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Politics of the Low Countries

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Aflevering 1, 2023 Alle samenvattingen uitklappen
Article

Appendix The Ideological Drivers Behind the Support for the Use of Direct Democracy among Voters and Parties of Benelux Countries

Trefwoorden direct democracy, referendums, public opinion, political parties
Auteurs Emilien Paulis en Sacha Rangoni
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie

    The use of referendums has gained popularity among both voters and parties. Yet, despite the diffusion of such direct forms of democracy during the last decades in Europe, referendums remain not a very common policy instrument in Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). We establish that this trend could be explained by a large consensus among mainstream (especially right) parties and voters against the use of direct democracy. Moreover, we confirmed the well-established demarcation with radical ideologies, which convey overall more support and congruence on the use of referendums than the mainstream. Additionally, and probably reflecting this new line of cleavage, we show that support for referendums among the voters relate to left-wing economic position, but also with culturally right-wing view. Overall, this article questions the relevance of the traditional left-right divide to explain support for direct democracy, as well as the capacity for (some) parties to align with their voters in terms of democratic demands.


Emilien Paulis
Emilien Paulis is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Luxembourg.

Sacha Rangoni
Sacha Rangoni is PhD Researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

Nanuli Silagadze
Nanuli Silagadze is a postdoctoral researcher at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Her main areas of research include democratic innovations with a particular focus on the instrument of direct democracy, political parties and voting behaviour. She is the guest editor of this special issue of Politics of the Low Countries 2023-1.
Literature Review

Amending and Extending Referendum Ballots

Innovations in Referendum Literature and Practice

Auteurs Charlotte C.L. Wagenaar
Auteursinformatie

Charlotte C.L. Wagenaar
Charlotte C.L. Wagenaar is a postdoctoral researcher on the NWA-REDRESS project, which explores the potential for combining voting and deliberation in so-called hybrid democratic innovations. Charlotte specialises in (multi-option) referendum design.
Article

The Democratic Potential of Community-Based Initiatives

Trefwoorden community initiatives, democracy, participation, do-democracy, legitimacy
Auteurs Kors Visscher, Menno Hurenkamp en Evelien Tonkens
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie

    As governments in Western Europe have retreated from providing public services over the past decades, they have stimulated communities to take over many of these services. This has resulted in, among other things, a plethora of community-based initiatives (CBIs). CBIs are heralded by some for their innovative potential: they would address new problems. CBIs are also criticised for being undemocratic, as their activities can marginalise or overrule elected politicians and the citizens active in CBIs are not representative of the population. We argue that these different praises and criticisms implicitly depart from different democratic perspectives, specifically the representative and do-democratic perspectives. These different perspectives need to be explicated and compared in order to judge in what ways CBIs can and cannot be said to have democratic legitimacy, when assessed from different perspectives on democracy.


Kors Visscher
Kors Visscher MSc. is a doctoral researcher on the project Democratic Legitimacy of Community-Based Initiatives at the University of Humanistic Studies, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Menno Hurenkamp
Prof. dr. Menno Hurenkamp is professor of democracy at the University of Humanistic Studies, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Evelien Tonkens
Prof. dr. Evelien Tonkens is Chairholder Citizenship and Humanisation of the Public Sector at the University of Humanistic Studies, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Article

The Ideological Drivers Behind the Support for the Use of Direct Democracy among Voters and Parties of Benelux Countries

Trefwoorden direct democracy, referendums, public opinion, political parties
Auteurs Emilien Paulis en Sacha Rangoni
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie

    The use of referendums has gained popularity among both voters and parties. Yet, despite the diffusion of such direct forms of democracy during the last decades in Europe, referendums remain not a very common policy instrument in Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). We establish that this trend could be explained by a large consensus among mainstream (especially right) parties and voters against the use of direct democracy. Moreover, we confirmed the well-established demarcation with radical ideologies, which convey overall more support and congruence on the use of referendums than the mainstream. Additionally, and probably reflecting this new line of cleavage, we show that support for referendums among the voters relate to left-wing economic position, but also with culturally right-wing view. Overall, this article questions the relevance of the traditional left-right divide to explain support for direct democracy, as well as the capacity for (some) parties to align with their voters in terms of democratic demands.


Emilien Paulis
Emilien Paulis is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Luxembourg.

Sacha Rangoni
Sacha Rangoni is PhD Researcher at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Article

Direct Democracy Integrity in Modern Authoritarian Systems

The Constitutional Referendum in Turkey 2017 and Russian Plebiscite in 2020

Trefwoorden referendum, integrity, modern authoritarianism, opposition
Auteurs Norbert Kersting, Margarita Zavadskaya en Tiphaine Magne
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie

    Modern authoritarian regimes have implemented a relatively large number of referendums in recent decades. These have had important consequences for institutional change. Applying the new Direct Democracy Integrity Index to the Turkish constitutional referendum in 2017 and the Russian constitutional referendum in 2020, this analysis determines whether these plebiscites fulfil the standards of integrity and respect the rights of oppositional parties and minorities. We found that the level of integrity was lower during the pre-election period than during the election or the post-election period. We observe that modern authoritarian systems such as Russia (in 2020) use strategies of mobilisation, activism and even modern forms of deliberative democracy. However, their strategies are characterised by propaganda. In contrast, authoritarian regimes (such as Turkey) are still implementing strategies of repression which lead to passivity, disengagement and apathy. Both have strong implications for the integrity of referendums.


Norbert Kersting
Norbert Kersting is Professor at the University of Münster, Germany.

Margarita Zavadskaya
Margarita Zavadskaya is Professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Tiphaine Magne
Tiphaine Magne is a PhD candidate at the Lille Institute of Political Studies of the University of Münster, Germany.
Article

Responsive or Responsible? On the policy implementation of popular initiative under challenges of international law

Trefwoorden direct democracy, deportations, implementation, international law, Switzerland
Auteurs Laurent Bernhard
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie

    The scant literature on policy implementation in direct democracy has found that non-compliance with accepted initiatives is rather widespread. Political scientists have mainly explained this finding by focusing on the preferences of those actors in charge of implementation, thereby neglecting supranational restrictions. This article advances the literature by focusing on the challenge posed by international law. It is argued that the implementation of initiatives that conflict with international law poses a dilemma between responsiveness (i.e., respecting the people’s will) and responsibility (i.e., complying with a country’s external obligations). A case study of the Swiss deportation initiative shows that legislators relied as much as possible on responsiveness by enacting a decisive tightening of penal legislation according to the basic demands of the accepted proposition and as little as necessary on responsibility, given that MPs refrained from implementing those provisions that conflicted with mandatory international law.


Laurent Bernhard
Laurent Bernhard is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Democracy Studies of the University of Zurich, Switzerland.