Lobbying by interest groups and the formation of governments both are established themes of empirical research, but not much is known about their linkage. This article presents an exploratory study of organizations and groups with interests seeking influence on the political agenda at the earliest stage of a governmental life cycle: its formation. From the theoretical perspective of the politics of attention, an empirical study is made of the lobby papers that government informateurs receive from business, non-profitorganizations and ngo’s, public organizations and citizens or citizen groups. By comparing the lobby agenda of these diverse organizations and groups to the coalition agreement, it is possible to draw some preliminary conclusions about whose issues and themes become visible and prominent on the governmental agenda, and whose topics obtain lower priority. This research is a basis for further analysis of the impact of lobbying on the policy agenda.

Should we consider local authorities and their associations as a formal government layer when they interact with the European institutions in order to influence EU legislation, or should this be classified as informal territorial interest group behaviour? This paper discusses the role and the influence of local authorities in the European decision-making process. Based on a literature review, the paper contrasts both positions in terms of theoretical underpinning, practical implementation and academic state of affairs. The paper demonstrates that whilst the formal perspective has gained more leeway in the official European policy discourse and subsequent institutionalisation in recent decades, it is often insufficient to guarantee the effective inclusion of local authorities in EU policy-making. Interest group action, i.e. lobbying, might therefore still be a more practical and powerful way of promoting local political interests in the European policy arena.

In this article I argue that the commonplace interpretation of neoliberalism in the Netherlands is mistaken. According to this interpretation the term ‘neoliberalism’ refers to a series of policies, including privatisation and deregulation, that were implemented in the Netherlands in the 1980’s in imitation of Thatcher and Reagan. I argue that it is not this series of policies but the justification underpinning them that is of a neoliberal nature. To support this claim I offer a brief genealogical history of neoliberal thought, which developed in the interwar period, by explicitly distinguishing itself from both 19th-century classical liberalism and contemporary modern liberalism. On the basis of this historical account I assert that neoliberalism adopts the foundational principles of classical and modern liberalism, but that it prescribes different formal principles of rational government. I conclude that this diction makes it possible to write a critical history of neoliberalism.

Studies have shown that multiple office-holding, a practice that denotes the simultaneous exercise of any directly elected municipal mandate and parliamentary seat, is more commonplace in European national parliaments than expected. However, research in Belgium, and especially in the Netherlands, is scarce and extremely fragmented. Therefore, our analysis provides a systematic comparison between the Low Countries with a longitudinal focus. In the first part of the paper, the frequency of the practice is described and its evolution in the last two decades tracked. In the second part, we provide aggregated explanations for the identified discrepancy. Indeed, our results show that after the most recent elections, more than 80% of all Belgian members of parliament held a local mandate, and this percentage increased by 10% during our reference period. In contrast, 9 out of 150 members of the Dutch Second Chamber were combining several offices at the beginning of their national mandate, while the degree of cumulards remained stable. Unexpectedly, the legislative framework and the party regulations are not the source of this deviation, as they are almost identical in both countries. We argue that the difference can be attributed to the role and position of the local government, the political culture and the electoral system.

Even though they are portrayed as culturally and mentally very different, the Dutch and the Flemish share a border, a part of their history, and their language. Little oversight has been provided regarding the similarities and differences in terms of their democratic and political institutions and their mode of operation. This is especially the case for the local level. With upcoming local elections in both the Netherlands and Flanders/Belgium, this article presents an oversight of similarities and differences regarding local government and local elections in both territories. The main conclusion is that there are differences and similarities in both the local institutional setting and government practice. In local government practice however, the differences stand out.

This article compares the mayoralties of the Netherlands and Flanders, with a particular focus on the changes since 2010. The results show that the mayors of these two historically and culturally connected Low Countries form particularly homogeneous groups of people. This has not changed much over the last few years. The role and function of mayors in both Flanders and the Netherlands, however, have gradually changed substantially. In particular, both mayors’ responsibilities in the field of safety and security have increased. At the same time, the two mayoralties show considerable differences. The Flemish mayor has long been and still is a far more political figure than the Dutch mayor is. The Dutch mayoral office, however, is politicising, which has resulted in more debate about its role in local government than in Flanders. The comparison shows how the local political culture can strongly influence how public offices take shape.

This article investigates to what extent national and/or local factors influence the performance of national parties in the most recent Flemish and Dutch municipal elections of, respectively, 2012 and 2014.
Our analyses underscore the impact of local factors on the municipal election results, both in Flanders and in the Netherlands. The number of parties and previous election results have a negative effect on the vote share of national political parties. Contrary to the expectations, participation in local government does not have any influence on the national lists’ elections results.
Although local factors have to be taken into account to get a better estimation of the performance of national lists in municipal elections, national factors have significant effects as well. Parties doing well at the national elections, are less successful at the local level.

