Recently, studies have burgeoned on the link between populism and demands for democratic reforms. In particular, scholars have been debating the link between populist citizens or voters and support for referendums. In this article, we examine voters of populist parties (Vlaams Belang (VB) and Parti du Travail de Belgique-Partij van de Arbeid (PTB-PVDA)) in Belgium in 2019 and we look at their attitudes towards various types of democratic reforms. We find that voters of populist parties differ from the non-populist electorate in their support for different kinds of reforms of representative democracy. Voters of VB and PTB-PVDA have in common stronger demands for limiting politicians’ prerogatives, for introducing binding referendums and for participatory budgeting. While Vlaams Belang voters are not significantly different from the non-populist electorate on advisory referendums, citizens’ forums or technocratic reform, PVDA-PTB voters seem more enthusiastic.

Two petitions on the internet strive to include ‘animal rights’ in the Dutch Constitution. Jeremy Bentham stipulated that animals should not be denied the right to happiness, because they suffer. The Dutch philosopher Eskens made a plea to grant animals the same fundamental rights as humans. Theoretically, this leads to special, bizarre and sometimes paradoxical situations. This indicates that the logic in this theory is missing.
In the past fifty years, ethological science made enormous progress and we have learned much more about the emotions and the behaviour of animals. Animals travel consciously through ‘time’ and hurt their brains in the search for knowledge and experiences. But this does not yet make humans and animals equal. Within the legal discourse there is no place for universal rights for animals because these must always be asserted through human intervention. The energy to maintain the bureaucracy Eskens proposes should be used to formulate animal protection as a human obligation.

The General Equal Treatment Law – adopted in 1994 – is a landmark in the history of homosexual emancipation in the Netherlands. It took two decades before the first proposals for a legal ban of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation would be transformed into law. Background of this controversy is the clash between the equalityprinciple and the freedom of education. The compromise reached – the so-called single fact-construction – however sent a double message: being gay was not a justified reason for unequal treatment, but some forms of behaviour were incorporated as a legal exception. It took another twenty years before this flaw in the law would be changed.
This article analyses the political debates behind these legal developments. What was the problem that the various drafts for this new legislation were supposed to solve? Which definitions of discrimination on the basis of homosexuality were used and how did they change over time? The adoption of the law and its ‘reparation’ twenty years later are mainly a question of symbolic politics. They reflect the development of the growing acceptance of homosexuality in Dutch society and have stimulated its further growth. Their actual legal effects seem far less important.

Animals Rights are sometimes seen as unpractical. Some critics expect they will result in an overwhelming bureaucracy. Furthermore, critics point out, it is impossible to make legal arrangements that are coherent and non-contradictory. Most of these concerns are exaggerated. We do not have to devise a whole new legal system. We just need a couple of court cases to get legal clarity and many laws originally meant for humans are easily applicable to other living beings. Keeping animals out of our legal systems meanwhile goes against the constitution. In most democratic countries the constitution states that we may not discriminate on irrelevant factors as race, gender, birth, ‘or on any other ground’. This implies, in my view, that discrimination based on species is not allowed. Equal interests simply should be weighed equal, regardless of the bearer of these interests.

A key factor to a well-functioning ombudsman’s office is autonomy, which can also be derived from the public turmoil surrounding the appointment of Dutch Children’s ombudsman in 2016. Organization-wise, the Dutch Children’s ombudsman is embedded within an existing autonomous institution: the National ombudsman. This triggers the question to what extent such nested constructions can guarantee sufficient autonomy. Viewing the statutory and de facto autonomy of the Children’s ombudsman, we find that the autonomy of the Children’s ombudsman depends to a large extent on the position of the National ombudsman and on the relationship between the National ombudsman and the Children’s ombudsman. Our findings point out that it is necessary to determine and codify the degree of autonomy at the start of an ombudsman’s office.

This article assesses the size and diversity of Belgium’s interest group population by triangulating four data sources. Combining various sources allows us to describe which societal interests get mobilised, which interest organisations become politically active and who gains access to the policy process and obtains news media attention. Unique about the project is the systematic data collection, enabling us to compare interest representation at the national, Flemish and Francophone-Walloon government levels. We find that: (1) the national government level remains an important venue for interest groups, despite the continuous transfer of competences to the subnational and European levels, (2) neo-corporatist mobilisation patterns are a persistent feature of interest representation, despite substantial interest group diversity and (3) interest mobilisation substantially varies across government levels and political-administrative arenas.

