What happens when populist radical right parties (PRRPs) adopt an anti-lockdown stance? PRRPs in Western Europe, which in ideology are mostly comparable, have been divided on the issue of COVID-19....Show moreWhat happens when populist radical right parties (PRRPs) adopt an anti-lockdown stance? PRRPs in Western Europe, which in ideology are mostly comparable, have been divided on the issue of COVID-19. The answer does not follow automatically from their economic, cultural or anti-elitist positions, which all seem to advocate for a different strategy. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, two PRRPs have each taken a different approach: one became an anti-lockdown party, the other did not. In this study the effects of becoming an anti-lockdown party on their voter base, who either vote for economic, cultural or anti-elitist reasons, have been examined using a mediation analysis on existing panel data. This study concludes that voters, who mostly vote because they agree with the PRRPs cultural right-wing positions, might be dissuaded to vote for a PRRP that has become an anti-lockdown party. However, anti-lockdown attitudes most strongly positively affect voting for an anti-lockdown party on their own and appear to tap into a new voter base. Future research is needed in order to corroborate this finding.Show less
Recent advisory reports on the Dutch parliamentary system, public scrutiny, and parliamentary upheaval following transgressive behaviour by the old speaker of parliament have drawn attention to the...Show moreRecent advisory reports on the Dutch parliamentary system, public scrutiny, and parliamentary upheaval following transgressive behaviour by the old speaker of parliament have drawn attention to the functioning of parliamentary administrations. The support staff of parliaments is a scarcely covered topic in political science. In a new body of literature, this article is only the second to examine parliamentary staff size quantitatively. It fundamentally extends the scope of previous research from western democracies to a much broader population of parliaments. Drawing on both a functionalist and an institutionalist framework, it hypothesises that population size, population non-linearity, clientelism, parliamentary competition, an interaction between clientelism and parliamentary competition, parliamentary culture, and institutional isomorphism influence the number of institutional and committee staff in parliaments. This research uses house-level data from 161 countries over ten years and employs multilevel analysis to test these hypotheses. It finds strong support that population size, population size non-linearity, and institutional isomorphism influence staff size, while it finds mixed support for parliamentary competition as a predictor of staff size. There was no support for parliamentary culture, clientelism, and the clientelism-competition interaction hypotheses. Additionally, previously thought insignificant predictors of staff size, such as assembly size and parliamentary powers, were, in fact, significant. This article is the first to look at parliamentary administrations, which are vital to the functioning of primary democratic institutions, from a global perspective. Due to the mixed results, it calls for more extensive research on different types of staff, further disentangling of the mechanisms posited, and further data collection to progress understanding of this veiled political and administrative institution.Show less
PA’s hebben een unieke positie in het Nederlandse staatsbestel: ze worden persoonlijk door hun bewindspersoon benoemd, zijn actief in de ambtelijke top van hun ministerie en hebben veel contact met...Show morePA’s hebben een unieke positie in het Nederlandse staatsbestel: ze worden persoonlijk door hun bewindspersoon benoemd, zijn actief in de ambtelijke top van hun ministerie en hebben veel contact met politici, partijgenoten, media en belangenbehartigers. Tegelijkertijd is er weinig inzicht in hoeverre hun werk eerder ondersteunend of strategisch is en of dit de afgelopen twintig jaar veranderd is. Op basis van dertien interviews met PA’s kan gesteld worden dat de rol sterk afhankelijk is van de positie van de bewindspersoon in het kabinet en de taken die een PA van de bewindspersoon mag uitvoeren. Binnen kabinetten zitten hierdoor grote verschillen in de mate waarin PA’s strategisch opereren. Er zijn ook overeenkomsten: vrijwel alle PA’s besteden de meeste tijd op het ministerie, gevolgd door het parlement, het contact met de minister en contact met journalisten en belangenbehartigers. Het werk van de PA lijkt de afgelopen twee decennia, door toegenomen versplintering en minderheden voor kabinetten in de Eerste en Tweede Kamer, strategischer geworden. Ook zijn PA’s meer tijd aan het parlement gaan besteden. De instelling van een parlementair contactpersoon zorgt er daarnaast voor dat een gedeelte van de ondersteunende werkzaamheden uit handen wordt genomen. De maatschappelijke discussie over dualisme raakt direct aan het werk van de PA, die als verbinder en vertaler voor menselijk contact tussen twee werelden kan zorgen. Door de beperkte functieomschrijving kan het takenpakket erg verschillen: van het halen van koffie tot aan meedenken bij vacatures voor topambtenaren aan toe. Inzichten uit dit onderzoek zijn relevant voor de discussie over kabinetisering in Nederland, maar kunnen ook gebruikt worden in het aangekondigde onderzoek naar regelgeving voor PA’s door het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties.Show less
