The assassination of Pim Fortuyn and the electoral breakthrough of his Lijst Pim Fortuyn sent shockwaves through the Netherlands in May 2002. This article assesses the influence Fortuyn has had on Dutch politics and society. It provides an overview of the research that has been conducted on this topic over the past decade and relates the findings of previous studies to research on the consequences of the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties on West European party systems.

For several years, Dutch and international survey research programmes, such as the European Values Studies, the Eurobarometer, and the Dutch Parliamentary Elections Studies, have registered the judgements of (Dutch) citizens regarding a wide variety of topics. The Legitimacy-monitor Democratic Governance (Hendriks, Van Ostaaijen & Boogers, 2011) assembles those statistics that together present a layered picture of the legitimacy of democratic governance in the eyes of Dutch citizens. For this article, we review those statistics and take the ‘Fortuyn-year 2002’, the year in which Fortuyn shook up Dutch politics, as a demarcation point. Among the many continuities in pre- and post-Fortuyn statistics, we register a number of marked changes in the judgements of citizens regarding democratic governance in the Netherlands. The most salient, we conclude, is the growing thirst for vigorous ‘leadership’, which not only breaks with the trend of several decades (ever weaker preference for strong leadership), but also the logic of Dutch consensus democracy (many hands and not one head).

The Dutch electorate is the most volatile of Western Europe. At its height in 2002 more than 30 percent of the seats in the Dutch Lower House changed to another party. But what does the increased electoral volatility mean? Are volatile voters whimsical, behaving randomly like drift-sand? Or are volatile voters emancipated, no longer committed to a single political party but still loyal to their own preferences?We answer these questions by analysing the 1VOP panel data set, which covers 55.847 adult respondents who participated in at least 2 of the 58 waves between November 2006 and June 2010.First, we assess the presence, frequency, and direction of changes in voters’ party preferences. More than half of the respondents (52 percent) changed party preference at least once. However, they mostly stick to one of two ideologically coherent party blocks.Second, we explain why some voters are more likely to change party preference than others. Especially middle groups are volatile: people with modal income and average levels of education, and people who position themselves in the political center. However, the lower educated are more likely to switch between dissimilar parties. These findings support the view that increased volatility reflects voter emancipation.

In this paper we analyze Fortuyn’s political inheritance in the Netherlands. Going beyond the mere electoral popularity of his neo-rightist successors, we analyze the changing political culture since Fortuyn entered the political stage. More specifically we show that his ideological beliefs – Fortuyn voiced an unprecedented combination of liberal views towards homosexuals and gender equality with critical views pertaining to immigration, and he was critical of political and administrative elites – caught on in current Dutch politics. Moreover, his highly personal communicative style, placing him outside the inner circle of Dutch politics underscoring his adversity to these political elites, also caught on in mainstream political campaigning. This new personal style, however, did not mean a demise of ideology. On the contrary, Fortuyn actively tried to appeal to the electorate with ideals and ideology – hence marking the rebirth of the so-called ‘fact-free politics’ after the de-ideologized purple governments in the Netherlands. Since Fortuyn, mainly parties on the right side of the political spectrum have followed this path of re-ideologization. The paper ends with a comparison of the counterculture originating in the 1960s and post-Fortuyn right-wing politics, which surprisingly shows great continuity. We therefore argue that we are currently witnessing a veritable counterculture 2.0.

When people think of Pim Fortuyn, most of them mainly remember his national campaign and (electoral) debates. However, Fortuyn also had an impact in local politics. With the local party Liveable Rotterdam (Leefbaar Rotterdam) he won the 2002 Rotterdam municipal elections with almost 35 procent of the votes and was involved in coalition talks with the Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Party. Without Fortuyn, who was murdered in 2002, Liveable Rotterdam was able to implement several parts of its electoral programme (Van Ostaaijen 2010, 2011). But Fortuyn’s anti-establishment attitude was not unprecedented at the local level. Many local parties, meaning parties not affiliated to a national party, already portrayed styles of anti-establishment, especially the so-called ‘Liveable’ (Leefbaar) parties. In this article, the development of those parties, mainly since 2002, is described and discussed. The electoral results of these parties are, where possible, linked or hypothesised to the rise of Fortuyn.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.