Forecasting the 1992 French Referendum A.F.K. ÜRGANSKI ANO BRUCE BUENO OE MESQUITA This short paper presents a preliminary report on results of work on the 20 September 1992 French national referendum carried out in relation to the Maastricht Treaty. The research employed different analytical proce- dures than those usually used to explore the dynamics of electoral deci- sions and/or to forecast electoral outcomes. It was an attempt to extend the utilisation of expected utility models, proven successful in modelling gov- ernmental and business decisions in situations where direct intervention of mass publics was not a factor, to elections or referenda, where mass publics are the final arbiter of how a decision will turn out. The French choice to decide whether to accept the Maastricht Treaty through a popular referendum on 20 September was an event of critical importance in the progress of European unification. Danish rejection of the treaty on 2 June of the same year had shaken the political and eco- nomic elites of western Europe. Progress toward European unification was in danger of being permanently derailed. Were France to foUow in the path of Denmark the treaty would not have survived (Bueno de Mesquita, forthcoming; Bueno de Mesquita et al., 1985). The decision to vote When President Mitterand chose the option of a popular referendum as the means of deciding on the Maastricht Treaty, he could not have imag- ined how elose, how divisive, and how great a source of turmoil his deci- sion would turn out to be for the European Community. However, given the information available to President Mitterand at the beginning of the summer of 1992, the proposal to use a referendum to reach adecision on the issue of the Maastricht Treaty made very good sense. The issue of Maastricht had split the French right, leading to an expec- tation that the faction opposing Maastricht would be damaged at the poUs; moreover, there was some question whether a choice to ratify Maastricht without turning to a referendum would succeed as a joint session of Parlia- 67 R. Morgan et al. (eds.), New Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1993