncharacteristic of the rest of the region. Nevertheless, we would expect to
observe similar dynamics throughout Europe – East and West. European parties, particularly in more
institutionalized and established party systems, are likely more capable of dominating these sorts of direct
democracy challenges than is the case in the United States. This does not mean that European political parties
will not be put under increasing popular pressures for different social policies, particularly if the rise of far-right
groups continues and if they attempt to broaden their appeal through various direct democracy initiatives. When
21
it comes to same-sex marriage, the dramatic slowdown in EU enlargement, coupled with the fact that most East
European states already have constitutional definitions of marriage, may imply this issue is settled. We would
argue, however, that the drastic contrast in this policy area between Eastern and Western Europe means the
potential for conflict is still far from exhausted.
22
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28
Table 1. Descriptive statistics
Mean
St.dev.
Min
Max
Marriage Yes
0.274
0.111
0.007
0.818
Marriage No
0.083
0.051
0.006
0.262
Marriage Abstain
0.640
0.102
0.165
0.971
HDZ
0.179
0.097
0.003
0.675
Kukuriku Coalition
0.244
0.098
0.019
0.523
1739.2
463.1
415.8
3258.4
Unemployment
0.218
0. 099
0. 052
0. 566
% Social welfare
0.055
0.034
0
0.216
% Married
0.812
0.035
0.684
0.901
% Divorced
0.032
0.012
0.005
0.071
% Workforce female
0.416
0.041
0.208
0.506
% Non-believers
0.035
0.037
0
0.232
Average age
42.64
3.33
33.1
63.3
Years of education
9.84
0.87
5.93
12.13
Log population
3.01
0.54
1.65
5.78
% Local born
0.636
0.122
0.219
0.944
% Croats
0.889
0.172
0.018
1
8.54
8.08
0
64.98
Income p/c
War disabled per ‘000
29
Table 2. Beta maximum likelihood estimation results
Model 1
Model 2
Yes
No
Abstain
HDZ
0.585***
(0.048)
-0.092***
(0.014)
Kukuriku Coalition
-0.318***
(0.042)
0.207***
(0.014)
Yes
Model 3
No
Abstain
Yes
No
Model 4
Abstain
Yes
No
Abstain
-0.651***
(0.060)
0.547***
(0.054)
-0.078***
(0.015)
-0.588***
(0.064)
0.052
(0.047)
-0.285***
(0.043)
0.159***
(0.015)
0.124***
(0.046)
Political
Economic
Income p/c
-2.2x10-5
(1.8x10-5)
2.7x10-5***
(4.8x10-6)
-2x10-5
(1.8x10-5)
-3.5x10-6
(1.2x10-5)
1.1x10-5*** -2.5x10-5 *
(3.5x10-6)
(1.3x10-5)
Unemployment
0.295***
(0.074)
-0.106***
(0.021)
-0.240***
(0.076)
0.031
(0.044)
-0.026*
(0.015)
-0.041
(0.051)
% Social welfare
-0.343**
(0.141)
0.127***
(0.046)
0.319**
(0.144)
-0.016
(0.094)
0.047
(0.035)
0.03
(0.103)
Traditional
% Married
0.199
(0.150)
0.082**
(0.040)
-0.308**
(0.149)
0.345***
(0.101)
0.019
(0.027)
-0.407***
(0.11)
% Divorced
-3.623***
(0.538)
1.181***
(0.126)
2.907***
(0.535)
-0.491
(0.344)
0.408***
(0.095)
0.279
(0.381)
% Workforce female
-0.036
(0.118)
0.095***
(0.035)
-0.002
(0.118)
0.027
(0.089)
-0.008
(0.028)
0.01
(0.103)
% Non-believers
-0.05
(0.117)
0.252***
(0.042)
-0.676***
(0.117)
0.143
(0.107)
0.113***
(0.029)
-0.687***
(0.117)