Utopianism has developed over time from abstract fictions of ideal societies to both a canon of theories and a method of theorizing about what societies best facilitate the good life. Modern...Show moreUtopianism has developed over time from abstract fictions of ideal societies to both a canon of theories and a method of theorizing about what societies best facilitate the good life. Modern utopianism is under-utilized as a tool to evaluate policy proposals that have the potential to impact society's structure on a fundamental level. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is an unconditional monetary payment to all to fulfill people's basic needs. With that, it separates people's right to their basic needs from an obligation to work, allowing them more freedom in what work they do and whether they want to work. UBI has been developed into specific policy programs worldwide, but has not yet progressed beyond a welfare program in most cases. A truly utopian UBI would be more ambitious, but is not yet feasible.Show less
Despite the upward trend of democratization since the mid-1970s, there are still many countries that are struggling to make the transition from autocracy to democracy. One of these countries is...Show moreDespite the upward trend of democratization since the mid-1970s, there are still many countries that are struggling to make the transition from autocracy to democracy. One of these countries is Zimbabwe. In 2008, Zimbabwe appeared to be on the brink of democratic change. This thesis investigates why these democratic changes did not materialize by analyzing the situation through the lens of the elite-driven theory of democratization. Using the qualitative research methods and theory building, this thesis can further develop the elite-driven theory of democratization and simultaneously investigate the puzzle of the Zimbabwean case. of within case theory building, this project develops both the elite-driven theory of democratization and investigates the puzzle of the Zimbabwean case. Conceptually, the project finds that the elite-driven theory lacks concrete empirical indicators and expectations which makes it an incomplete theory to use for investigating real-life cases. With regards to Zimbabwe, this project finds that democratization led by the elite did not occur in 2008 because the theoretical conditions did not materialize themselves as expected. Additionally, the project also finds that democratization is not a rational choice for elites and if they are given any other alternative that can protect their collective wealth and power then they will not encourage democracy.Show less
Despite worldwide reports of former child recruits engaging in post-conflict criminal activity, no one has sought to systematically analyze whether this turn of events was a consequence of their...Show moreDespite worldwide reports of former child recruits engaging in post-conflict criminal activity, no one has sought to systematically analyze whether this turn of events was a consequence of their child soldiering past. In fact, any attempt to empirically verify this would have to address the lack of theoretical foundations on which to rest. Indeed, theories about adult post-conflict crime cannot help mapping juvenile crime in the same context, as they are bound by age-specific assumptions. This thesis therefore addresses, and contributes to filling, both these empirical and theoretical gaps. I hypothesize that wartime child soldiering increases post-conflict juvenile crime through two complementary mechanisms – the long-term effects of a full socialization into violence and relative economic grievances – and further suggest that both are mediated by gender. Running a negative binomial regression using existing datasets enables me to glean supporting evidence for this hypothesis, as well as preliminary evidence speaking to the socialization mechanism. Yet, overall, the findings remain somewhat inconclusive due to limitations in the data. I thus call for more research – including qualitative work and original data collection – to ground them.Show less
After almost thirty years of conflict and 3000 fatalities, the Northern Ireland peace agreement promised peace. However, while there was a significant reduction in violence, the post-peace years...Show moreAfter almost thirty years of conflict and 3000 fatalities, the Northern Ireland peace agreement promised peace. However, while there was a significant reduction in violence, the post-peace years were marked by increasing polarisation, low-level sectarian violence and outbreaks of rioting and unrest. The most recent outbreak was in Spring 2021 and is the case-study for this research. Using content-analysis of newspaper articles and interviews with local actors, this research investigates the relationship between ethnonational and socioeconomic grievances in violent collective action in Northern Ireland. It found that decremental and aspirational deprivation were present as grievances in the Spring 2021 riots, and further shows the impact of socioeconomic grievances on this instance of ethnonational collective action.Show less
