Search

Populist politicians' social media activity has often been associated with their electoral success. Yet, research on the driving forces of engagement on social media is scarce. Are populist politicians triggering more interaction than mainstream politicians, or is it rather the populist ideology they convey? To disentangle these different factors, we conducted a comparative content analysis of Twitter and Facebook communication of 13 leading candidates in Austria and the Netherlands during an election campaign. Findings show that it is rather styles conductive to populism (i.e. emotionality, first-person references) than the actual content of populist communication that trigger online behaviour. Importantly, irrespective of the content they convey, right-wing populist politicians are more successful in spreading their message via social media than mainstream politicians. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of online communication for populist politicians' success in spreading their viewpoints across networked societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research is devoted to the relationship between populist parties and democracy. However, relatively little is known about the relationship between citizens' populist attitudes and democracy. This article examines the relationship between populist attitudes, support for democracy, and political participation (voting, protest, support for referendums, and support for deliberative forms of participation). Using survey data from the Netherlands, this article shows that individuals with stronger populist attitudes are more supportive of democracy, are less likely to protest, are more supportive of referendums, and are more supportive of deliberative forms of political participation compared to individuals with weaker populist attitudes. Results show no relationship between populist attitudes and voting. These findings provide important insights into the relationship between populism, democracy, and political participation from a citizen's perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure and organisation of the machinery of government are key to the ambitions of political coalitions. When portfolio allocation and agencification are a function of political choice, political volatility should also affect the internal structure of government administrations. This study tests the effects of political turnover of individual ministers and of the political ideology of coalitions on a dataset of intra-ministerial changes in Dutch ministries between 1980 and 2014. Findings indicate that the turnover of political heads of departments and the shifts in policy preferences between successive coalitions indeed affects the internal structure of ministerial departments. Political variables have a strong impact, particularly changes in the left–right position of the government. A clear pattern for how precisely politics affect the structural design of public organisations remains absent, in spite of the robustness of the findings. Most ministries experience significant effect of executive turnover, sometimes increasing the hazards of intra-organisational transitions and sometimes increasing stability. It turns out that ministers can substantially re-arrange their organisations in line with their policy preferences but do not necessarily do so. Sometimes the effect of liberal ideology dominates, sometimes the effect of the policy preferences with respect to a specific domain prevails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central question in Western European electoral research is whether electoral changes over the past decades should be interpreted in terms of dealignment or realignment. Although many scholars study this question, they have not paid much attention to the role of generational replacement. This 'age-period-cohort' (APC) study fills this void by examining the last 10 national elections in the Netherlands (1986–2017). The hypothesis is tested that the determinants of party choice differ systematically across generations. With regard to period effects, it is found that the association between party preference and its predictors has mainly weakened. Over generations, contrarily no decreasing associations are found. The effects of religion, social class, partisanship, left–right and redistribution have not structurally decreased with each successive generation, whereas the effects of education, immigration and European unification are stronger for younger generations. Taken together, these findings reveal how dealignment over time can co-exist with realignment over generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to spatial theories of voting, voters choose parties that are ideologically close to themselves. A rich literature confirms the presence of a close connection between the positions of voters and parties, but findings from cross-sectional analyses of spatial voting might be driven by endogeneity biases. We argue that for investigating the impact of ideological distance on the vote, spatial theories of voting should be tested dynamically. Taking a Downsian perspective on voting behaviour, we assume that changes in parties' ideological positions should cause voters to switch parties from one election to another. In doing so, we also contribute to work on responsiveness to political parties. For testing the role of spatial voting dynamically, we make use of election panel surveys in four established democracies: Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden. The results presented in this article suggest that parties' ideological shifts may indeed cause voters to switch parties, in particular when the party closest to them changes positions, but that the overall impact remains limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For five Dutch public information campaigns, this study assessed whether interpersonal communication mediated the effects of exposure (to TV, radio, or online banners) on five persuasive outcomes: awareness, knowledge, attitude, intention, and self-reported behavior. Structural equation modeling was used to test 23 models relating exposure to one of these outcome variables. Few direct effects of media exposure were found (for online banners, TV, and radio in, respectively, one, four, and seven of the 23 models). In contrast, results revealed that interpersonal communication had direct effects on the outcomes in 17 of the 23 models. Moreover, indirect effects of media exposure via interpersonal communication were found for online