Demographic controls
Average age
-0.004***
(0.001)
0.003***
(0.0003)
0.0003
(0.001)
0.001
(0.001)
0.002***
(0.0004)
-0.002
(0.001)
0.004**
(0.001)
0.0005
(0.0004)
-0.005***
(0.002)
-0.002**
(0.001)
0.002***
(0.0004)
0.001
(0.001)
Years of education
0.024***
(0.004)
0.025***
(0.002)
-0.052***
(0.005)
0.010
(0.012)
0.023***
(0.003)
-0.029**
(0.011)
-0.009
(0.008)
0.032***
(0.002)
-0.013*
(0.008)
0.021***
(0.006)
0.019***
(0.002)
-0.029***
(0.007)
Log settlement size
-0.017***
(0.006)
0.007***
(0.002)
0.009
(0.007)
-0.016*
(0.008)
0.006**
(0.003)
0.009
(0.007)
0.026***
(0.008)
-0.012***
(0.002)
-0.020***
(0.008)
-0.011*
(0.006)
0.002
(0.002)
0.007
(0.007)
0.051*
(0.026)
-0.048***
(0.008)
-0.010
(0.028)
0.088**
(0.038)
-0.046***
(0.009)
-0.035
(0.037)
-0.110**
(0.033)
0.035***
(0.011)
0.066**
(0.033)
0.034
(0.028)
-0.025***
(0.008)
-0.033
(0.031)
% Croats
0.287***
(0.023)
0.010
(0.006)
-0.224***
(0.023)
0.466***
(0.026)
-0.03***
(0.009)
-0.394***
(0.025)
0.422***
(0.032)
-0.014*
(0.008)
-0.389***
(0.029)
0.28***
(0.026)
0.008
(0.006)
-0.236***
(0.024)
War disabled per ‘000
-0.001*
(0.0004)
0.0002*
(0.0001)
0.001**
(0.0005)
0.003***
(0.0004)
-0.001***
(0.0002)
-0.002***
(0.0005)
0.003***
(0.0004)
-0.001***
(0.0002)
-0.002***
(0.0004)
-0.001
(0.0005)
0.0001
(0.0001)
0.001**
(0.0005)
% Local born
30
Observations
2
R
Wald chi-square (d.f.)
Prob > chi-square
Log likelihood
546
546
546
546
546
546
546
546
546
546
546
546
0.772
0.897
0.672
0.761
0.882
0.640
0.449
0.812
0.389
0.532
0.814
0.473
1328 (8)
4086.2 (8)
848.9 (8)
709.4 (9)
2242.5 (9)
549.7 (9)
747.8 (10)
2096.8 (10)
657.2 (10)
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
842.2
1496
758.3
630.2
1339.3
619.77
671.4
1360
659.1
855.8
1532.5
785.6
***p<0.01. **p<0.05. *p<0.1. Standard errors in parentheses.
31
1701.8 (15) 4127.1 (15) 1089.3 (15)
Table 3. Effect size estimates
Marriage
Yes
Marriage
No
Marriage
Abstain
HDZ
9.94 ①
(29.42)
0.163
(1.58)
10.68 ①
(24.45)
Kukuriku Coalition
2.29 ③
(9.79)
2.6 ②
(20.46)
0.694
(2.07)
Income p/c
0.003
(0.015)
0.974 ③
(8.78)
0.178
(0.54)
Unemployment
0.019
(0.081)
0.007
(0.074)
0.04
(0.124)
Social welfare
0.021
(0.088)
0.026
(0.258)
0.006
(0.021)
% Married
0.663
(2.71)
0.019
(0.188)
0.927
(2.73)
% Divorced
0.20
(0.832)
0.135
(1.316)
0.102
(0.309)
Female workforce
0.019
(0.081)
0.066
(0.651)
0.0001
(0.001)
% Non-believers
0.086
(0.362)
3.41 ①
(25.19)
1.55
(4.51)
Average age
0.221
(0.919)
0.632
(5.87)
0.008
(0.026)
Years of education
0.624
(2.55)
0.697
(6.44)
1.70 ③
(4.9)
Log population
0.112
(0.468)
0.19
(1.84)
0.027
(0.082)
% Local born
0.249
(1.04)
0.136
(1.33)
0.135
(0.407)
2.84 ②
(10.65)
0.041
(0.40)
3.8 ②
(10.35)
0.453
(1.86)
0.053
(0.52)
0.717
(2.13)
Political
Economic
Traditional
Demographic controls
% Croats
War disabled per ‘000
Table reports η2 and partial η2 (in parentheses), all multiplied by 102 for ease of presentation.
Symbols ①②③ denote the first, second, and third largest effects in each column.
32
Figure 1. Referendum results
33