This paper analyzes the interaction between policy distance and issue salience using the proximity model of voting. It uses a quantitative analysis of items from the Dutch Parliamentary Electoral...Show moreThis paper analyzes the interaction between policy distance and issue salience using the proximity model of voting. It uses a quantitative analysis of items from the Dutch Parliamentary Electoral Survey (2021) and POPPA (2018) to research whether the more salience is attached to economic, socio-cultural, and political issues by voters, the more important the chosen dimension will be for their vote. The examination provides data on voters’ and party positions on these three dimensions, and the binary logistic regression finds that the effect is strongest for the socio-cultural issues, but also somewhat significant for political issues, which confirms the importance of populism in contemporary Western European democracy.Show less
This thesis focusses on the so far neglected role of NATO – the organisation – in the transatlantic conflicts during the Trump administration. Adopting a constructivist approach and conducting a...Show moreThis thesis focusses on the so far neglected role of NATO – the organisation – in the transatlantic conflicts during the Trump administration. Adopting a constructivist approach and conducting a discourse analysis, I identify agency in the discourse of NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s response to the internal frictions with the aim to draw further conclusions on how discourse contributes to the autonomy of international organisations. By doing so, I confront the current dominance in the literature on this subject which has focussed predominantly on the involved states and state power. Correcting for this one-sided misrepresentation, the empirical findings of this thesis suggests that the autonomy of NATO echoed in the Secretary General’s discourse in two ways. One, Stoltenberg was able to create topics, address them and shape its content, indicating that he possessed significant discursive agency. Two, he employed this discursive agency to defend and pursue the interests of the organisation, even at the expense of the interests of NATO’s member states. Consequentially, I argue that these signs of agency were telling echoes of NATO’s autonomy in Stoltenberg’s discursive response to its internal conflicts during the Trump administration.Show less
State-centric, collective resource governance in a world of finite resources is an undertaking struggling with opportunistic behaviour and competitive thinking. Rapidly developing climate change...Show moreState-centric, collective resource governance in a world of finite resources is an undertaking struggling with opportunistic behaviour and competitive thinking. Rapidly developing climate change makes the ability of collective action on vital resources only more difficult. Although states band together in global organisations to address shared issues such as water shortages the academic literature finds stately led collective action to be inadequate for effective, sustainable resource governance. The suggested solution to the found collective action problems is a change in governance approach, namely polycentrism. This study aims to analyse the viability of polycentric governance in global organisations by applying a comparative content analysis on two global institutions, one based on statal and one on municipal membership. These two organisations will be analysed and compared on their ability to collectively govern water resources and avoid collective action problems, which are categorized in coordination, cooperation and division problems. The comparison bases on the organisation’s membership type, being statal or municipal, the institution’s networking structure and the paradigm used for resources which is found to influence discourse and thus governance. If the global organisation based on municipal membership is able to compensate for the found collective action flaws of the state-membership based organisation and vice versa the case can be made that polycentrism is viable. If not, the realizability of polycentrism can be put into question.Show less
Recent studies have found a strong correlation between covid-19 and higher conflict intensity. Yet, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which covid-19 increased the conflict intensity of...Show moreRecent studies have found a strong correlation between covid-19 and higher conflict intensity. Yet, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which covid-19 increased the conflict intensity of pre-existing conflicts. Therefore, this is the gap that this thesis aims to fill. From the disaster-conflict literature, and the covid-19-conflict literature more specifically, I derive three possible causal mechanisms concerning 1) state capacity 2) conflict mitigation, and 3) foreign backers. Consequently, I test these mechanisms with the use of process tracing in the context of the Libyan conflict. The evidence reveals that all three mechanisms were partly present, but did not exactly function as theorized. Indeed, in contrast to the hypothesized causal mechanism, no evidence is found for the suspension of military activities by the state, suggesting that the emergence of covid-19 did not weaken state capacity. Besides, the suspension of conflict mitigating activities and the involvement of foreign backers led to an intensification of violence, despite the continued attention for the conflict during the pandemic. More research, therefore, is necessary to further explore the mechanisms linking pandemics and conflict intensity in pre-existing conflicts.Show less
