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This paper explores varieties of state intervention in corporatist political economies. Focusing on recent reforms in social policy, labor-market policy, and wage policies in Germany and the Netherlands, it suggests that the neglect of the role of the state in corporatist systems has led to a failure to capture important dimensions of how they adjust to shifting political, economic, and social challenges. Furthermore, it argues that the state’s role in promoting needed institutional and policy reforms has been particularly important during the contemporary period of fiscal austerity, slow growth, and intense pressures on inherited policy arrangements. In some policy areas, the Dutch and German states have worked within existing corporatist frameworks, while, in others, they have suspended, by-passed, or even dismantled them in order to secure urgently needed reforms. The paper concludes that the character of state intervention not only varies with the challenges posed by particular policy areas, it has also been shaped in important ways by the national institutional frameworks within which corporatist institutions are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My study examines the conditions under which middle power states, such as Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway, may exercise effective leadership in the realm of human security. I hypothesize that a middle power-led human security initiative is more likely to be successful if the initiative does not threaten the fundamental principles of the superpower. My paper demonstrates that although it is possible for a human security initiative to overcome American opposition that is based on political or military interests, an initiative will be less likely to succeed if it challenges the core principles of the United States. I test the hypothesis by conducting a qualitative analysis of four cases of human security initiatives where the middle powers have played leadership roles. The cases include the endeavor to create a United Nations rapid deployment peacekeeping force, which led to the formation of the Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations (SHIRBRIG) in 1996; the campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines, which resulted in the 1997 Ottawa Convention; the struggle to establish the International Criminal Court, which came into existence in 2002; and the unsuccessful attempt to regulate the legal trade in small arms and light weapons. The United States has taken different positions on these issues. The U.S. approved of the idea of a standby UN rapid response force, but did not participate in the establishment of SHIRBRIG. Washington objected to the Ottawa Convention on the basis of a conflict with U.S. military interests, and opposed the International Criminal Court due to the influence of certain groups in the American foreign policy establishment. Finally, the U.S. rejected the adoption of restrictions on the licit small arms trade due to a clash with an American principle protected by the U.S. Constitution: the right to bear arms. By illustrating that smaller states can assume leadership on global security, my paper counters the trend in international security studies of focusing almost exclusively on great power leadership, a tendency which has been reinforced by the decades-long predominance of the realist approach to international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions many European countries have begun to develop adaptation strategies. However, developing and implementing these is not easy due to all kind of institutional complexities. Many of the current governance institutions are the product of times in which the climate issue was hardly of any importance. This paper deals with the question if our institutions are able to adapt to climate change. The paper presents a theoretical framework to assess the capacity of institutions to deal with climate adaption and applies it to adaptation strategies in four different European Countries: the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden. It concludes that institutions in these countries provide the basic qualities to adapt. Using the theoretical framework, five institutional weaknesses have been identified which can cause tensions on the long term: 1) the lack of openness of the political system towards learning and variety; 2) the strong onesided reliance on scientific experts; 3) the tension between top down policy development and bottom-up implementation; 4) the institutionalized mistrust in the problem solving capacity of civil society and 5) the wickedness of reserving funding for the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the political inclusion of migrants in multi-ethnic cities is presented which is prepared for presentation at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association from September 3-6, 2009 in Toronto, Ontario. The paper discusses topics including ethno-cultural inclusion policies in Toronto, Ontario; London, England; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Much of the welfare state literature implicitly assumes that labor movements everywhere would choose roughly the same set of institutions if only they possessed the power resources to do so. Sweden is implicitly or explicitly seen as the model, with a large public sector providing comprehensive social services and income maintenance during sickness, unemployment, and old age. That countries such as Germany and the Netherlands fell short of achieving this standard is typically attributed to the inferior power resources of labor movements in these countries (i.e. they had to share power with strong Christian Democratic and/or Liberal Parties) and/or an unfavorable institutional context. An issue which has received less attention is whether labor movements in Germany and the Netherlands even wanted to follow a more "Swedish" strategy. In short, labor movements have developed their own, nationally distinct understandings of the role of the state in the provision of social welfare and regulating the market. This paper asks how labor movement visions of "the good society" in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany shaped their responses to pressures for welfare state restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s. To do so, the paper first compares and contrasts the ideas, norms and cognitive understandings embedded in the Swedish, German and Dutch social democratic cognitive framing of the welfare state and asks how these understandings shaped welfare state restructuring processes in the 1990s and 2000s. What were the core values that social democratic parties and unions sought to defend when faced with pressures to reform? How did the embeddedness of norms and cognitive understandings in specific welfare state institutions shape labor's approach to restructuring? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much discussion in the varieties of capitalism (VoC) literature whether currently a general move into liberal direction can be identified or that the different political economies are, because of the complementary character of their elements, more or less locked into the paths they have developed on. Other topics of discussion are which forces and mechanisms bring about change and whether the dichotomous typology of only a liberal and a coordinated variety is sufficient for adequately analyzing politico-economic reality and its processes of change. This paper wants to contribute to these discussions by taking recent changes in the Dutch political economy as point of departure. Since varieties of capitalism in the most prominent view of Hall and Soskice (2001) are conceived of as entities the parts of which are complementary the paper will also have to come to terms with change in configurations of complementarities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that relinquishing aspects of sovereign rule can be understood as incomplete contracting. This theory can shed light on how parties sever ties which involve transaction specific assets and how they create sovereign entities in the process. Rather than allocate full sovereignty, the negotiating parties often construct partial sovereignty arrangements, allocating some rights to both parties. Four issues need to be addressed during such negotiations: the allocation of assets, the bargaining dynamics over time, the momentum for further integration, and credibility of commitment. This paper discusses these issues with regards to decolonization of the French, British and Dutch empires and Soviet territorial partition. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue in this paper that Protestantism is an important cause of Euroskepticism in Britain, Scandinavia, and to some extent the Netherlands. Protestants, in contrast to Catholics, had few tools for uniting the Continent. Their Christian universalism was real, but invisible. Their churches were arms of their individual states and lacked a transnational structure. Their few confessional parties were small, parochial and lacked a common European political agenda. And Protestant culture proved inadequate to generate a community spirit across national boundaries and between political leaders. But aside from their lack of tools, Protestant nations simply did not want to meld their states into anything more than a European economic cooperation zone. To the Protestant mind, the state was not the cause of Europe?s tragedies. Individual states were the bulwarks against coercive, homogenizing forces, whether they issued from the Vatican, Napoleonic Paris, Hollywood?or Brussels. States had saved what was most important in the sixteenth century; states could still be trusted to save what was most important in the twentieth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of social movements theories, this paper seeks to uncover the determinants of protest mobilization. During the ups and downs of protest cycles various political factors are so intertwined that it is not unambiguous to explicate what are the driving forces behind the rise and fall of social movement mobilization. To solve this problem, I derive a set of competing hypotheses from established theories of social movements and conduct an empirical test based on a pooled cross-section time-series analysis with a negative binomial random-effects model by using Kriesi et al.?s protest event data on New Social Movements (NSMs), which covers four Western European countries ? France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland ? from 1975 to 1989. Empirical results demonstrate that the more Left government partisanship is associated with the less protest mobilization over time and that the institutionalization of a social movement decrease the likelihood of further protests, but in situations where the government becomes more conservative, an institutionalized social movement leads to a higher level of political protests. This finding implies how we can operationalize the murky term ?political opportunity? in comparative social movement studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our goal in this paper is firstly to provide an analysis of the causal relationships between TV news use and political attitudes on the basis of panel data. For this purpose we use the 1998-2002 Dutch Parliamentary Election Study. Secondly, a dynamic comparison of media use and political attitudes in the 1998 and 2002 Dutch elections is interesting because of the changes in both the media context and in the political context that occurred in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates economic voting in four countries in Western Europe - Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, and Norway - with reference to variations in institutional structure, the internal dimensions of the voting model, and economics vs. cleavages and ideology as determinants of the vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, governments and industry have entered into dialogues resulting in voluntary agreements that represent alternatives to "command and control" regulatory measures. It is argued that voluntary agreements provide firms greater flexibility in the methods and timing of activities, thus reducing the overall costs of environmental protection as well as stimulating innovation. Moreover, voluntary approaches are said to further understanding and trust between government and industry, thereby promoting faster implementation and compliance. Questions, however, have been raised about their environmental effectiveness: critics argue that voluntary agreements are not likely to move beyond what industry would have done in the absence of such commitments; in foregoing formal laws or ordinances, such commitments fall well short of what could have been achieved. This paper attempts to sort through the conflicting claims about the environmental effectiveness of voluntary approaches by comparing voluntary agreements concluded between government and industry in Germany and the Netherlands to reduce CO2 emissions. Special attention is paid to the agreements between government and the electric utility industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

