In 2019, the world witnessed an exceptional wave of climate protests. In this case study, we scrutinise who participated in the protests staged in Belgium. We ask: did the exceptional mobilising context of the 2019 protest wave also bring exceptional protesters to the streets? Were thanks to the unique momentum standard barriers to protest participation overcome? We answer these questions by comparing three surveys of participants in the 2019 protest wave with three surveys of relevant reference publics. Our findings show that while the Belgian 2019 protest was in many ways exceptional, its participants were less so. Although participants – especially in the early phase of the protest wave – were less protest experienced, younger and unaffiliated to organisations, our findings simultaneously confirm the persistence of a great many well-known socio-demographic and political inequalities. Our conclusion centres on the implications of these findings.

At the request of the General Administrative Service (ABD) of the Government in the Netherlands Mark Frequin developed a vision for public leadership. In his opinion it’s not about a paper-reality but about a movement to more leadership. For that reason he made a Compass for public leadership. If you want to set steps to more leadership it’s all about looking for direction. And despite what normally happens in the public sector, jumping to solutions, it’s therefore much more important to find out what are the dilemmas, the problems, the paradoxes, the puzzles…Mark is giving attention to some of them in this article: the need for more long-term-planning and at the same time short-term political promises; the importance of more knowledge in public on the one hand and the same time seeing more opinions in society and media; the information-paradox: not too much and not too little information; being in control and at the same time accepting uncertainty; and being a (civil) servant and also a (public) leader. The search for public leadership is understanding the difficulties. It’s therefore a search given the fact that there are not one-time answers.

At the beginning of the corona crisis, there was a real wave of solidarity actions, for example people helping each other in villages and neighbourhoods, and buying food from close by. At the same time, opinion articles appeared about the historical-social context in which the COVID-19 virus could have such a rapid impact on society. These two observations have led to this research into the potential of citizen collectives in times of crisis. First, it was shown that, in combating the pandemic, governments paid little or no attention to the possibilities of citizen collectives to reach citizens in villages, districts and neighbourhoods through direct, personal channels. In contrast, the analysis of 20 opinion articles from the period March-June 2020 shows that the value shifts that most authors consider desirable to address the big issues in society are a good fit with the values that citizen collectives represent. For three domains – care and housing, work and food – this is illustrated with existing practices and new needs. Their conclusion is that the government would do well to make a strong appeal to the organizing capacity of active citizens, their networks and community strength when tackling major social challenges related to climate, energy, care, food and housing.

As soon as uncertainty rears its head, mistrust increases and people seek interpretation and clarity. Both reactions strongly appeal to the ability of public organisations to make contact precisely then, at the critical moments. That’s no mean feat. What makes establishing and perpetuating contact in a unique context such as the corona crisis so complex? That question is central to this contribution. The authors set up their consideration from the philosophy of appreciative communication. The complexity lies in several things, first of all, the necessary customisation. Management is communication and communication is people’s work and that makes it custom work. In a crisis, you cannot simply fall back on protocols, existing policies, etc. The situation requires constant reassessment, coordination and making choices. In addition, you have to make those choices in an ever-changing context that is characterised by factors such as the initial invisibility of the problem, the unprecedented scale, the uncertain course, the indivisibility of the government, and the unease with the government. In combination with a number of faltering communicative levers, various tensions arise that complicate the contact and thus the administrative task. The authors identify seven contact keys from the philosophy of appreciative communication that can be helpful in practice and conclude with a review of these ideas based on the communicative tasks identified by the Dutch Safety Board in its first evaluation. What takes place in a crisis is not an isolated communicative task that can be outsourced, but reveals a quality that is the guiding principle in everyone’s – managerial – actions.

This article examines the rally round the flag in the Netherlands during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, i.e. the rise in trust in political authorities in response to the external threat. The authors use unique panel data to do this, the first of which took place in the days before the announcement of the first national lockdown (mid-March 2020), and the second shortly after the announcement of the reopening of schools (late April/early May 2020). This allows them to isolate the rally in time. Their research shows that the government in particular has gained confidence. Confidence in other political institutions rose to a lesser extent; confidence in the police and the judiciary did not increase. We can best understand the rise in confidence as a decline in cynicism: during the first wave, politicians were less often portrayed as incompetent, which proved to be a motivator for increasing confidence. Fear of contamination was an important motivation for increasing confidence. Under the influence of the external threat, people placed their hopes on political authorities. Both mechanisms may explain that confidence rose particularly sharply among voters of radical right parties, although radical right voters remained the least trusting voters.

This research note presents new definitions, measurements and data of cabinet conflicts and conflict features. Particular attention is given to the ethno-territorial nature of conflicts. This approach can easily be applied to various sources, periods, policy levels and countries. As an example, this note describes a novel dataset that provides the most fine-grained picture of Belgian cabinet conflicts to date (N = 1,090; 1995-2018).

