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As European societies become continuously more diverse, understanding the dynamics of minority rights endorsement becomes increasingly crucial. This paper investigates the variations in citizen support for minority rights and how these endorsements differ across various minority groups and purposes. This study focuses on minority organized supplementary schooling for minoritized youth in Flanders, Belgium as a case study for examining the endorsement of rights. Using new observational evidence, we first show that there is significant variation in citizens' opposition to community education. Subsequently, we conduct a survey experiment to unravel what explains public opposition to certain minority-organized initiatives, but not others. Specifically, we examine the causal effect of the organizing ethnic community (i.e. Italian, Chinese, or Moroccan) and the school's stated purpose (i.e. heritage language training or math tutoring) on public support. The study reveals that public approval of such minority-organized spaces is not uniform across initiatives. It is influenced by the perceived cultural threat posed by specific minority groups and the nature of the initiative. This research is the first to comprehensively examine public perceptions of minority-organized spaced. The findings indicate that deeper research into the support for minority rights and freedoms is imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do crises bring us closer together? Many have observed how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, several European societies experienced a 'rally around the flag' effect. While this certainly took the form of support for incumbent governments, anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals' European identification may have been affected as well. In this paper, we exploit the unique timing and panel nature of a survey, whose respondents were interviewed in March/beginning of April 2020, again in July 2020, and finally in November 2022 to analyze whether a change in attachment to Europe occurred between the first and the second wave of the pandemic and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our results show that the emotive dimension of EU attachment changed over the course of these crises, increasing both during the Covid pandemic and after the invasion of Ukraine. Our results support the view that symmetric crises tend to bring people closer together, suggesting that far-reaching EU-level actions in case of crises create, rather than require, a perception of belonging to an EU-level community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European fiscal integration is highly controversial and is assumed to lead to a Eurosceptic backlash among the public. Yet, in a historical decision in July 2020, European governments agreed on the ambitious recovery package 'Next Generation EU', establishing an unprecedented fiscal stabilisation capacity to address the economic and healthcare challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the mass politics of European fiscal integration in a survey experiment on public support for a European Pandemic Recovery Fund (PRF) in five European countries in 2020. We find remarkably high support for a joint European fiscal instrument, which, however, is sensitive to policy design. While cross-country differences reflect collective self-interest, citizens' left-right orientations, their EU positions, and perceived economic risk from COVID-19 structure differences within countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many democracies around the world face the challenge of democratic recession and autocratization as democratically elected incumbents increasingly show autocratic tendencies. Existing research has mainly focused on the circumstances under which these autocratizing incumbents erode democracy and on the structural factors explaining the resilience of democratic institutions. Much less is known about the actors within those institutions and when they stand up against the autocratizing incumbent to defend democracy. In this article, we present a novel theoretical framework of democratic defence that focuses on the interaction between the incumbent, institutional elites, and citizens. Developing a two-level model of democratic defence, we show how the democratic defender's personal interests, repression by the incumbent, the perceived ambiguity of the autocratic action, and the perceived credibility of the democratic defender interact to affect the occurrence of democratic defence. The resulting framework can guide future research on the role of specific actors in defending democracy. We demonstrate the utility of our framework with illustrative case studies of (attempted) democratic defence in Senegal (2011–2012) and Poland (2017–2018). An actor-based approach of democratic defence is crucial to understand what actions domestic and international actors can take to prevent (further) democratic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populists believe in the sovereignty of the people. Yet, the people can be construed in ethnic terms or in civic terms. Using a novel wording experiment in Germany (N = 7,034), we examine whether ethnic or civic conceptions of 'the people' affect respondents' adherence to key populist attitude items. 'Volk' in German has an ethno‐nationalist connotation and has been used throughout history to signify 'ethnic Germans'. The concept 'Bürger', or citizens, by contrast, lacks an ethnic undercurrent. Similar ethnic connotations of 'the people' are also common in other languages. We find that there are statistically significant differences between items framed in an ethnic and a civic manner – and that this differs per item. This relationship is significantly moderated by respondents' degree of exclusive national identity and voting behaviour for the radical right. Our findings suggest that the way in which the people is conceptualized has important implications for the measurement of populist attitudes. When populist attitudes are measured with an ethnic understanding of the 'the people', the construct is biased towards right‐wing populism, inhibiting the measurement of populism as a 'thin ideology'. Moreover, we demonstrate the importance of careful translations in comparative research, since some translated synonyms carry different semantic meanings and thereby change the concept