Direct Democracy and Regional Integration::Citizens' Perceptions of Treaty Implications and the Irish Reversal on Lisbon

Analyses of voting in European Union referendums typically distinguish between ‘second-order’ effects and the impact of substantive ‘issues’. In order to explain change in referendum outcome, two types of substantive issues are distinguished in this article. Focusing on Irish voting in the Lisbon Treaty referendums and using data from post-referendum surveys, it is found that perceptions of treaty implications outperform underlying attitudes to EU integration in predicting vote choice at both referendums, and perceptions of treaty implications are strong predictors of vote change between the referendums. The findings have broadly positive implications for normative assessments of the usefulness of direct democracy as a tool for legitimising regional integration advance.

Eve and evolution: Christian responses to the first woman question, 1860-1900

Historians of encounters between evolutionary science and Christianity have long been aware of the significance placed upon debates about the applicability of evolution to Adam. It has not been widely noticed, however, that in more conservative circles the creation of Eve was frequently thought to be a more difficult problem to solve. This essay examines how, in distinctive ways, the creation of Eve became a point of contention among three communities of conservative Christian thinkers grappling with the implications of evolutionary theory in the period 1860-1900.