The extensive growth of urban tourism has influenced the living environment of urban citizens worldwide, which is among others due to changes in the range of commercial amenities. As a manifestation of this development, the existing supply of retail and hospitality services gradually changes from a focus on inhabitants to the tourist. As a result, the call for municipal intervention grows. However, little is known about the steerability of this development. In this article we therefore asses how tourism affects the range of commercial amenities in city streets, and what local policy responses are most suitable. The research builds on the concepts of tourism gentrification and different types of ‘policy-instrument fit’. Our case study of the city centre of Amsterdam, including a media and policy document analysis, as well as in-depth interviews with stakeholders, show that some problems caused by mass tourism require ‘hard’ forms of government control, while others require a ‘softer’ process approach, linking local parties to jointly improve a city street. The presented steering perspectives are not only relevant for the city of Amsterdam, but also for many other towns within, and beyond, the Netherlands, that have been struggling with the growth of tourism. The open attitude towards urban mass tourism has come up for discussion and urban (tourism) policy calls for reconsideration.

In this article in the series on the local democratic audit, the authors argue that municipal democracy in the Netherlands has become a multiple democracy. Within the formal framework of representative democracy, numerous democratic arrangements have emerged that may be referred to as participatory, direct and also what the authors call ‘do-democracy’. Additions to representative democracy did not come without reason: representative democracy is not a perfect system, either in theory or in practice. Efforts have been made to improve the functioning of representative democracy in a number of ways. Three of these are discussed in this article. The authors note that these three reforms do not solve the problems in representative democracy. So the Dutch municipalities have started looking for additions to representative democracy. In this article various forms of participatory, do-it-yourself and direct democracy are discussed. Many effects of these reforms are still unknown and knowledge about them has crumbled, but one conclusion can be drawn: people with a low education are not inclined to take part, even with arrangements that are easily accessible. Striving for a more vital local democracy seems meaningful; the authors formulate a number of ways of thinking about this.

Reflection and debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

Citizens are being activated to organize activities in asylum centres in both the Netherlands and Belgium. That way, asylum centres are expected to become better integrated in the local context of a municipality or neighbourhood. This ideal of citizenship does not stand on its own. The policy object to integrate asylum centres in the local context has parallels with broader societal and academic discussions about citizen participation and active citizenship. The object, however, is now the asylum seeker. In this article we research how voluntary work in two asylum centres takes shape and how policy could support voluntary activities better. A comparative interpretive policy analysis of two asylum centres in Amsterdam and Brussel shows how voluntary work is stimulated by policy, how these policies are implemented locally, and how they are experienced in daily practices of volunteers and professionals. The cases reveal stark differences, but exactly those contrasts lead to important lessons. We show that because of this policy, the asylum centre is often functioning as a community centre, that integration can be strengthened by volunteers, but we are also critical when voluntary activities are driven by an ideal picture of the ‘good asylum seeker’. There is a risk that the societal responsibility for integrating and engaging asylum seekers in the local context is pushed on the shoulders of unpaid volunteers and that activities are exclusively for one group. That is why we conclude that professional support and financial resources are crucial to implement the policy ideal of active citizenship in asylum centers.

On January 9 2015, Job Cohen held his inaugural speech at the University of Leiden as extraordinary professor at the prestigious Thorbecke chair. His study field was the theory of the municipality as an administrative, political and legal system. The title of his inaugural speech was ‘The fourth D’, in which the first three Ds stand for three different decentralizations of tasks to Dutch municipalities and the fourth D for democracy. In his speech Job Cohen advocated a deliberative form of democracy, because it doesn’t emphasize differences and the exaggeration of differences, but emphasizes what the members of a community have in common. This essay contains the farewell lecture that he held on November 30 2018. In it Cohen says that we are still in the transition of a gigantic operation, the three decentralizations of youth care, social services and labor participation. In many areas, therefore, cooperation at a higher level than the original municipalities is necessary and indeed established. Due to the increased regional cooperation, the House of Thorbecke no longer has such a strong foundation, which has long been the case. It is therefore inevitable, according to Cohen, that the House of Thorbecke receives more than just a new coat of paint. In his farewell lecture he furthermore discusses two kinds of citizen participation. The first kind concerns policy-influencing participation, the second involves self-reliant participation, or do-democracy or civil administration, in which the Right to Challenge is currently in the center of attention. This requires a delicate coordination between those who have and exercise government powers and citizens who want to exert influence on it.

