The start-up fund - an elegant treaty mechanism for sustaining defence capabilities. Security Policy Brief No. 48, June 2013

When the European Council meets in December, it will face a range of decisions which will lay the foundations for Europe's defence posture and role in the wider world for decades to come, perhaps even beyond the remainder of this century. The Lisbon Treaty has, for the first time, equipped the EU with the range of means to meet that role in practice. The question that remains to be answered is whether Europe's leaders have the political will to implement those means in full.

Déjà-vu (again): The Lisbon Treaty Referendum in Ireland. IHS Political Science Series No. 133, February 2013

There has been an increasing use of direct democracy in the form of referendums on aspects of European integration. Two such referendums have been held in Ireland in 2008 and 2009 with the outcome changing from a No to a Yes vote. This paper addresses the question of what explains the change in outcome in two referendums on essentially the same document. It will do so by looking at the role of the campaign in providing information and hence reducing uncertainty, the importance of issue frames and the impact of domestic considerations on vote choice. It is suggested that there has not been a change in underlying attitudes but a change in how the Irish electorate weighed the same factors differently at both referendums. In addition, a change in economic conditions at the time of the second referendum also had an effect on how voters decided the second time around.