This paper analyses ministerial expertise of senior ministers and junior ministers (in Dutch: staatssecretarissen) who held office in the Netherlands between 1967 and 2015. Expertise is differentiated between two independent dimensions: technical knowledge with respect to the subject matter of the portfolio, and political knowledge and skills. Results indicate that both types of ministers have considerable political and technical expertise, but junior ministers have relatively and significantly more often technical expertise and senior ministers more often have political expertise. Furthermore, the complete outsider (lacking both technical and political skills) is a rather rare phenomenon in both types of ministers. Besides, although it follows from the watchdog junior minister theory that political expertise is needed to function effectively as a watchdog, there is not a significantly higher frequency of political expertise in the junior ministers when the junior minister and the senior minister are from different parties than when they are from the same party.

This article looks at indications and counterindications in Dutch democracy for the popular claim that citizens, while still valuing representative democracy, are fed up with representative politics. Using available large-scale surveys, citizen attitudes are analysed at the levels of specific political actors (politicians, officials), central political institutions (political parties, parliament, government) and the general system of representative democratic politics (the way it works in the Netherlands, with multiparty coalitions, etc). While specific legitimacy problems exist, the evidence for a general legitimacy crisis in Dutch democracy is comparatively weak and highly mixed. More specifically, the evidence suggests that Dutch citizens do not so much want less representative politics, but rather representative politics of a somewhat different kind: less exclusively organized via party-political channels; more geared at recognizable and accountable political authority. Dutch citizens want to seriously influence but not supplant selectionistic representative politics, the evidence suggests.

New forms of participatory and deliberative democracy gain popularity alongside traditional representative democracy at the local level in the Netherlands. In this article we look at passive citizens defined as citizens who do not participate in any of the new practices. How do they perceive the shift from traditional to new forms of democracy (defined as stakeholder democracy, deliberative polling and associative or ‘do’ democracy)? We performed a Q-methodological study to find patterns of opinion among passive citizens. We found three patterns. Critical citizens are critical about both traditional representative democracy and new forms of democracy. Loyal citizens support traditional local democracy and do not think the shift to other forms is a change for the better. Distant citizens find that politicians should first and foremost uphold the law and act as referees when citizens disagree. This task has been neglected over the years but this deficiency cannot be remedied by new forms of democracy. All three patterns of opinion are cause for concern for the advocates of more participatory and deliberative democracy. While these new forms may restore faith in politics among active citizens they may simultaneously alienate passive citizens.

This article looks at national political institutions and euroscepticism. Over a timespan of 25 years, I compare values for majoritarian vs consensus democracy for 14 European democracies, with measures for euroscepticism at the levels of party systems, elections and public opinion. Consistent with the thesis that consensus democracy generates more system-opposition at the national level, this regime type is also more sensitive to euroscepticism. This is not the case, however, for France and the UK, two very eurosceptic majoritarian democracies. The study also shows that a context of socio-economic crisis (2008-2014) turns this relationship around, as increased conflict within society demands for more consensus at the elite level. The study essentially argues that euroscepticism still is ‘a touchstone of dissent’ for national politics. However, the extent to which national democracies generate this dissent, and especially, whether it is channelled by eurosceptic parties, depends on the dominance of consensus in the domestic institutional context.

Issue ownership theory argues that the public considers some parties as more capable to handle certain issues. Issue ownership is important, because parties tend to receive more votes if their owned issues dominate the campaign. Consequently, issue ownership theory expects parties to emphasize issues they own, while ignoring issues owned by their competitors. This study investigates to what extent Dutch parties emphasized issues they own, before and after the seven Dutch national elections held between 1994 and 2012. It uses a detailed content analysis of four Dutch newspapers, that tracked parties’ issue attention. The results show that parties tend to emphasize owned issues more, both compared to other issues and compared to their competitors. A surprising finding is that parties tend to emphasize owned issues more during the formation period compared to the campaign. Moreover, government parties emphasize owned issues less than opposition parties.

Elections are routinely investigated with a focus on the way in which winners or losers of the elections are different in their attitudes towards the political system. There is no previous research on the general impact of participation in the electoral process on support for the political system. In this study, we hypothesize – based on the procedural fairness theory – that participating in elections raises the voter’s political trust, irrespective of the result of the party s/he voted for. Furthermore, we expect this impact to be largest for voters with the lowest level of internal political efficacy. These expectations are investigated using the Belgian election panel (2009-2014) study, observing political trust before and after the elections in two consecutive electoral cycles. The results provide support for all proposed hypotheses, highlighting the importance of general participation in elections for democratic legitimacy.