under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many citizens are sceptical of policies implemented to mitigate climate change. Existing research shows that citizens' populist beliefs are significant determinants of climate scepticism. However, little is known about the underlying factors driving populist opposition to climate policies. To address this gap in the literature, this study develops structural equation models with new ideological measures using a high-quality probability sample of Dutch citizens (2019). The findings show that the relationship between populist attitudes and climate policy opposition is mediated through two anti-elite dispositions: the idea that climate science is unreliable and the belief that politicians exploit climate change for political gain. This relationship holds for left- and right-wing individuals alike. Moreover, a replication of a recent study shows that these findings hold alongside mechanisms rooted in institutional trust. These findings provide important evidence that populists' opposition to climate policy is principally rooted in distrust in political and scientific elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the ideational approach to populism, populism and pluralism do not go together. While evidence indeed suggests that populist politicians consider a politically pluralist parliament as an obstacle to the expression of the true people's will in politics, it is however an open question whether 'the people', and especially those with high populist attitudes, are just as opposed towards pluralism in parliament and coalition government. Thus far, evidence of a negative relationship between populist attitudes and preferences for pluralism in politics has been inconclusive. We asked ca. 2000 Dutch respondents—raked to be representative of the population—to draw up their ideal assembly and to select the parties that they wish to be part of coalition government. Results show that populist attitudes positively associate with the total number of parties included in the assembly, and non-negatively with the number of parties in the coalition. Parties with government experience, however, are much less preferred. These results shed new light on the presumed incompatibility between populism and pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal Politics of the Low Countries (PLC) has introduced two new sections in their publication. The first section, called "State of the Profession," aims to foster a sense of community among academics in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands by discussing universal academic themes as well as specific national concerns. The second section, "New Format for PhD Reviews," features a revised structure for reviewing PhD theses, with a summary written by the candidate themselves and a critical review by a separate reviewer. These additions aim to enhance the quality and relevance of the content and maintain PLC's position as a reference journal for understanding political dynamics in the low countries. [Extracted from the article]

New parties can shake up party systems by advancing new issues, influencing established competitors and affecting the dynamics of party competition. However, which kinds of new parties are successful? While the literature has extensively focused on institutional-level and election-level drivers of new party success, the literature on party-level determinants of new party success is scarce. As most studies on new party success focus on party entry at the election level or on new party survival, we argue that these studies suffer from selection bias as they do not leverage information on unsuccessful parties. This is understandable, since quality data on unsuccessful parties' vote shares, party organizations and ideological characteristics are scant. To overcome this limitation, we examine the party-level determinants of new party success in the Netherlands, including all parties that have participated in national parliamentary elections since 1946. Our findings have important implications for the study of new parties in modern democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has primarily focused on stable institutional and party system characteristics – ignoring more dynamic determinants of voter turnout related to party competition. To fill this double gap in the literature, we examine the effect of populist parties, both left and right, on aggregate-level turnout in Western and Eastern European parliamentary elections. Based on a dataset on 315 elections in 31 European democracies since 1970s, we find that turnout is higher when populist parties are represented in parliament prior to an election in Eastern Europe, but not in Western Europe. These findings further our understanding of the relationship between populism, political participation and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As scholars explore opportunities for democratic renewal, the potential of ballot structures to improve the quality of representation has been largely neglected. We argue that expressive ballots can improve the congruence of political preferences between voters and their vote choice and, subsequently, decrease parliamentary polarization. Recognizing that voters' political preferences are more complex than a dichotomous party-vote allows, we propose the 'assembly ballot', which allows voters to choose their 'ideal parliament' by distributing 150 parliamentary seats across all participating parties. To assess the consequences of the assembly ballot for ideological congruence and parliamentary composition, we conducted a survey experiment with over 16,000 respondents around the 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections in which respondents cast a vote in a mock-election using the assembly ballot or a closed-list PR ballot. Results show that ideological congruence is, on average, significantly higher for voters voting with the assembly ballot for both the left–right dimension and the cultural dimension, while also producing a more centripetal, less polarized parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism has become a pervasive concept in political science research. However, a central and basic question remains unanswered: which European parties are more populist than others? Despite the increasing wealth of studies on populism in parties, we lack data that measures populism in political parties in a valid and precise manner, that recognizes that populism