Prosperity and peace: Economic interests and war legacy in Croatia’s EU referendum vote

Abstract

Studies of popular attitudes toward European integration have paid limited attention to the historical roots of voters’ security preferences. Using an original municipality-level data set, we test whether the pattern of voting in Croatia’s 2012 referendum on European Union accession was affected by the legacy of the country’s 1991–1995 war for independence or rather by economic factors. While finding evidence for the impact of the communities’ level of prosperity and structure of economy, our analysis more notably demonstrates that the intensity of the communities’ experience of war had a positive effect on their level of support for European Union membership. This effect also had a strong interactive relationship with the communities’ political allegiances, highlighting the importance not only of historically rooted security issues but also of political actors who make those issues electorally salient.