banner, TV, and radio exposure in, respectively, eight, nine, and ten models. These results indicate that interpersonal communication plays an important role in explaining media exposure persuasive effects and should be taken into account in the development and evaluation of public information campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article was sparked by a critical reading of Henri de Waele's article 'A New League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? The Professionalization of International Law Scholarship in the Netherlands, 1919–1940', and aims to offer an alternative perspective on this period in the history of Dutch international legal scholarship. While it appreciates the author's examination of Dutch international law scholarship during the interwar period and concurs with the idea that this scholarship needs to be examined more closely, it argues that doing history today requires us first to raise 'the woman question', especially in the context of the so-called 'professionalization' of international law in the 1920s and 1930s, and second to include Dutch colonialism as an important backdrop to the work of the interwar international law scholars. I will give some pointers and illustrations to support this argument. The specific Dutch material brought to bear aims to show more generally the importance of questioning rather than reproducing traditional historiography, within which 'the woman question' and 'the colonial question' were left unmentioned. As such this article also deals with the issue of expanding and remaking international legal history as an issue of present and future purport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hostile media effect (HME) entails that partisanship incites hostile perceptions of media content. However, other research underscores that partisans selectively turn to like-minded media, resulting in a friendly media phenomenon (FMP). The present study suggests that the HME and FMP co-exist, and, furthermore, jointly affect people's voting behavior. More specifically, based on a media content analysis and a long-term panel survey surrounding the 2014 election for the European Parliament in the Netherlands, we find that people selectively turn to like-minded friendly media (FMP), but perceive coverage about the EU (European Union) in these media as relatively unsupportive of their own position (HME). In this context, the FMP and HME appear to jointly influence voting behavior. People cast votes in line with the objectively partisan-friendly media tone of their self-selected media. However, to a certain extent they do so, because they seem motivated to counteract the seemingly unfair or insufficient coverage about the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial scholarly attention has been devoted to explaining why voters support populist parties. Recently, a new concept has been introduced to gauge populism among voters and to explain voting for populist parties: populist attitudes. However, some researchers regard populist attitudes as simply another measurement of existing and established concepts such as political trust and external political efficacy. Using data from the Netherlands (2018), this article addresses the relationship between these concepts, both theoretically and empirically. This article examines whether political trust, external political efficacy, and populist attitudes tap into different latent dimensions. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we show that populist attitudes are not old wine in new bottles and that they tap into different underlying attitudes than political trust and external political efficacy. Furthermore, we show that the three measures are not only different constructs but also relate differently to populist voting preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why the support of independent local parties has grown substantially in the Netherlands. These are parties that run in municipal council elections, but do not run in elections at higher levels, specifically the national level. Such parties saw their support double in the Netherlands between 1986 and 2010. Parties of this type have also grown in other Western European states. This paper examines two possible explanations: declining political trust on the level of voters and, on the supply side, the rise of parties that are not rooted at the local level. The evidence shows that the rise of independent local parties reflects the rise of national political parties that do not run in many municipal elections. This article examines the case of the Netherlands, pooling five surveys from the 1986–2010 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do politicians react to some stories in the news and ignore others? We attempt to answer this question by integrating the micro-level politician perspective with a macro-level country approach. Using a unique experimental approach, we test when politicians in the Netherlands and Switzerland (N=80) take political action based on a (fictional) news report. We find that all politicians react more to negative coverage, but not if the information is merely presented as investigative reporting. Results also reveal a systematic variation that we ascribe to two key differences in the electoral systems. In The Netherlands, with its large single voting district, politicians react to news reports covering issues they are specialized in. In Switzerland, where between-party competition is more important, politicians are more likely to capitalize on the party's profile. Overall, this study shows when and how politicians react to news coverage also depends on the institutional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses two confronting narratives authored by Ukrainian and Russian bloggers who reported the Dutch referendum held on 6 March 2016, and discussed Dutch citizens' referendum vote on the Ukraine–EU Association Agreement. The considered narratives, addressed to the Ukrainian and Russian audiences respectively, are viewed as strategic because they specifically portray political actors of the referendum "drama" – the Netherlands, the European Union (EU), Ukraine and Russia. These actors are significant participants of European international relations, and their perceptions of one another are important for European security at the present time of critical diplomacy. In this paper, information about the DUTCH REFERENDUM obtained from the new media texts is regarded as a narrative-based political concept (NBPC). It is argued