This study is an effort to extrapolate the patterns that exist in parliamentary voting in the Dutch Parliament. It investigates what party- and vote characteristics influence the divisions between...Show moreThis study is an effort to extrapolate the patterns that exist in parliamentary voting in the Dutch Parliament. It investigates what party- and vote characteristics influence the divisions between coalition and opposition and between left and right that exist in parliamentary voting. Using a triadic model on all recorded votes in the 2017-2021 parliamentary term, this study finds that the proposing actor, proposal type, and proposal subject are relevant predictors of the division that will come about in a parliamentary vote. Specifically, this study provides evidence for three points. Firstly, amendments, bills, and budgets are found to have a stronger left-right division than motions, which have a more dominant coalition-opposition split. Secondly, proposals from opposition parties are found to have a stronger coalition- opposition division than proposals from the government or coalition. Thirdly, contrary to theoretical expectations, this study only finds very limited effect of topical ideological distance on votes pertaining to said topic. The effect is only significant for proposals on economics and environment. This study contributes to the literature by using an extensive dataset and an innovative triadic method. In doing so, this study has attempted to further understanding of parliamentary behaviour based on coalition- and opposition membership and ideology in the Dutch Parliament.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
Research master thesis | History: Societies and Institutions (research) (MA)
open access
2013-01-18T00:00:00Z
In the British House of Commons of the 1860s and 1870s, the concept of ‘democracy’ was despised by most of its members: the word carried a strong negative connotation. No one wanted to have a...Show moreIn the British House of Commons of the 1860s and 1870s, the concept of ‘democracy’ was despised by most of its members: the word carried a strong negative connotation. No one wanted to have a democracy, and no one wanted to be a democrat. Gradual franchise extensions (1867, 1884) transformed this valuation. Yet it took the British parliament decades of debates, and three parliamentary reform acts, before the concept of ‘democracy’ was judged positively by most members of the House. It was only after the Third Reform Act, during the Irish Home Rule debates of 1886, that a new consensus was reached: on the fact that Great-Britain was a democracy, and essentially ruled by ‘the people’. Twenty years before, during the Second Reform Act debates in 1866, such an utterance was unimaginable; it was perhaps desired by a few Radicals, but condemned by a broad majority. Hence, in the period from 1866 to 1886, the meaning and value of the concept of ‘democracy’ underwent a complete and unexpected change. How can we explain this conceptual turnover, from an essentially negative to a predominantly positive valuation? And how did democracy’s meaning shift? Those are the two questions that this thesis tries to answer.Show less