In August 2021, the Taliban took control over the Afghan government. Subsequently, the EU halted development aid to Afghanistan. This research seeks to explain what motivated this decision and how...Show moreIn August 2021, the Taliban took control over the Afghan government. Subsequently, the EU halted development aid to Afghanistan. This research seeks to explain what motivated this decision and how Afghanistan’s illegitimacy has influenced the EU’s decision. Two aid allocation models based on recipient merit and donor interests are used to explain this puzzle. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative content analysis, this research illustrates how both aid allocation models sufficiently explain the EU’s decision considering Afghanistan’s illegitimacy.Show less
R2P (Responsibility to Protect) is an international norm set up by the international community to set out against mass genocide prevention. It is socially relevant given the Rohingya migration...Show moreR2P (Responsibility to Protect) is an international norm set up by the international community to set out against mass genocide prevention. It is socially relevant given the Rohingya migration crises calling out R2P to be invoked. However recent media and academic debates have cast doubts on R2P’s application. Regardless of these doubts, R2P advocacy has grown globally with more international research partners and their own research journal. This brings forth the question: how does the organization of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) reflect epistemic/expert authority? This is an explorative thesis that makes use of a single case study of R2P employing qualitative research methods. Academic debate shows R2P as either an extension of unilateral humanitarian intervention or a replacement for it. Proponents argue it as a replacement due to its increasing popularity through its authority. This thesis adds to the authority argument with the use of Global Knowledge Networks which explains whether knowledge production of an organization has expert-legitimacy. Using the transnational discourse community and coalition approach it is shown that R2P’s knowledge production has independent force and power among experts, and simplification and impact towards nonexpert. This gives R2P’s knowledge production expert-legitimacy and therefore establishes R2P’s epistemic/expert authority.Show less
With the arrival of over 800.000 migrants to Europe in 2015 during the ‘migration crisis’, the debate on migration rights shifted its discourse from compassion and solidarity to more negative...Show moreWith the arrival of over 800.000 migrants to Europe in 2015 during the ‘migration crisis’, the debate on migration rights shifted its discourse from compassion and solidarity to more negative stances, such as systematic racist behaviors, including demoralization, dehumanization and hate speech against migrants. This thesis aims to delve into the deteriorated image of migrants in the media and determine the consequences of national decision-making at the European level. To do this, this thesis refines existing theories on the relationship between media, the public and policymakers, as these present important academic inconsistencies. By employing a combined approach including the relevance of the political orientation of media outlets and the constraints of collective action problems, this thesis aims to show that media outlets hold similar frames on asylum-seekers and EU asylum cooperation as their political affiliates. With the use of Poland as a case study, this thesis conducts a discourse analysis on Gazeta Wyborcza & Rzeczpospolita Polish press media outlets and parliamentary speeches to uncover frame patterns and the influence media has on a government. This is done by tracing the frames in a chronological manner. Ultimately, this thesis finds that there is a political affiliation between press outlets and politicians, and that the discourse on asylum-seekers significantly impacted asylum-application rejection rates, thus undermining the EU asylum cooperation.Show less
Somaliland is a self-declared country located in the Horn of Africa that has been struggling for international recognition for over 30 years. Nonrecognition hinders unrecognized states from...Show moreSomaliland is a self-declared country located in the Horn of Africa that has been struggling for international recognition for over 30 years. Nonrecognition hinders unrecognized states from participating in multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, it severely restricts their opportunity to attract foreign aid and it excludes their region from international legal frameworks. The decision to grant Somaliland recognition is a political process of negotiation and depended on the global context, and moreover, not strictly bound by international law. Discourse and framing theories exemplify that how actors frame their actions, words and perceptions has a significant influence in diplomatic relations. Hence, this thesis is intending to unravel the ways in which the Somaliland government aims to influence the stance of the international community towards recognizing its independence by using various types of framing. This will contribute to the academic debate as unrecognized states and their practices, interests and beliefs are still considered to be a ‘black box’. A qualitative content analysis was carried out and data was gathered, comprising 14 speeches and interviews given by the Somaliland President and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the period of 2012-2022. The results indicate that the government of Somaliland prioritizes prognostic framing over diagnostic framing with a specific focus on the justification for acquiring international recognition. Motivational framing is mostly deployed towards the United States as this country is seen as a powerful actor in diplomatic relations.Show less