’Good Governance’ may be an ambiguous concept in the context of development cooperation. But it receives a meaning in practice through mechanisms of policy making and implementation. In this paper I will explore the mechanisms which gave Dutch policy on ‘Good Governance’ its specific meaning. In the first half of the nineties, the discourse was structured around the role the concept should play in the relation between donor and recipient. Rivalry between the minister of developement cooperation and foreign affairs is the most determining practice then. In the second half, it was structured around the content the concept should have. Determining mechanisms then are the rivalry between departmental units and the way in which implementation practices supported a more economical meaning of the concept rather than a political one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates voting participation in three countries in Western Europe - Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway - from the 1960s to the late 1990s. Results show that there is no general trend of decline in turnout. However, aggregate turnout figures show somewhat lower levels in more recent elections. Turning to the individual level, the influence of demographic and attitudinal factors is investigated. Political interest show the strongest impact on electoral participation, generation the second largest. Education has effects in the expected direction. These results point to a ??puzzle of electoral participation??: from turnout statistics one would conclude that political interest should have gone down. However, this is not true. This ??puzzle?? points to the fact that context has to be taken into account. This is done here by relating the judgments about political supply of political parties to turnout. Using the classical rational choice notion of alienation and indifference reveals that for example judgments about political offers are related to turnout, also when controlling for educational level. That this relationship is not just subjective but is related to what parties offer in election campaigns is demonstrated by relating programmatic polarization and differentiation to alienation and indifference. The main conclusion to be drawn from our analyses is, that many variables are related to turnout. However, even if they show to have effects consistently over time and across countries it is obvious that their explanatory power altogether is rather weak. This probably has to do with the fact that electoral participation has a low-cost, low benefit nature. Under such circumstances neither an approach concentrating on resources like the SES model nor rational choice considerations can contribute considerably to the explanation of turnout. On the other hand, these variables obviously matter considerably for turnout, given the differences between different socioeconomic groups, or between those being alienated or not. Since the strength of these effects appears to be shaped by the context of an election, it is worthwhile to investigate to which degree the effects of different variables are shaped by the specific context in a given election, be it the closeness of the race, the campaign strategies, the strategic placement of parties and the like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference about intra-party ideological tensions over immigration in the Netherlands and Belgium is presented which was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The paper discusses topics including how political parties address the immigration issue, the Green parties and conservative Liberal Democratic parties.

The observation that policy processes are increasingly addressed by governance networks raises questions concerning the legitimacy of these processes and the relationship with traditional institutions that are based on the foundations of representative democracy. The literature on governance networks is ambiguous with regard to this relationship and is empirically not well developed. In this paper we examine the effects of a complexity sensitive management style on the legitimacy of governance networks that deal with complex water issues in The Netherlands. Building on the literature we distinguish three forms of legitimacy: output legitimacy, processual legitimacy and procedural legitimacy. Based on survey research (n= 272) among respondents involved in complex water projects, we found that complexity sensitive management has a positive effect on output and processual legitimacy. The results regarding the effect on procedural legitimacy are less obvious, but these results indicate that the sometimes negatively associated relationship between collaborative practices in governance networks and institutional accountability structures of representative democracy should be more nuanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about consociational democracy and crisis management in the Netherlands is presented. The authors asses the factors that explains the Netherlands' relatively favorable socio-economic performance. They demonstrated that the Netherlands performed well because it had access to and possessed a strong system. They examined the financial-economic condition in the Netherlands in the midst of the crisis.