Theories on issue competition assume that there is only a limited number of issues that a person prioritises simultaneously. In this research note, we test this mechanism by using a panel study that was conducted among Belgian parents in 2019 and 2020. Between the two observations of the study, the country suffered a severe health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate whether this crisis reduced the priority of environmental issues among respondents. Our results show that there was indeed a significant decline of some indicators for environmental concern, but not for others. Furthermore, we show that a higher priority for the health-related and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a steeper decline in environmental concern.

The underrepresentation of women in politics is a worldwide phenomenon and the Netherlands fit the pattern: about 39% of the Dutch MPs are female. Based on social role incongruity theory, it is expected that female politicians are evaluated more negatively than male politicians since women do not fit the dominant male politician role. However, most research is conducted in the United States, that is, a candidate-centred system where individual characteristics play an important role. This article focuses on the party-centred parliamentary context in which we examine (1) whether gender stereotypes are present among citizens and (2) to what extent these stereotypes influence the evaluation of politicians. We do this by conducting an experimental vignette survey design. We find that at the mass level there is no difference between the evaluation of male and female politicians, although gender stereotypes are present.

This article provides a computer-assisted morality framing analysis of Vlaams Belang’s 2019 manifesto. The VB is regarded in the literature as a prototypical example of the Populist Radical Right (PRR). We first concisely review what PRR politics is and what it consists of, tentatively distinguishing four elements that we hypothesise will materialise in corresponding subframes running throughout the manifesto. We point to a mismatch between the omnipresent role of morality in all PRR subframes and the little attention devoted to the concept in the PRR literature. We introduce a useful theory from social psychology into framing literature to create a novel methodological approach to frame analysis that builds a bridge between a qualitative content and a quantitative context approach. The results support our hypothesis that populism, nationalism, nativism and authoritarianism can be distinguished from one another. Additionally, we detect a fifth PRR subframe, crimmigration, by its unique role of morality.

Following the municipal elections in the Walloon Region (Belgium) on 14 October 2018, 189 political groups won an absolute majority. Twenty-two of these decided not to exercise power alone, but favoured the formation of an oversized coalition by integrating a minority partner. The aim of this article is to identify the motivations behind the formation of a local coalition when one of the partners has an absolute majority. Semi-structured interviews with mayors and leaders of political groups in these municipalities make it possible to identify the motivations for, first, the choice to open and, second, the choice of a minority partner. By distinguishing between necessary and supporting motivations, this article shows that the search for greater representation is a necessary motivation for the choice to open, whereas personal affinities and memories of the past are necessary motivations for choosing minority partners. By prioritising motivations, this article shows that.

Local policy freedom is often equated with the formal policy freedom of municipalities and thus with the formal boundaries that determine the local playing field. In this article, we question this approach. It is not clear to what extent formal policy freedom is a good measure for the ‘real’ policy freedom of municipalities, and thus for the policy freedom that municipalities use in policy implementation. Does more formal policy freedom necessarily lead to more used policy freedom? Moreover, not every municipality uses formal policy freedom in the same way. To indicate variance in policy discretion used, reference is often made to official capacity, scale and political changes. However, it is unclear to what extent these variables have an impact on local policy freedom. The authors investigate the link between formal and used policy freedom, official capacity, scale and political change on the basis of Flemish policy reform. Based on an analysis of financial data, they conclude that more formal policy freedom can be an incentive for more used policy freedom, but also that the explanatory power of administrative capacity, scale and political change is limited. In both research and policy, we need more attention for the value of social interaction, soft skills and networking.

Local political parties are an important factor in local politics in the Netherlands. These parties, which participate in municipal elections but are not affiliated with national political parties, are currently the largest ‘political family’ in the municipal councils. Yet surprisingly little is known about these parties. The existing research indicates that this ‘party family’ has a protest character. But at the same time, more precise analyses indicate that this party family is more diverse: and that the label ‘local party’ describes all kinds of different movements. However, a comprehensive analysis of the programmatic positioning of all parties in this family in relation to national parties is lacking. That is the purpose of this article. For this research, all election manifestoes of the departments and parties that participated in the municipal elections in November 2013, March and November 2014, November 2017 and March and November 2018 were collected. On this basis, the positions of all these parties are estimated on the left-right dimension, a scale that measures anti-elitist rhetoric and a scale that measures localism, based on modern quantitative text analysis techniques (bag-of-words approaches). In this way, for the first time, a picture is obtained of the programmatic cohesion and diversity of this party family as a whole.