is constituted by multiple dimensions, and that ensures full coverage of all parties in Europe. In this article, we first appraise the weaknesses of existing approaches. Arguing that parties' populism should be measured as a latent construct, we then advocate a new approach to operationalizing and measuring populism in political parties using expert surveys. Relying on the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey spanning 250 political parties in 28 European countries, we show that populism is best measured in a multi-dimensional and continuous manner. We subsequently illustrate the advantages of our approach for empirical analysis in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown that mainstream political parties shift their positions on European integration in response to threats from niche parties. Whether or not this strategy affects the electoral fortunes of mainstream parties remains unclear, however. Drawing on both spatial and issue competition models of party competition, this study examines how mainstream political party accommodation of niche party position on the issue of European integration affects mainstream party electoral success. Using fixed-effects panel regression models, we investigate the effect of mainstream parties becoming more Eurosceptic in the face of a radical right political party on the size of the mainstream party's vote share. We show that position shifts towards Euroscepticism are detrimental to centre-right mainstream party success when faced with a radical right party that has seen more electoral success. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of party competition and electoral responsiveness in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which a government's policies mirror the preferences of its citizens is often deemed a key feature of a representative democracy. While research on this topic has traditionally been done at the national level, scholars have also increasingly been examining the European Union (EU). This debate section takes stock of the research done in this area and includes contributions by authors who have different, but complementary suggestions for how to move forward. Whereas all contributions seek to elucidate the mechanisms behind responsiveness in the EU, they adopt different perspectives that focus on institutional actors, processes of absorbing and communicating policy-relevant information and implementation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) is an unlikely case for responsive policy-making. Yet, in recent years scholars have found that the EU's overall decision-making output is correlated with the average preferences of the European citizens toward European integration. Despite recognizing the value of this systemic approach, we argue in this contribution that studies of EU responsiveness should explicitly acknowledge the multi-dimensionality of responsiveness in the EU by addressing the multiplicity of actors, institutions and publics involved. This actor-oriented perspective directs the focus of responsiveness research to the input stage of EU policy-making. This contribution calls for research that a) theoretically situates the responsiveness of actors in specific institutional venues in a broader perspective of multi-dimensional EU responsiveness and that b) empirically links different forms of input responsiveness to one another and to policy outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Niche party leverage over mainstream party policy agendas is a central theme in the issue competition literature. The literature has underlined that the electoral threat associated with niche party issue mobilization guides mainstream party responses to such niche parties. Yet how do political parties react to issue mobilization in an institutional setting not primarily steered by electoral considerations? We argue that the European Parliament constitutes such a case and study issue competition on the radical right's core issue: immigration. To establish the leverage of radical right members of the European Parliament (MEPs), we use an original data set of parliamentary questions and motions between 2004 and 2016. Using time-series regression analysis, we find that mainstream party groups do not increase their emphasis of immigration issues in response to radical right MEPs' issue emphasis. These findings indicate that the institutional context and the perceived electoral threat are crucial for issue competition dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governments of Hungary and Poland have been accused of sliding toward semi‐authoritarianism. Systematic analyses of the responses of political actors at the EU level to these instances of alleged democratic backsliding are scarce, however. This article therefore investigates the responses of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to the issue of the quality of democracy and the rule of law in Hungary and Poland. On the basis of data on parliamentary questions and motions for resolutions, we analyse who puts these issues on the European Parliament's (EP's) internal agenda and what positions legislators subsequently take in votes on resolutions. We find that both ideological preferences and strategic interests determine MEPs' responses to democratic backsliding. Our findings are important for research on EU responses to democratic backsliding in EU member states as well as for the literature on party competition in the EP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether the support for Eurosceptic challenger parties influences mainstream party position change on European integration in Western Europe. The key finding is that Eurosceptic challenger support is capable of influencing mainstream position shifts on European integration provided that, on average, EU issues are regarded as important by the Eurosceptic challengers. Moreover, the centre-left is more affected by Eurosceptic contagion since it is influenced by both radical right and radical left Eurosceptic success, whereas the centre-right is only susceptible to radical right success. The empirical analyses are based on panel regression analysis employing expert survey data provided by Chapel Hill Expert Survey. The findings presented in this article have important implications for the study of party positioning on European integration as well as for the study of party competition in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]