Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
Party competition lies at the heart of every democracy. It is related to party organization and electoral behavior. There is no consensus on what the political space of competition looks like. The...Show moreParty competition lies at the heart of every democracy. It is related to party organization and electoral behavior. There is no consensus on what the political space of competition looks like. The left-right dimension is the most well-known model of party competition. However, especially in multiparty systems, with multiple salient issues each election, locating parties in a predefined onedimensional space is very unlikely to capture all differences between parties. This study addresses the question what the spatial representation of party competition in multiparty systems looks like. Is it indeed structured along a left-right dimension, or are multiple dimensions necessary to understand competition? It has been argued before that competition in multiparty systems is best understood using multiple dimensions. However, this is the first study that investigates whether the left-right dimension gives accurate information about party competition both deterministically and probabilistically. First, the formal logic behind the empirical use of the left-right dimension is tested. In other words, it is investigated whether the necessary conditions for one-dimensional competition hold in a multiparty system. Additionally, it is investigated how much information is gained when the space of competition is modeled probabilistically, without the a priori assumption that competition is one-dimensional. Focusing on party competition in the Netherlands, it is found that in all election years from 1982 to 2010 left-right party positions did not give an accurate representation of Dutch competition. Rather, two-dimensional spaces are necessary. Especially ethical issues and the issue of European integration cannot be squeezed into an overarching left-right dimension.Show less
Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
The European Union (EU) has witnessed a diversification of its membership in terms of integration. This is regarded as one way of accommodating an increasingly heterogeneous EU. However, this...Show moreThe European Union (EU) has witnessed a diversification of its membership in terms of integration. This is regarded as one way of accommodating an increasingly heterogeneous EU. However, this differentiated integration is likely to be accompanied by disadvantages. Among other things, differentiated integration is also thought to be harmful to the differentiated states’ reputation. However, there is very little empirical work on tangible consequences of differentiated integration. This paper tries to fill this void by looking at one manifestation of informal power: member state access to European Commission advisory committees. The main conclusion is that there is no general relation between access to advisory committees and differentiated integration. However, when looked at in more detail, differentiated integration appears to strongly diminish access to Eurozone-related advisory committees. Moreover, it appears that newer member states’ degrees of access are affected, especially those new members that have not yet integrated fully into the Eurozone and Schengen. If this pattern is structural, the interests of newer member states could be affected.Show less
Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
2012-09-03T00:00:00Z
Over the past few decades a considerable literature, based on the populist notion of democracy, attempted to explicate the more or less successful translation of citizen demands into policy by the...Show moreOver the past few decades a considerable literature, based on the populist notion of democracy, attempted to explicate the more or less successful translation of citizen demands into policy by the political system. Yet maximizing political responsiveness need not be the highest good a democracy can aspire too. Following a liberal theory of democracy this paper moves political responsiveness to the position of the independent variable and shows that there is a connection high political responsiveness (and the risks for a tyranny of the majority this entails) and the freedom of the people living within the state. Drawing on data from the OECD and the Eurobarometer a measure of political responsiveness is developed based on behaviour, rather than attitudinal congruence. This allows the author to show the negative association between responsiveness and freedom (as captured through the CIRI Human Rights Project) in a sample of Western and Eastern European countries between 2006 and 2010.Show less
Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z
Why do democracies not go to war with other democracies? The idea that the internalized liberal-democratic norms of peaceful conflict resolution within a democratic society are responsible for the...Show moreWhy do democracies not go to war with other democracies? The idea that the internalized liberal-democratic norms of peaceful conflict resolution within a democratic society are responsible for the democratic peace, also referred to as the normative explanation, remains subject to a particular lack of empirical academic attention. The few studies into the normative explanation have not tested what should be tested: whether liberal democratic norms indeed affect the behavior of democratic citizens in comparison to the behavior of nondemocratic citizens. This research performs an improved empirical test and studies (1) whether liberal norms exist in a democracy in comparison to a non-democracy and (2) whether these norms have an effect on the individuals of these societies concerning the wish to use force in International Relations. An experimental design showed that there was no significant difference between a group of Dutch students and a group of Chinese students when it comes to the use of force in IR. A marginal effect of the regime type for the democratic citizens was found. Remarkably, in a comparison with the autocratic experimental group, these democratic citizens turned out not to be specifically more peaceful towards other democracies, but rather more war-prone towards autocracies. The overall conclusion of this study is that for both experimental groups the perception of threat was the main indicator for a decision to attack. This research argues that, in contrast with earlier research, there is no support to the claim that the normative explanation can explain the empirically found peace between democracies.Show less