This paper analyses the information sources members of the Dutch Lower House base their questions on with regard to EU affairs in the period 1995-2013. Knowledge of the type of information sources to base questions on is vital for determining what the conditions are under which members of national parliaments can scrutinize the decisions taken by the national government at the EU level. The involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs is according to many scholars a necessary condition for closing the democratic deficit of the European Union, especially when the turnout in elections for the European Parliament remains low and for national parliaments remains stable and relatively high. An original dataset is constructed including all sets of written parliamentary questions on EU affairs asked by Dutch MPs in the period 1995-2013, categorized by different types of information sources on which the question is based. These different categories of information sources are regressed with a variable measuring the Treaty changes impacting on the intensity of contact between MPs of different national parliaments and several variables measuring the characteristics of Dutch MPs and their parties. The findings indicate that Dutch MPs base their written questions primarily on coverage on EU affairs by national newspapers. Moreover, MPs are more likely to use sources rooted in a national context for asking questions when they are a member of a party with a negative attitude towards European integration. These findings imply that parliamentary control via written questions over the decisions of the national executive at the EU level can be strengthened by increasing national media coverage on EU affairs, allowing the EU public sphere to develop further in the future.

In this paper we investigate the effect of political sophistication on turnout and whether this effect differs in second-order national elections. Political sophistication is thought to influence turnout because the more sophisticated voters have access to more information about the electoral and the party system. In this paper, we start from the expectation that these effects should be even stronger in the context of secondorder national elections, where information about the stakes of the election is not readily available. We analyse citizens’ willingness to turn out to vote at different levels of government in Belgium and the Netherlands. The results show that a higher degree of political sophistication increases the probability to turn out at the national as well as the European level. Our expectation that this effect would be larger at the European level, however, is not supported by these results.

In order to win elections political parties sometimes adapt their policy platforms to a changing society. But according to some scholars left-wing parties are in this regard more reluctant than right-wing parties. The former would show less programmatic flexibility than the latter. Other authors nuance this difference and state that leftist parties are ideologically more volatile at one moment and rightist parties at another time. In this article we empirically test whether rightist parties show more programmatic flexibility than leftist parties. We make use of an in depth quantitative analysis of the socio-economic policy proposals of the Belgian liberal and social-democratic parties between 1961 and 2010. We find that the right-wing liberal party indeed makes larger programmatic changes. The intensity of the ties with social groups such as trade unions is probably the most important variable to explain this difference.

This article shows that the economic left/right dimension does not always suffice to understand the social-economic policy positions of political parties. It focuses on social-economic decision-making in the Netherlands in 2012. The increase of the government pension age, which was championed by parties of the left and the right and opposed by parties of the left and the right, is taken as a prime example of an issue where decision-making did not follow the left-right line of conflict. The article continues to show that party policy positions on a number of more important welfare state reforms do not follow the left/right line of conflict, but rather a reform line of conflict that divides parties from the left and the right into pro-European reformers and Eurosceptic defenders of the existing welfare state.

Advocacy groups can contribute to the public debate in many different ways. In this contribution we compare the presence of Belgian advocacy groups in two crucial arenas: the media arena and the political arena. We analyze the presence of advocacy groups in the 12 strategic advisory councils of the Flemish government (political arena) and the 19 o’clock newscasts of the most important public and commercial television stations in Flanders. We argue that while each arena has its own logic, elements of the political logic are echoed in the media logic. Our results show that access to both arenas is cumulative: the same organizations dominate both arenas. Both arenas are not perfect reflections of each other though. Organizations lacking access to the political arena can rise in the media arena by offering conflict and spectacle. However, this is the exception rather than the rule, as most ‘political outsiders’ gain little attention from journalists. We conclude that mass media tend to follow and reinforce political power, rather than offering challengers a level playing field.

The leader of the parliamentary party in Belgium occupies a very specific position, which differs from that of the political leader and that of the organizational leader of a party. This person acts as a crucial linking pin between ‘the party in central office’ and ‘the party in public office’. Owing to an increase in power of ‘the party in central office’ in modern ‘cartel parties’, we expect repercussions on the profile, selection and functioning of parliamentary party leaders. In this first, exploratory analysis based on a new dataset, we sketch the profile of these leaders in terms of experience and career, and based on these characteristics, we develop a typology. We also investigate whether these variables vary over time and by government status.
Our results show for most of the indicators a weakening of the parliamentary party leader over time, whereas government parties appear to prefer a stronger parliamentary party leader than opposition parties.

Studies of second-order elections using aggregate data have predominantly focused on examining the extent to which European parliament elections and regional elections are dominated by the national, first-order arena, and paid scarce attention to the analysis of municipal elections. In addition the study of second-order elections is dominated by looking at the impact of first-order factors whilst ignoring the impact of arena-specific factors. This article addresses these shortcomings by analyzing the impact of national and local factors on the performance of national parties in the Dutch municipal elections of 2010. Our analysis shows that there are significant effects of local factors. Most parties lose votes when having been in local government and in some cases as well when having in addition lost an alderman as a result of a political crisis. Parties also lose vote share as a result of the entrance of new national and local parties in a local election, with the effect of new national entrants being larger than that of new local entrants. Our analysis corroborates earlier findings that point to a dominance of national factors, while at the same time showing that it is vital to include local, arena specific factors in order to get to a better estimation of the second-orderness of non-national elections. We discuss our results with respect to the recurring debate about the nationalisation of the Dutch municipal elections.