This article examines what explains the performance of Dutch local party branches in the recruitment of candidates for municipal councils. Fielding a list of candidates is the most basic function of political parties. In the Netherlands, party branches are under pressure from the low number of party members. To analyse how branches fulfil their role in recruitment, we employ our own survey of the secretaries of party branches held in the run-up to the 2018 municipal election. We find that party membership drives the successful fulfilment of the recruitment function but that, more than the absolute number of members, the crucial factors are how these party members cooperate, the number of active members and the development of this number.

Preference votes constitute one of the key features of (open and flexible) PR-list electoral systems. In this article, we give an extensive overview of studies conducted on preference voting in Belgium and the Netherlands. After elaborating on the definition and delineation of preference voting, we scrutinize studies about which voters cast preference votes (demand side) and about which candidates obtain preference votes (supply side). For each of these aspects, both theoretical approaches and empirical results are discussed and compared. At the same time, we also pay attention to methodological issues in these kinds of studies. As such, this research overview reads as an ideal introduction to this topic which has repercussions on many other subfields of political science.

The electoral rise of the Belgian regionalist party New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) from scratch to the country’s largest party is remarkable. We explore here to what extent the party has shifted in ideological terms compared to its less successful predecessor VU. We make use of party member survey data (a dynamic indicator of a party’s position). We distinguish three factors that impact on parties’ positions: institutional reforms, the influx of new members and changes in the internal power distribution. The results show a clear change: on each of the five policy dimensions (centre-periphery, socio-economic, moral-ethical, post-materialist and migration issues), significant differences could be found.

This study on the role of media attention for the Dutch question hour answers these questions: to what extent is media attention a source of inspiration for oral parliamentary questions? What explains the newsworthiness of these questions? And what explains the extent of media coverage for the questions posed during the question hour? To address this, we present a content analysis of oral parliamentary questions and related press coverage in five recent years. Results show first that oral questions are usually based on media attention for a topic. Concerns about media influence should however be nuanced: it is not necessarily the coverage itself, but also regularly a political statement that is the actual source of a parliamentary question. The media are thus an important ‘channel’ for the interaction between politicians. Second, our analysis shows that oral questions do not receive media attention naturally. Several news values help to explain the amount of news coverage that questions receive. ‘Surfing the wave’ of news attention for a topic in the days previous to the question hour seems to be the best way to generate media attention.

Over the years, political cartoons have triggered debate and fierce and violent reactions. Apparently, cartoonists are able to get their critical, ‘negative’ message across both to the political elite and the general public at large. This line of reasoning, however, assumes that the communication between cartoonists and their mass public is successful, i.e., that the message that the cartoonist intends to send is correctly interpreted and received as intended. This is not obvious, since the decoding of the encrypted message of a cartoon is a complicated process that can easily go wrong, as the scarce research on the topic suggests. This study explores the idea that cartoons are correctly understood on the basis of a unique large scale survey in which over 24,000 respondents were asked via multiple-choice questions to identify the original, intended message of 11 cartoons of two Dutch cartoonists. The results show that overall it is extremely hard to correctly understand the meaning of cartoons. Moreover, among the few factors that help explain the difference in the capability to correctly understand cartoons, political preference is prominent and intriguing. People tend to ascribe a meaning to cartoons/cartoonists that fits their own political stand, and this suggests that psychological mechanisms are at work that may explain that more often than not the communication between the cartoonist and his public should likely be labelled miscommunication.

Previous research shows that the position on the ballot list strongly influences the electoral success of candidates. However, the underlying mechanisms of this effect remain unclear. The list position can have a direct influence through a so-called primacy effect, parties may anticipate on the success of candidates, or the effect can be mediated by factors such as media attention and campaign intensity. Using data from the Antwerp district elections in 2012, this paper disentangles these mechanisms. Our study confirms the direct ballot list position effect, providing evidence for the existence of a primacy effect. However, we find that part of the ballot list position effect is mediated by media attention, especially for the first candidate on the list. Campaign intensity also influences the electoral success of candidates, but does not mediate the list position effect. Finally, we find no evidence that parties successfully anticipate on the electoral success of candidates.

Politicians have started to use social media more often. As such media induce personal campaigning, one might expect more personalization to follow. We explore what type of personalization social media stimulate, whether this is different for Twitter and Facebook and analyze the role of parties. We make use of quantitative and qualitative data about the Netherlands (2010-2014). We find that while theoretically the impact of social media may be big, in practice it is fairly limited: more presidentialization but not more individualization (though Twitter might increase the focus on other candidates slightly). The difference between theory and practice seems largely due to the parties. They adopt a very ambiguous stance: though they often stimulate candidates to use social media, they want to keep control nonetheless.

