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
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
In deze scriptie wordt het effect onderzocht van behaalde voorkeurstemmen op de lijstplaatsing bij de volgende gemeenteraadsverkiezingen met als casus de verkiezingen van 2014 en 2018. De...Show moreIn deze scriptie wordt het effect onderzocht van behaalde voorkeurstemmen op de lijstplaatsing bij de volgende gemeenteraadsverkiezingen met als casus de verkiezingen van 2014 en 2018. De hoofdvraag luidt dan ook: In hoeverre zijn eerder behaalde voorkeurstemmen bij voorgaande gemeenteraadsverkiezingen een factor voor de kandidaatstelling en het opstellen van kandidatenlijsten bij de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen? Uit de uitgevoerde lineaire en logistische regressieanalyse blijkt dat partijen kandidaten ‘belonen’ met een hogere lijstplaatsing ten opzichte van de voorgaande verkiezingen, die relatief veel voorkeurstemmen behaalden. Er blijken geen significante verschillen in het gevonden effect tussen mannelijke en vrouwelijke kandidaten, landelijke en lokale partijen, landelijke partijen onderling, kandidaten met en zonder raadservaring en gemeenten met meer of minder inwoners.Show less
Political science literature has previously focused on different political behaviors among men and women in the United States, where little research of this type has been conducted in a west...Show morePolitical science literature has previously focused on different political behaviors among men and women in the United States, where little research of this type has been conducted in a west European context in parliamentary systems. Within a framework of cospecialization, this study explores potential gender differences in the municipal council of Utrecht in the period of October 2020 to October 2021 using mixed methods. Motions and its cosponsors were analyzed, where gender did not have a significant effect on the cosponsoring of council members. Cospecialization however, did have a significant effect, in line with the cospecialization literature. The interviews with council members were intended to explain any potentially found effects in the quantitative analysis, yet none of the participants alluded to a difference in gender when it came to political behavior quantified as cosponsoring motions. Still, some other themes for potential future research were brought up. A new hierarchy of factors is proposed based on the qualitative data (cospecialization, agreement, issue topic, and personal relations), and the data is contextualized and situated in the existent literature, from which future comparative studies are suggested.Show less
Studies over parlementaire agenda setting analyseren veelal welke factoren ervoor zorgen dat partijen succesvol hun onderwerpen op de parlementaire agenda krijgen. Het feit dat deze onderwerpen...Show moreStudies over parlementaire agenda setting analyseren veelal welke factoren ervoor zorgen dat partijen succesvol hun onderwerpen op de parlementaire agenda krijgen. Het feit dat deze onderwerpen soms door dezelfde partijen weer van de parlementaire agenda worden geschrapt, wordt daarbij vaak genegeerd. Deze studie analyseert 319 succesvol aangevraagde dertigledendebatten uit de Tweede Kamer om te achterhalen welke factoren een rol spelen het schrappen van zaken van de parlementaire agenda. Uit een nested analysis opgebouwd uit logistische regressies en een content analysis blijkt dat probleemeigenaarschap geen belangrijke factor is bij het intrekken van dertigledendebatten. De mate waarin een partij een populistische oppositiestijl hanteert, hangt daarentegen sterk samen met het intrekken van dertigledendebatten. Populistische partijen trekken minder dertigledendebatten in, omdat dertigledendebatten met name geschikt zijn om democratische controle uit te voeren. Omdat populistische partijen vooral gericht zijn op democratische controle, zijn zij daarom minder geneigd om een dertigledendebat in te trekken.Show less
In maart 2017 kwam zowel de Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) als het Forum voor Democratie (FvD) in het Nederlandse parlement. Beide partijen zijn rechts-populistisch, iets wat niet vaak voorkomt in...Show moreIn maart 2017 kwam zowel de Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) als het Forum voor Democratie (FvD) in het Nederlandse parlement. Beide partijen zijn rechts-populistisch, iets wat niet vaak voorkomt in Europese parlementen. Bijna al deze partijen zijn gecategoriseerd als radicaal rechts-populistisch of neoliberaal populistisch. De PVV van Wilders is gecategoriseerd als radicaal rechts-populistisch, maar voor het FvD ontbreekt een categorisatie. Dit onderzoek heeft daarom als doel om het FvD te categoriseren binnen het rechts-populisme. Het onderzoek richt zich op de theorie van het radicaal rechts-populisme en het neoliberaal populisme. Aan de hand daarvan worden vijf criteria geformuleerd om het FvD te categoriseren. Hiervoor worden parlementaire documenten (amendementen, moties, vragen en wetsvoorstellen) en parlementaire stemmingen in de periode maart 2017 tot en met 2019 gebruikt. Daaruit blijkt dat het FvD voor vier van de vijf criteria binnen het radicaal rechts-populisme valt. Op één criteria is de partij meer neoliberaal populistisch. Daarom wordt er geconcludeerd dat het FvD een radicaal rechts-populistische partij is.Show less
This thesis contributes to existing theories on democratization by examining the effect of Western influence on democratization in post-Soviet countries from 1991 until 2019. Western influence is...Show moreThis thesis contributes to existing theories on democratization by examining the effect of Western influence on democratization in post-Soviet countries from 1991 until 2019. Western influence is divided in two dimensions: leverage as governments’ vulnerability to external pressure and linkage as the density of ties to the West. It is expected that leverage alone does not enhance democratization, but linkage does, and that a combination of high linkage and leverage has the strongest effect on democratization. Surprisingly, a factor analysis on the dimensions of linkage and leverage reveals that leverage is not a coherent concept as was expected beforehand. Moreover, after performing multiple OLS regressions, it is concluded that linkage has a strong effect on democratization, and some dimensions of leverage positively influence democratization. Finally, it cannot be concluded that an interaction effect exists whereby leverage enhances the effect of linkage on democratization. This is due to the lack of coherence between the leverage dimensions and due to conflicting results of the performed tests.Show less
