New technology, flexibilization and the intensification of work could have significant consequences for those who still have work in the future, and for the quality of that work. In a new report, the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) is therefore arguing that good work for everyone should now be seen as an important aspiration for companies, institutions, social partners and the government. Good work is essential for general well-being: for the individual’s quality of life, for the economy and for society as a whole. We make nine policy proposals to promote and facilitate good work for more people.

Since Pim Fortuyn, discontent has become a central issue in public and political debates in the Netherlands. The government tries to ban out all risks and polarisation between citizens, because it fears this will have a destabilising impact on society. However, these measures do not seem to decrease discontent. In this article, we analyse why discontent so persistently keeps dominating debates. We argue that it is prominently and continuously expressed due to the position of opinion polls and the interaction between politicians, journalists and citizens and due to the platform that social media offer. But meanwhile, means to convert discontent into constructive, collective action are diminishing. As a result we continuously gather superficial information about people’s discontent. In order not to hinder constructive debates with this kind of information, as happens in current political discussions, different and more detailed information about the public opinion is needed. Politicians and researchers should make a more clear distinction between discontent itself and the incapacity of citizens to deal with it. Moreover, a revitalisation of the role of civil organisations is important to channel discontent.

Within political science there is an ongoing discussion about the persistent or diminishing influence of social cleavages on voting behavior and the extent to which new voting motives have taken over the explanatory power of these predictors. We investigate the influence of religion, nationalism, ethical conservatism/progressivism and left-right orientations on the voters’ appreciation of political parties in Belgium. This method allows us to make a more qualified analysis on voting motives, in particular for smaller parties. We use data from the 2009 PartiRep election study, which show that traditional cleavages still have an important influence on political preferences. While the left-right-dimension has a limited influence on voting preferences in Flanders, it does play a major role in Wallonia. Contrary to expectations, the explanatory power of left-libertarian and right-authoritarian positions is rather weak, with one major exception: the preference for Vlaams Belang is almost entirely determined by ethnocentrism while this attitude is not relevant for other parties. In general, we find that both traditional and postmaterialist cleavages play a more important role in predicting party appreciations in Flanders than they do for French-speaking respondents.

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.

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.

In deze bijdrage plaatsen we de gezagscrisis van de hedendaagse wetenschap in cultuur en politiek in een breder, cultuursociologisch perspectief.

In their book Diploma Democracy Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille state that positions in the field of politics are dominantly held by people with higher levels of education. Because of diverging political preferences between citizens with a higher level of education and those with a lower one this results in a lack of representation of the latter, they argue. In this section five authors critically replied to this position from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. In this contribution Bovens en Wille answer their critics.

Some studies find that interethnic propinquity leads to ethnic tolerance, while others conclude that it underlies ethnic conflict. Using data on 50 Dutch cities in 2006 and 2010, this article assesses whether the consequences of interethnic propinquity for votes for Wilders’s PVV – the Dutch anti-immigrant party par excellence – are conditional on the economic and cultural urban contexts in which these contacts take place. In line with the ‘conflict hypothesis’ it is found that a higher level of interethnic propinquity leads to more support for the PVV in cities with a high level of unemployment and an intolerant cultural climate (as measured by the bohemian index and the gay-scene index), whereas the relationship is reverse in cities with low unemployment levels and a tolerant cultural climate (corroborating the ‘contact hypothesis’).

After a summary of several contributions in this volume, we focus on certain problems and omissions in the debate about citizenship and the position of migrants in Dutch society. First, nearly all the contributions are related to the level of theoretical concepts or policy proposals, neglecting the level of social behaviour and important changes of social reality. Second, all authors acknowledge the fact that the moral dimensions of citizenship have become more important, yet nobody seems to be interested in a scientific explanation of this remarkable fact. In response to these omissions we try to understand why the Netherlands has changed from an open society into a community struck by xenophobia. One explanation might be that the intensity of social interaction has increased considerably. Another explanation is related to the fact the level of education has grown, creating a higher expectations of 'normal' behaviour. Together these tendencies undermine the ('typical Dutch') tradition of tolerance or deviant behaviour generally and for 'strange' behaviour of migrants specifically.

By means of a re-analysis of the most relevant data source (Nieuwbeerta & Ganzeboom 1996), this paper criticizes the newly grown consensus in political sociology that class voting has declined since World War II. An increase of crosscutting cultural voting, rooted in educational differences, rather than a decline of class voting proves responsible for the decline of the traditional class-party alignments. Moreover, income differences have not become less, but more consequential for voting behavior during this period. It is concluded that the new consensus has been built on quicksand. Class is not dead – it has been buried alive under the increasing weight of cultural voting, systematically misinterpreted as a decline of class voting, due to the widespread application of the Alford index.

This paper deals with the linkage between changes in the political culture and changes in class-party alignments. First, we investigate how the political culture in Western countries has changed over time. Three views are tested using data on party-manifestos. The first predicts that only new-leftist issues will increase in salience. The second predicts that both new-leftist and new-rightist issues will emerge at the same time. The third, which is empirically corroborated, predicts that first new-leftist issues will emerge followed by a rise in new rightist issues.
Second, we investigate how the emergence of these new issues has affected the traditional class-party alignments. We show that the middle class increasingly votes left-wing as newleftist issues become more important and that the working class increasingly votes rightwing as new-rightist issues become more important. The middle class also appears to alienate from the traditional party of their class as new-rightist issues rise in salience.

The decline of traditional class voting is at the centre of the Class Politics debate. From the framework of traditional class analysis a labourer’s right wing vote appears ‘unnatural’. A right wing vote is thought to damage the interests of the economically precarious groups. This paper attempts to understand the phenomenon of so-called unnatural voting behaviour starting from the populism concept. From a theoretical literature study we analyse the relationship between populism and attitudes regarding the economic left-right cleavage. We argue that right-wing populism appeals to a cry for equality, yet at the same time mobilises this sentiment against the institutions of the welfare state. In that way populist right parties succeed in attuning their economic discourse to the socio-economic attitudes of broad layers of the population, including economically precarious categories. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis is tested on the case of Flanders.