At the beginning of the decade when many European countries began drafting new labor migration policies in response to labor shortages, Austria and Netherlands refrained. One might guess that since both are corporatist-style economies with tightly regulated labor markets, bringing in unregulated labor through immigration would be difficult. Deeper analysis shows that there are two different logics behind the cool attitude toward foreign labor recruitment. In Austria, the strength of the relationship between the social partners and the strong opposition by trade unions has led to a highly regulated and minimalist labor migration program. In the Netherlands, social partnership also constrains the ability of employers to bring in labor, but it is far more a case that employers can draw from other sources of flexible labor. Through the use of labor market statistics, organizational materials, media reports, and personal interviews with representatives from trade unions, employers' associations and government ministries in the IT, hospitality and construction sectors, the paper traces the processes that have lead to new policies and draw out the preferences that have kept these at a minimum, offering insights to the differences within varieties of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the experience of three recent Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform to explore the values held by ordinary citizens with respect to electoral systems and the impact of those views on their choice of appropriate systems. The three Assemblies in question (British Columbia, the Netherlands and Ontario) all operated in the same way but ended up recommending different systems. Data taken from successive surveys of Assembly members allow us to trace the patterns of deliberation and decision-making in each and reveals the relative importance of key determining criteria including proportionality, voter choice and local representation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on citizens' emotional reactions to address a puzzle in Dutch politics, namely the mechanism on the basis of which voters decide on their vote preferences. There is an ongoing debate in the Netherlands on the relative role of candidate considerations for vote preferences, and the significance of party oriented voting (van Wijnen 2000; Aarts 2001; van Holsteyn and Irwin 2003). The theory of affective intelligence provides the theoretical framework to explain the role of affective dynamics in regulating the use of partisan considerations and habitual voting versus the use of campaign relevant information such as candidate characteristics. When anxiety is absent voters automatically rely on previously learned routines and party identification as a determinant of vote choice, but under conditions of uncertainty and increased anxiety citizens abandon partisanship and ideology and rely more on issue choice and candidate characteristics. We show that the theory of affective intelligence explains electoral behavior also in a parliamentary democracy based on coalition government. We find that the emotional reactions of Dutch voters towards their leaders can point to the conditions under which party heuristics versus candidate preferences determine party evaluations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childbirth is one of the most widely shared experiences of roughly half the world‟s population. Yet even among the most highly developed countries, the quality of that experience varies tremendously, with high-intervention practices becoming increasingly the rule in the US, while countries such as the Netherlands have relatively low numbers of cesareans, but high numbers of homebirths with excellent results. A discourse of medical rationality would have us expect that wealthy countries provide the best care available for whatever health needs present themselves, including the needs of women giving birth. Yet countries clearly differ in what they consider the "best" care. Why do otherwise similar countries diverge in their approaches to childbirth and maternal health? This paper documents the extent of variation in obstetric practices and maternal and child health outcomes among OECD and EU countries and then presents research design and preliminary findings for a new multi-country investigation into policy divergence in maternal health policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does TV viewing affect political attitudes and activism? Most research that addresses this question has been conducted in the setting of a media system - the United States - in which commercial broadcasting has been dominant for a long time. Findings from this research have often pointed to negative relationships between TV viewing and political attitudes and activism. In media systems with a better balance between public and commercial broadcasting, these relationships are specified by the type of channel people tend to view. Exposure to commercial channels would be negatively associated with political attitudes, in contrast with exposure to public channels (Holtz-Bacha and Norris 2001; Hooghe 2002; Aarts and Semetko 2003).In this paper, we present an analysis of survey panel data of television exposure and political attitudes with a four-year interval (1998-2002) from the Netherlands. We show that exposure to television programs is structured according to a clear public-commercial divide. This structure of television exposure is quite stable over the time period studied. Focusing on the exposure to TV news programs in particular, we find that the percentage of intensive viewers of both public and commercial news almost doubled over the four year period. Respondents who used to focus more or less exclusively on public TV news programs, now tend to watch commercial TV news as well. Finally, we show that the type of news audience group people belong to (no intensive news viewer at all; intensive viewer of public news; intensive viewer of commercial news; intensive viewer of both public and commercial news) is related to indicators of political communication and political attitudes such as interest, internal efficacy, cynicism and trust. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent referenda in France and the Netherlands have brought renewed attention to the question of whether European integration is an elite-led process or is driven bottom-up, through the demands of electorates for more or less integration. Past research has presented competing views of the politics of European integration. On one hand, Carrubba (2001) argues that party elites respond to their electorates and represent mass preferences over integration. On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that party elites cue the mass public, shaping its preferences concerning Europe. When one accepts this view, the causal arrow runs from elites to masses, rather than from masses to elites, as Carrubba (2001) suggested. In this paper, we estimate models that allow for both directions of causality. Moreover, we understand the relationships between party elites and their electorates to be conditional, i.e. contingent on a series of attributes of the environment, the party, and the electorate. Using expert survey placements of parties and Eurobarometer data about electorates, we find little evidence that parties respond to electorates. We find much more systematic evidence that electorates takes cues from parties. However, the strength of this cueing effect is contingent on other factors, suggesting that cueing is not always effective. We consider the implications of our work for Euroskepticism and the alleged gap between citizens and political elites on European integration. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain how international factors influence the outcomes of political conflicts at the national level. The particular focus is on the religious/ideological division over education in Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland around the turn of the 19th century. The interstate rivalry that dominated European politics at the time had a direct impact on domestic politics. For countries participating in the interstate power struggle, domestic uniformity was seen as a precondition for strength. Germany, Austria and France needed internal solidarity to project state power. These countries could not afford the perceived international weakness of internal divisions and domestic plurality. Thus, the conflict became a zero-sum one over the hegemonic control of the state. Neutral countries without similar pressures, on the other hand, were able to reach compromises between opposing camps. Belgian, Dutch and Swiss neutrality was either recognised or imposed by the Great Powers and by international law. So when there was less pressure to speak with one voice in international relations, the attainment of a compromise between feuding sides became more likely. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the results of the parliamentary election in the Netherlands in May 2002. Number of seats gained by the List Pim Fortuyn party in the election; Theoretical basis for the analysis of the structure of political competition that emerged during the parliamentary election; Explanation on how the Dutch party system has changed in 2002.