The media are a much-discussed subject in both the scientific and the public debate on the functioning of democracy. Nevertheless, there is relatively little empirical research on the effects of media on the most fundamental aspect of politics: the legislative process. However, this type of research is important because it helps us gain insight into the influence journalists exert. This study analyses the influence of media attention for bills on the legislative process in the Netherlands. A quantitative analysis of the newspaper coverage for recently discussed bills indicates that the parliamentary process is influenced by this coverage. This first study of media-effects on the Dutch legislative process suggests that more media-attention leads to the introduction of more amendments by both members of government and members of parliament.

This article investigates whether group-based politics is still relevant in Belgian and Dutch politics. Based on the PARTIREP MP Survey it more precisely studies the extent to which Belgian and Dutch parliamentarians in comparison to other European countries attach importance to the representation of ‘old’ cleavage groups (class and religious groups) or new groups (age groups, women and ethnic minorities), and which strategies are considered most appropriate. Group representation of old and new groups is found to be of great importance in both countries. Class is not dead and age groups are also highly represented. In contrast, religious groups and ethnic minorities receive far less attention in the Low Countries. Notwithstanding these similarities, there is also cross-country variation regarding the level of importance (greater in the Netherlands), the represented groups and the strategies for representation.

Electoral behavior has changed considerably over the last few decades. The Netherlands are exemplary of how the cleavage structure has waned and how this has led to a weakening of the bonds between parties and voters and to higher levels of electoral volatility. Christian democratic and social democratic parties are most affected by these changes, because of their strong roots in the cleavage structure. The alterations in electoral behavior are generally assumed to be evolving gradually through a process of generational replacement. Composition effects on the one hand and a weakening of the impact of socio-structural factors, partly caused by cognitive mobilization on the other hand are considered to be the mechanisms behind this generational change. This paper tests these assumptions with regard to the Netherlands on the basis of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Surveys, 1971-2010. The findings indicate that while some variation between different birth cohorts is visible, most of the differences in voting for both of these parties, however, are situated at the level of election years. Furthermore, with regard to what drives change over time, the analyses indicate that while composition effects and changes in the effects of socio-structural variables are of some importance, cognitive mobilization is not causing the change observed.

If the impact of party leaders on the electoral fate of their parties may be called first order personalization, this paper addresses second order personalization: a preference for an individual candidate having to do with that person embedded in a prior choice for the candidate’s party. Using survey data and election results with respect to intraparty preference voting in The Netherlands, this study explores the characteristics of both voters casting a vote for a candidate other than the party leader and candidates receiving preference votes. Given the increase in intraparty preference voting, second order personalization has increased considerably in recent decades. Moreover, the correlates of second order personalization differ from those identified for first order personalization: intraparty preference votes are cast more often by higher educated, politically interested and efficacious female voters. Intraparty preference voting also seems to be a form of expressive rather than instrumental electoral behaviour: female candidates, and to a lesser extent ethnic candidates, receive more preference votes, but such votes are cast predominantly for the highest placed female (or ethnic) candidate on the list – candidates who would be elected on the basis of their position on the party list anyway.

Political parties are the building blocks of representative democracy since they traditionally perform roles that are considered essential for the functioning and well-being of democracy. In the study and evaluation of the democratic system as a whole, as a general rule, parties are treated as unitary actors. Most political parties, however, are membership organizations and their external functioning is partly dependent on internal affairs, including the behavior and opinions of their members. In this paper we open the black box of parties and show on the basis of a 2008 survey among seven political parties how united or divided ordinary Dutch party members are with respect to various political issues and orientations. It is shown that most parties are rather united on most issues. They are least united on two of the most pertinent issues of today’s politics, i.e. the integration of ethnic minorities and European integration.

Compulsory voting was abolished in the Netherlands in 1970 without a thorough debate about the likely consequences. On several occasions, I have recommended its retention in countries that have it and its introduction in countries that do not have it. Compulsory voting has a positive effect on turnout and is a guarantee for equal electoral participation by different groups in society. However, the debate is far from closed. In particular, the relationship between compulsory voting and type of democracy (majoritarian vs consensus democracy, majoritarian vs proportional electoral systems) requires further research.