The following thesis investigates the moderation effects of issue salience on the relationship between retrospective evaluations of governments' healthcare as well as economy policies performance...Show moreThe following thesis investigates the moderation effects of issue salience on the relationship between retrospective evaluations of governments' healthcare as well as economy policies performance and government popularity. Its core hypothesis postulates that voters are more likely to reward incumbents with reelection if they pursue successful policies, as well as more likely sanction them with defection to opposition, if their policies fail for issues they consider to be salient. The thesis runs two separate studies using different measurements of the same theoretical concepts to check for robustness of results. The first study is based on individual-level data, while the second study employs macro-level data. Results of the first study suggest, that voters are more likely to reward incumbents for improving healthcare standards when healthcare-related issues are salient, but not more likely to sanction incumbents for worsening healthcare standards. Contrary to expectations, voters who are of the view that economic issues are salient, seem to be more likely to support incumbents when national economic conditions are regressing. For Study 2, the thesis found no significant effect – objective indicators of economic and healthcare quality performance as well as measures of economy and healthcare-related issues on a macro-level seem to be unrelated to government popularity, though data validty is suspected to play an important part in the outcome of the regressions of Study 1.Show less
This study examines how the government accession within an EU country can affect the discourse of the left-wing and right-wing populist parties. We analyzed this question by tracing two Greek...Show moreThis study examines how the government accession within an EU country can affect the discourse of the left-wing and right-wing populist parties. We analyzed this question by tracing two Greek populist parties' discourse, the left-wing Syriza and the right-wing Independent Greeks (Anel), during the 2012-2019 period. We have split the examined period into two subperiods (2012 to July 2015, and August 2015 to 2019). The turning point was the Syriza-Anel government’s signature of the third EU bailout program in August 2015. The first hypothesis was that the government accession within the EU context would slightly decrease the populist logic of the two parties. The next two hypotheses referred that the EU leverage emerged by the signing of the bailout agreement will decrease the populist rhetoric of the two parties towards the external elites (mainly the EU). However, the right-wing populists (Anel)- even after this decrease- will target the external elites to a larger extent than the left-wing populists. To examine the hypotheses in-depth, we applied a combination of quantitative content analysis with qualitative discourse analysis. The findings have corroborated our three initial hypotheses. Simultaneously, the qualitative discourse analysis offered us some additional findings concerning the two parties' use of topos of “History” to increase their populist appeal within the electorate.Show less
De parlementaire arena wordt door volksvertegenwoordigers gebruikt om zich te electoraal te profileren. Aan de hand van de Ierse Health Act 2018 wordt in deze studie onderzocht in hoeverre...Show moreDe parlementaire arena wordt door volksvertegenwoordigers gebruikt om zich te electoraal te profileren. Aan de hand van de Ierse Health Act 2018 wordt in deze studie onderzocht in hoeverre electorale stabiliteit een voorspeller is van individuele standpuntbepaling bij abortuskwesties. Met behulp van een innovatieve rubriekmethode worden de speeches van 45 Ierse parlementariërs geanalyseerd, op basis waarvan vastgesteld wordt dat er slechts een beperkt verband waarneembaar is tussen electorale kwetsbaarheid en de mate waarin TD’s uitgesproken standpunten verwoorden. Geconstateerd wordt dat kiezersopvattingen niet noodzakelijkerwijs leidend zijn voor de standpuntbepaling van electoraal kwetsbare parlementariërs. Naarmate hun districten minder eenduidig gestemd hebben bij het abortusreferendum in 2018, kiezen zij er vaker voor om überhaupt geen eigen standpunt in te nemen over de abortuskwestie.Show less
Political trust is seen as a requirement for democratic regimes to function well. In the Netherlands, polling data indicates that trust is lower in less densely populated provinces, while remaining...Show morePolitical trust is seen as a requirement for democratic regimes to function well. In the Netherlands, polling data indicates that trust is lower in less densely populated provinces, while remaining high nation-wide. This study aims to identify if living in less urbanized - low population density - areas in the Netherlands have lower levels of political trust, and if so look at potential explanations. I investigate the two most specific levels of the framework by Norris (2011, 2017) of political trust: trust in regime institutions as well as trust in incumbent office-holders. All analyses were performed on four waves of data from the DPES (2006 - 2017). After controlling for education, religion, gender and age, urbanization did not improve the prediction of political trust in either level. One remarkable result was that education and age had opposite influences in trust in regime institutions versus trust in incumbent office-holders. These differences demonstrate the value of Norris’ framework: the type of relation between an underlying factor and political trust may depend on the type of political trust considered.Show less