that this concept has different versions, or images that reflect the narrators' biased perceptions imposed upon the public. Identification and comparison of such images require a particular methodology. Therefore, the objective of this paper is two-fold: to expose the two confronting versions of a strategically relevant political image, and to develop an authentic, interdisciplinary methodology for its analysis. The proposed methodology is informed by the ontology theory employed in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, counter-terrorism legislation has been argued to be globally focused on a so called 'suspect community': the 'Muslim community'. The media, politicians and scholars speak about a new wave of terrorism where 'Islamic' is a common key denominator. Critical research, so far predominantly focused on the United Kingdom, has pointed at unintended consequences arising from political discourse in which a 'suspect community' is constructed, for society as a whole and the 'suspect community' in particular. Building on this research, this study analyses if and how Muslims are also constructed as a 'suspect community' in Dutch political discourse on terrorism in the period 2004-2015. The analysis shows that political discourse in the Netherlands has shifted significantly in this period. Whereas until 2011, terrorism was framed as a problem that originates in society and that is to be solved for society as a whole, it is currently seen as a problem that originates in Islam and which needs to be addressed by the 'Muslim community'. All members of that 'Muslim community' are now considered as potentially 'suspect' when they do not openly and explicitly adhere to Western values and take action to distance themselves from the 'Jihadist enemy'. Further societal implications of this discourse, in which the 'Muslim community' is constructed as a 'suspect community,' are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how populist parties wage opposition in parliament. We conceptualise opposition behaviour in terms of two independent dimensions: scrutiny (monitoring and criticising government actions) and policy-making (participating in or directly influencing legislative production). In line with the conceptualisation of populism as an opposition to the ruling elite in name of 'the people', our hypothesis is that populist opposition parties are more likely to use scrutiny and less likely to use policy-making tools than non-populist opposition parties. We study the Netherlands between 1998 and 2017 as a typical example of a consensus democracy, where populist parties have a greater opportunity to win representation and use parliamentary tools (compared to majoritarian democracies). Our findings indicate that populist opposition parties are particularly less likely to engage in policy-making behaviour and somewhat more likely to engage in scrutiny behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late 1950s onwards, the Netherlands witnessed a transformation of the emotional codes of politics. A culture of political leadership marked by notions of duty and restraint, made way for self-expression and authenticity. This article argues that the interaction between the spheres of politics and popular culture played a vital role in this transformation. The practices and discourses of popular culture became a significant part of the repertoire through which politicians articulated representative claims. The article traces how politicians negotiated their interaction with popular culture, started to cultivate a private persona and eventually turned into political celebrities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and financial crises that unfolded since 2008 shook the foundations of the European project and its monetary union. Then, the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers into Europe in 2015 questioned the EU’s ability to jointly respond to common political issues. More recently, Brexit came across as the corollary of a prolonged legitimacy crisis. These crises have not only affected the course of European integration but also provided novel issues for political competition within the EU member states. At the party-political level, populist anti-establishment parties have traditionally listed among the principal interpreters and drivers of criticism towards ‘Europe’. In this article, we empirically address the changing Eurosceptic frames adopted by populist parties during these crises and speculate on the reverberation of these frames in respective party systems. For this purpose, we focus on two cases: Italy and the Netherlands. Both countries present instances of populist parties of different ideological persuasions within traditionally Europhile contexts. At the same time, both countries have been affected to very different extents by the recent crises, allowing us to examine how populist parties have responded to different political opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We contribute to the literature on party platform change by theorizing and assessing how party performance motivates parties to change their platform in-between elections. We built a new and unique dataset of >20,000 press releases issued by 15 Dutch national political parties that were in parliament between 1997 and 2014. Utilizing automated text analysis (topic modeling) to measure parties' platform change, we show that electoral defeat motivates party platform change in-between elections. In line with existing findings, we demonstrate that parties are backwardlooking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many party systems across Western Europe, the Dutch party system has been in flux since 2002 as a result of a series of related developments, including the decline of mainstream parties which coincided with the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties and the concurrent dimensional transformation of the political space. This article analyses how these challenges to mainstream parties fundamentally affected the structure of party competition. On the basis of content analysis of party programmes, we examine the changing configuration of the Dutch party space since 2002 and investigate the impact of these changes on coalition-formation patterns. We conclude that the Dutch party system has become increasingly unstable. It has gradually lost its core through electoral fragmentation and mainstream parties’ positional shifts. The disappearance of a core party that dominates the coalition-formation process initially