This article investigates the state of affairs of local participation and participation wishes, and its backgrounds. The central question is if those who participate a lot are also those who wish to have more participation or not. It is not possible to simply summarize the developments in time in terms of ‘less and less’ participation and ‘more and more’ wishes. Since the seventies the turnout in municipal elections has fallen (against fluctuations without trend at the national elections) and collective actions for local goals have remained at the same level (against a fall in collective actions for supralocal goals). In 2016 also less people have appeared to participate non-electorally (19% local activists) than electorally (54% turnout in 2014). In addition the support for new opportunities for participation is larger than the actual use of existing opportunities. Political participants are almost as often as non-participants in favour of new opportunities for participation. In line with previous research the authors find several social and political attitudes in support of promoting more opportunities for participation. For participants as well as non-participants it applies that support for more opportunities is promoted by ‘positive’ characteristics (like interest in local politics, worries about the environment) as well as ‘negative’ ones (dissatisfaction with local democracy, disbelief in the responsiveness of councillors).

The term ‘second-order election’ indicates some elections are less important for citizens than national elections. This article investigates to what extent that applies for the Dutch elections of the municipal council. The research builds on literature about the second-order nature of the local elections in the Netherlands. The authors focus on the question to what extent the Dutch elections of the municipal council are second-order elections, by comparing voting at local and national elections in different ways. They compare four aspects of local and national voting: the turnout, the underlying factors that explain the turnout, the factors that explain voting for local parties, and the national or local character of the voting motives at the municipal elections in 2014. The results do not give a clear answer to the question to which extent municipal elections are locally oriented. The four different angles all deliver ambiguous patterns. So municipal elections indeed partly have a second-order nature as previously argued and shown. Nevertheless, we must not underestimate local affinity and political involvement. The fact that some of the citizens are interested in local politics, local parties and in local election electoral programmes is pointing out a local political dynamics.

E-democracy incorporates digital tools, the internet and social media to enhance democracy. There are many of these tools available to improve governmental responsiveness, transparency, and accountability, but also to support the inclusiveness, representativeness and influence of citizens’ participation. Examples are online petitions, apps for neighborhood watches, wikiplanning and social media monitoring. Web 3.0, which is more interactive and less location specific, enables governments to take a more personalized approach. It also allows for participation across administrative and geographical boundaries. In this symposium two contributions address the question of the influence of e-democracy on the democratization of governmental decision-making, information and service delivery, and of citizens’ participation.

E-democracy incorporates digital tools, the internet and social media to enhance democracy. There are many of these tools available to improve governmental responsiveness, transparency, and accountability, but also to support the inclusiveness, representativeness and influence of citizens’ participation. Examples are online petitions, apps for neighborhood watches, wikiplanning and social media monitoring. Web 3.0, which is more interactive and less location specific, enables governments to take a more personalized approach. It also allows for participation across administrative and geographical boundaries. In this symposium two contributions address the question of the influence of e-democracy on the democratization of governmental decision-making, information and service delivery, and of citizens’ participation.

The often gloomy analyses of democratic representation at the local level are frequently directed at the problems with parties and elections. Direct participation is not a good alternative because only certain people who are already politically active use it. However, with the help of the concept ‘representative claim’ and based on two qualitative case studies of decentralizations in the social domain, the authors show that there are other representative people besides elected politicians. These self-appointed, non-elected representatives may advocate on behalf of vulnerable groups who themselves do not have a strong voice in politics. In addition this study shows that elected representatives, like political parties and local counselors, can strengthen their representative role by: (1) cooperating better with the non-elected representatives, (2) highlighting their representational claims and the basis of these claims, and (3) strengthening their responsiveness towards their support base through authorization and other accountability structures other than elections. In this way the democratic representation in municipalities is reinforced and may be stronger than the often gloomy analyses suggest.

Every now and then the question whether or not civil servants are allowed to wear religious and ideological signs divides the minds of the people, and leads to societal and political controversy. In this article we examine this controversy by contrasting two different conceptions of neutrality, an inclusive and an exclusive account. We illustrate why the former is to be preferred and hence that a neutral government should not necessarily ask its servants to abstract from religious and cultural expressions. This however does not imply that all kinds of expressions should be allowed. In order to prevent a slippery slope, we formulate a number of formal criteria that can help to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff: (1) the interpretation of neutrality in relation to a minimum and objective review; (2) the proportionality criterion; (3) the functionality criterion; and (4) the criterion of contact with the public.