Do the budgetary consequences of an acute crisis make us less willing to tackle long-term challenges? This paper asks whether the recent ­COVID-19 crisis has affected the willingness of parties to commit to so-called ‘policy investments’. These are policies where short-term costs are accepted in anticipation of higher benefits in the longer run. Theoretically, there is no unambiguous prediction as to whether the recent crisis plays a role in repositioning party preferences regarding policy investments. In light of this theoretical ambiguity, this article aims to provide an empirical answer by measuring and comparing party positioning regarding policy investments of Dutch parties during the two general elections for the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamerver­kiezingen) of 2017 and 2021 respectively. To identify which proposals qualify as policy investments, and measure the corresponding willingness to engage in them, the article builds on calculations of the budgetary impact of party manifestos provided by the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (Centraal Planbureau; Keuze in Kaart). The subsequent analysis shows that overall willingness of parties to engage in policy investments has increased during the COVID-19 crisis; suggesting that the tension between addressing short- and long-term challenges is less strict that often suggested.

COVID-19 has hit many countries all over the world, and its impact on (party) politics has been undeniable. This crisis situation functions as an opportunity structure incentivising opposition forces to support the government. Not much is known about what drives opposition parties to (not) support the government in crisis situations. This article integrates the literature on rally-around-the-flag, political opportunity structures, party types and party goals. More specifically, we focus on the behaviour of opposition parties towards the government’s crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse whether and how the party type influences the position of the party vis-à-vis the governmental coalition, focusing on the case of Belgium. We categorise the seven opposition parties in Belgium as challenger or mainstream parties and explain their behaviour on the basis of policy-, office- or vote-seeking motives. Our analysis is based on party voting behaviour, elite interviews and an analysis of the main plenary debates.

Governments around the world responded at roughly the same time but in several different ways to the emerging threat of COVID-19 in early 2020. This article sets out the nature of the different strategies that emerged over the course of the pandemic, focussing on the policy tools deployed. Some of these efforts were successful in containing the coronavirus while others were not, in some cases due to poor initial choices and in others due to poor implementation of the chosen strategy. Although the initial understanding each government had of the nature of the disease was the same, different state capacities and different levels of preparedness and effective leadership can be seen to have resulted over time in the emergence of six distinct approaches to the pandemic which, once deployed, proved difficult, although not impossible, to change as the pandemic unfolded.

In this article we present the results of research into quality control systems in Dutch mental health care (GGZ). So far, little is known about the efficacy of quality control systems in this sector. A mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods has been applied (interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and document analysis) to find out how these systems were applied in mental health care and how their use could be explained.
The findings show that the implementation of quality control systems was limited and highly selective. The system appears to be permanently failing, a fact recognized by most parties, yet mistrust prevents change. This confirms the assumption from institutional theory that some parts of organizations can have a symbolic rather than a real effect. In this case, it seems that the presence of quality control systems is valued over the actual improvement of quality.

This paper takes a public administration lens to look at the relationship between scientific knowledge en policy making during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemix in The Netherlands. Policy makers portrayed an eagerness for scientific knowledge to help them make ‘the right decisions’, and many scientist were just as eager to answer the call. However, there are many dilemmas involved in the relationship between policy making and scientific advice. How can de the relationship between science and policy best be organized? What scientific dicisplines and subsidsciplines should be involved? And what is the specific role of social sciences in policy advice?

Do citizens with a lower level of political representation evaluate political actors more negatively? While the literature has documented inequalities in political representation, less attention has been given to the extent to which different levels of representation affect citizens’ levels of political trust. We aimed to fill this gap by analysing whether Belgian citizens with a lower level of policy opinion congruence with their party’s legislators have lower levels of trust in the parliament. Our results show that policy opinion congruence has a positive impact on citizens’ political attitudes. Indeed, citizens with policy preferences closer to those of their political representatives tend to have higher levels of trust in the parliament. This rela‍tionship depends on political sophistication: policy opinion congruence affects political trust for most citizens except those who consider themselves to be ‘very interested’ in politics. Citizens with a very high level of interest in politics trust the parliament regardless of policy opinion congruence with their party’s legislators.

In this article I analyse whether differences in formal committee structures affect how parliamentary actors organise their work within them. I compare the allocation of members to specialised committees in the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) and the Belgian Chamber of Representatives (Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers/Chambre des Représentants) to test whether committee assignments are given more serious consideration when committees are strong. Despite many similarities, both parliaments differ in their internal institutional arrangements: committees in the Chamber of Representatives are, at least formally, considerably more powerful than those in the Dutch Lower House. The article uses the congressional theories of legislative organisation as heuristic devices to deduce several rationales of the assignment process. The role of parliamentary party groups is highlighted. The results indicate the presence of stable, reoccurring patterns in both parliaments. Even in the House of Representatives, where committees present lower opportunity structures, assignments are given due consideration.