Lijphart?s (1977, 1984, 1999) conceptualization of the distinction between consensual and majoritarian democracy has been one of the most important developments in the study of comparative political systems in the last thirty years, and has indeed served as an antidote to the anglocentrism that previously existed in the study of democratic institutions. However, the concept of consensual democracy is problematic from the point of view of social choice theory. Theorists of consensual democracy have emphasized consensus as an alternative to majority rule. I will argue, however, that many of the countries most often cited as ?consensual? are actually amongst the world?s purest examples of government by majority rule, having virtually no constitutional checks and balances (examples include the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and to a lesser extent Austria and Belgium). Furthermore, I will argue that the institutions of consensual democracy follow axiomatically from the requirement of political equality. Far from being a new form of democracy, consensual democracy might better be described as ?simple democracy?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars have assumed that strategic voting was not possible in a system with proportional representation because the calculations that the voter would have to make are too difficult. This paper demonstrates that most voters in the Netherlands possess the knowledge and information that Anthony Downs stated were necessary to vote in a rational manner. Using a set of four hypothetical vignettes, it is shown that at least one-third of the Dutch electorate would consider casting a strategic vote under the right circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of polls on perceptions of the race, preferences, and vote choice under three different electoral systems: pure plurality (Canada), pure PR (the Netherlands), and a mixed member proportional system with a threshold (New Zealand). We test the hypothesis that poll effects are greatest in Canada, where the incentives for strategic voting are strongest, and smallest in the Netherlands, where the incentives are weakest. The data come from the 1997 Canadian Election Study (CES), the 1998 Dutch Election Study (DES), and the 1999 New Zealand Election Study (NZES). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opposition to Muslim headscarves remains high in otherwise typically tolerant countries, like Sweden and the Netherlands. One suggested explanation is a mounting concern among liberal Europeans that Muslims threaten liberal values. Yet, the nature of these threatened values remains obscure. Empirical research on anti-Muslim attitudes in general, and their relation to liberal values in particular is limited. What understanding of liberalism characterizes those who oppose Muslim veiling? By studying attitudes towards the veil in a Swedish and a Dutch sample, we test a number of hypotheses informed by political theory, and the burgeoning field of immigration studies, which have rarely been used in political psychology. We include measures of different conceptions of liberalism and value orientations and resistance to Muslim veils. Our analyses suggest that post-materialism values are too crude measures for parsing out intolerance against the Muslim veil in a liberal sample. Positive attitudes to veiling are best predicted by a Reformation Liberalism, a commitment to a diversity-oriented understanding of liberalism. Both Enlightenment Liberalism (emphasizing autonomy) and Romantic Liberalism (stressing authenticity and individuality), on the other hand, seem to induce more negative attitudes towards the headscarf, yet providing mixed results in the two studies. Possible explanations for these mixed results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch city-regions more than ever face the question how to legitimize their existence and be credible to participants and the public. The formal answer to this question is that the city-regions are an "extension" of local government. Their policies, programs and decisions are democratically legitimate as city councils of the municipalities formally approve their plans (Cie. Toekomst Stadsregionale Samenwerking 2009; Ministerie van BZK 2008, 2010). However, the Dutch national government no longer grants legal tasks to these voluntary forms of network collaboration. Moreover, the economic crisis intensifies competition and conflicts among participants. The credibility of these innovative forms of cooperation is on the line as routines of municipal, provincial and state decision making allure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which issues are defined or not defined as a safety problem changes over time. In this article, the rise of the safety frame on three Dutch government agendas (Queen's Speeches, Coalition Agreements, and Council of Ministers' press releases) is established by showing that there is an increase in the usage of the word safety as well as an expansion of the issues that get to be defined as a safety problem. Most notably, the Dutch government has come up with a policy approach towards safety which is so broad as to encompass almost all safety issues at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changes in the health policies in four advanced countries including Great Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands. It states that the British internal market reforms, the enactment of the health insurance in the U.S. and the launch of Dutch' universal managed competition among insurers have represented significant shift on the traditional state of health care. The impact of the absence of conjunctures on the delivery of health care is also emphasized.