transformed the direction of party competition from centripetal to centrifugal. However, since 2012 a theoretically novel configuration has emerged in which no party or coherent group of parties dominates competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent literature on discursive opportunities shows broad consensus on the importance of media communication in determining the success of minority mobilization. However, the impact of media discourse on formal forms of political participation is less clear. This article examines to what extent, if any, media coverage on immigrant minorities shapes the parliamentary activities of “minority representatives” in the Netherlands and the UK. We investigate whether salience and tone on minorities have impact on how often and in what ways minority members of parliament address ethnic and/or religious constituencies. To study this relationship between media coverage and parliamentary activity, we conduct two separate content analyses of parliamentary questions and newspapers between 2002 and 2012 in the Netherlands and the UK. Multivariate analyses reveal that a more negative tone in newspaper coverage results in more suppressive framing in the Dutch parliament. Our findings for the British case indicate a negative effect of media salience and minority presence on parliamentary salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the supply side of politics demonstrates that populism acts as a common denominator even though populist parties possess very different ideological positions. However, it is uncertain whether this translates to the demand side: Do voters support left and right-wing populist parties for similar reasons? Using the Netherlands as our case study, we investigate the common demand side characteristics of supporters of populist radical right and populist radical left parties. The paper concludes that populist attitudes (i.e. a people-centered notion of political representation) unify supporters of both populist radical left and populist radical right parties. Supporters of both parties also demonstrate lower levels of political trust (than voters for other parties): this is particularly the case for PVV supporters. Beyond these similarities we find that the PVV and the SP attract very different supporters. PVV supporters demonstrate low immigrant tolerance, while SP voters support more income equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New forms of participatory and deliberative democracy gain popularity alongside traditional representative democracy at the local level in the Netherlands. In this article we look at passive citizens defined as citizens who do not participate in any of the new practices. How do they perceive the shift from traditional to new forms of democracy (defined as stakeholder democracy, deliberative polling and associative or 'do' democracy)? We performed a Q-methodological study to find patterns of opinion among passive citizens. We found three patterns. Critical citizens are critical about both traditional representative democracy and new forms of democracy. Loyal citizens support traditional local democracy and do not think the shift to other forms is a change for the better. Distant citizens find that politicians should first and foremost uphold the law and act as referees when citizens disagree. This task has been neglected over the years but this deficiency cannot be remedied by new forms of democracy. All three patterns of opinion are cause for concern for the advocates of more participatory and deliberative democracy. While these new forms may restore faith in politics among active citizens they may simultaneously alienate passive citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative studies have recently highlighted obstacles related to continental European countries’ proclivity for adopting risk-based governance. However, so far, the interface between risk-based policy-making in the EU and potential policy change in reluctant member states has been underexplored. We compare flooding policies in the Netherlands with those in France and Germany to establish the extent to and conditions under which EU-level risk-based policies can transform national governance approaches. Drawing on the concept of Europeanization, we compare national adaptation pressures stemming from the EU floods directive, investigate adaptation dynamics, and account for transformations towards risk-based thinking. We find that Europeanization enabled a mainstreaming of risk-based flooding policies in France and Germany, as national actors used the EU as a venue to entice a desired policy rationalization and centralization. By contrast, and somewhat unexpectedly, the Netherlands partially retrenched from EU procedures because the directive’s reporting mechanisms were considered to breach The Hague’s aspirational policy approach. Overall, the paper identifies a strong potential for even ‘soft’ EU policies to ease national reluctance to risk-based governance approaches, but it also indicates limits where member states use risk-based techniques within an aspirational protection framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The risk framework developed by the International Risk Governance Council includes a ‘concern assessment’ in parallel to the more conventional risk assessment. This factor in risk analysis has had a low profile, but this paper argues that it could be a vital factor in managing a political crisis in reaction to a disaster. The Dutch Government’s ‘Risk and Responsibility’ programme focuses on the tendency of politicians to resort too easily to over-regulation as a response to disasters and the use of concern assessment could provide a way of providing a political analysis of the issues involved. Responses to disasters require good risk analysis, but when there is high public anxiety as a result of the incident then that anxiety is itself an issue, especially for politicians, and requires a different approach than a technical, evidence-based rational analysis. The anxiety is a combination of concerns and requires both analysis and assessment. The anxiety may be an integral part of the main issue or may develop into a parallel issue. Politicians need to understand the nature and strengths of the concerns and consider them alongside more technical recommendations for action. The paper proposes that the concern assessment should lead to a concern response, which should be a political value statement. Rather than announcing a process or a solution, the political value statement should respond directly to the concerns expressed through the public’s anxiety and identify the main values or outcomes that any solution should provide. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Dutch Risk and Responsibility programme has been studying and discussing the ‘risk regulation reflex’ since 2010. As the Dutch government aims at playing a smaller and more realistic part in dealing with risks, it is critical to know how citizens would view such a change. Or do they really demand the government to provide 100% safety, as often seems to be assumed by journalists, politicians and policy-makers? This article describes two studies into the attitudes of citizens towards safety risks and how the programme takes those insights on board. Research in the course of a year, combining quantitative and qualitative methods, found that the majority of respondents appeared to have a down-to-earth and rational attitude towards risks they voluntarily and even involuntarily face. These attitudes do however need to be addressed specifically. And when considering a policy response to a serious incident, the government does not necessarily have to take the strong initial emotion as a starting point. Instead, it can quite plausibly tune in to the public’s down-to-earth attitude. A second study deals with the various perspectives citizens use when accepting risks. The general public tend to follow a broad scope of moral values when deciding on the acceptability of risks, whereas government tends to limit itself purely to risk reduction. When analysing citizens’ perceptions of risk it is more important to question whether a risk is morally acceptable rather than focusing on the exact size of the risk. Technocratic argumentation only strengthens the moral need to reduce risks, as it disconnects risks from the moral reasons why we perhaps ought to take them. And, only the latter contains the key to achieve risk acceptance by the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why do constituent parties that participated in a party merger that was intended to be permanent decide to leave the merger to re-enter party competition separately? To address this question, merger termination is conceptualised in this article as an instance of new party formation, coalition termination and institutionalisation failure. Building on this conceptualisation, three sets of factors are presented that account for which mergers are likely to be terminated by constituent parties and which are not. To test these three sets of hypotheses, a mixed-methods design is used. First, survival analysis is applied to a new dataset on the performance of mergers in 21 European democracies during the postwar period. The findings support hypotheses derived from a conception of merger termination as new party formation: pre- and post-merger legislative performance significantly affect the probability of merger termination. Furthermore, the institutionalisation of constituent parties helps to sustain mergers if the latter already built trust in pre-merger cooperation, in line with the conception of merger termination as institutionalisation failure. Two theory-confirming case studies are then analysed: one case of merger survival and the other of termination. These case studies substantiate the working of the significant variables identified in the large-N analysis that drove the selection of case studies. They also reveal how mediating factors difficult to capture in large-N designs help to account for why factors that - theoretically - should have complicated the working of the 'survival case', and should have been beneficial to the 'termination case', did not generate the expected effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the usefulness of historical insight is often implicitly recognized in public values studies, it is rarely expressed in actual historical research. This article argues that historical analysis is well equipped to investigate public values and their dynamics (i.e., change and continuity over time). To illustrate this argument, the article presents a corruption scandal involving the regent Hugo Repelaer in the Dutch Republic of the 1770s and 1780s. The article shows how patronage and other forms of political behavior were contested on the basis of new and/or reemphasized public values and political principles, such as popular sovereignty and representation. It also shows the emergence of value monism in the Dutch context. An explicit link between the events of the case and theoretical perspectives on public value dynamics serves, furthermore, to increase the understanding of the latter and to elucidate present discussions. The article contends that a historical approach to public values can and should inform present-day attitudes to corruption and integrity, and offers promising avenues for future historical research on public values on a European scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On election day, voters' commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties' organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat-rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party-year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the party's local presence. The findings indicate that today's parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom-made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a specific issue, the "legitimacy problem", in the discussion of whether or not competition authorities in the EU should, in their competition law assessment of co-operation between companies, include a weighing of non-competition elements, such as concerns for a sustainable society. The problem is that decisions in which competition authorities undertake such a weighing of competition values and non-competition values may lack legitimacy; I address it by introducing ideas for enhancing democratic legitimacy. I will do so after introducing more fully the underlying discussion of the goals of European and national competition law and the notion of legitimacy, and how this relates to the weighing oj non-economic values by competition authorities. This general discussion is not limited to the situation in the Netherlands, although this article then focuses on the institutional setting of the Dutch competition authority. This will ground the general exploration in a specific practice. The goal of this article is thus to explore whether a counter-argument to the legitimacy problem can be formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]