The primary objective of the project is to contribute to the theoretical integration of the domestic-level dynamics of plebiscitary politics into the study of European integration. Plebiscitary politics, in this context, is taken to refer to the politics by governments of voluntarily committing to popular consultations on European issues which are neither constitutionally required nor forced upon them by other domestic actors. Given the increased frequency of national referendums on EU-related issues in the post-Maastricht era, a systematic understanding both of the driving forces behind the calling of popular votes on the EU and of these votes’ implications for the future trajectory of the integration process has become a crucial prerequisite for analysing EU politics. In order to add to such an understanding, the project seeks to develop an analytical framework that can account for (1) the political rationale of governments to turn to plebiscitary politics in the field of European policy and (2) the effects of plebiscitary politics on European-level decision making and on the patterns of domestic conflicts over Europe. Specifically, this framework builds on the concept of ‘Europeanisation’ and conceives plebiscitary politics as a strategy of governments to avoid the inconvenient political effects which the increasing domestic contestation of European integration tends to inflict on them in the arenas of interparty and intraparty politics. In its empirical part, the project will investigate in how far the proposed framework can account for the record of plebiscitary politics in European integration so far. Apart from evaluating the existing qualitative and quantitative data in this regard, it will employ media content analyses and expert surveys to generate more fine-grained and systematic insights into the incentives that make governments resort to plebiscitary politics and into these politics’ (unintended) domestic and European-level feedback effects.