In this article, we first trace the Europeanization of social policy at the EU level in the Treaty of Amsterdam and the subsequent issuance of anti-discrimination directives. The advent of these institutional changes at the EU level and the inclusion of sexual orientation in the anti-discrimination directives, have provided new opportunities for gay and lesbian civil society organizations across Europe to work together transnationally. This Europeanization of anti-discrimination has laid a minimum ground floor, in which further extension of rights beyond the area of employment, to include equality in housing, the provision of services, and other areas have become possible. In addition, while some countries have extended rights of marriage to same-sex couples or offer other forms of state recognized partnerships, this has emerged as a new goal for gay and lesbian groups in other countries. The Europeanization of the policy area has led to a growing transnationalization of the movement, in which groups learn and are assisted by groups in other countries. This article presented an empirical investigation of the goals and strategies pursued by two national groups, Arcigay in Italy and the COC in the Netherlands. From the two empirical cases presented here, it is apparent that the two possible modes of interaction faced by gay and lesbian groups offered in the literature, either highly divisive 'morality politics' or an incremental 'interest group' mode of interaction, must be joined by a third which we call 'high profile' politics - one marked by coalition seeking, highly visible public events, government support, and transnational activity at the EU level and in countries abroad. This is a strategy possible where this is a high degree of public support for equality and minimal partisan or religious opposition to the movement. The modern gay and lesbian rights movement has moved well beyond the identity politics of Stonewall to demand equal rights, including anti-discrimination measures and the right to marriage. While some gay and lesbian civil rights groups remain trapped in a 'morality politics' mode of interaction because of strong opposition to their demand for equal rights, which makes success difficult, other groups may be able to achieve results through an incremental 'interest group' mode of political interaction. But we have seen, others civil society organizations, like the one we studied in the Netherlands, are now able are able to use the tolerance and acceptance won in their societies, for a 'high profile' strategy to maintain and advance their societal and political influence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Types and shifts of media power. A conceptual analysis illustrated by 50 years of political communication in the lowlands ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spring of this year, within only a couple of weeks, the institutional order of the European Union (EU) has been thoroughly shaken, turning into sheer institutional "disorder". After the referenda on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe held in France and in the Netherlands, hardly anybody will question that the Union finds itself in an utterly dramatic situation. Seen from the point of view I am going to sketch out in the following sections, what became manifest with the turbulences of May and June 2005 are the symptoms of a crisis that had remained more or less latent for a longer period of time. The trends culminating in the rejection of the European Constitution by a majority of French and Dutch citizens reflect a crisis of political legitimation. I will argue that this crisis is basically the crisis of 2 specific mode of political legitimation, or, to be more precise, a consequence of the tendencies to link governance in the EU primarily to this mode. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the model of Benoit (2004) we describe and explain the change and persistence of the Dutch electoral system between 1897 and 2005. We focus on the introduction of proportional representation in 1917, the attempts to further increase the threshold between 1950 and 1980, the abolishment of compulsory voting in 1970, the attempt to introduce a district system with large multi-member districts in 1970, and finally the attempt in 2005 to introduce a mixed system with multi-member districts. We systematically use ex ante perceived consequences of an alternative electoral system with regard to changes in the distribution of seats to understand the preferences of political parties with regard this alternative system. We will show that many (stated) preferences of political parties with regard to electoral systems change can indeed be understood once we assume parties to be seat-maximizers. Some preferences, however, cannot be explained by this assumption. In addition many potential changes in the Dutch electoral law appear to have no consequences for the distribution of seats at all. This means the model of Benoit is unable to explain or predict a large set of potential changes in an electoral system. In addition we shall show that electoral law change and other policy areas and tightly connected. This makes preferences with regard to electoral systems and the decision-making procedures only part of an explanation of decision-making about electoral systems. Electoral systems are simply part of politics and therefore less predictable than is assumed by Benoit. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]