This book argues that referendums are not only acts of decision or legislation, but also exercises in social integration through which identities are formed, reshaped and expressed.

In the years following the global economic crisis and its 2010 ‘bailout’, Ireland held a series of seven referendums aimed at liberalising and modernising its Constitution of 1937. Addressing children’s rights, marriage equality, abortion, blasphemy, divorce, family rights and care, some of these referendums effected landmark legal reforms. However, they also represented a shift towards a ‘symbolic’ style of referendum use: their purpose was expressive as much as legislative. And while they were aimed at reshaping national identity in the aftermath of the Great Recession, they also represented a peculiar political strategy of responding to social problems through the symbolic profession and affirmation of constitutional rights.

Accordingly, this book explores both the peculiarity of Ireland’s use of constitutional referendums, and the wider potential of constitutional referendums as instruments of social integration.