National officials play an important role in all phases of the EU policy process and are often assumed to be more euro-enthusiastic than other citizens. Yet, thus far systematic knowledge on their views on EU integration is lacking. This study fills this gap through recently collected survey data among Dutch officials (N = 3509). We find first that at least for officials, hard and soft euroscepticism are no gradations on the same scale, but separate dimensions. Second, both sociological and rational choice institutionalism help explain bureaucratic euroscepticism, where the latter seems to have a somewhat stronger explanatory power. Third, officials are on average indeed more euro-enthusiastic than other citizens. However, (a) relatively fewer officials are strongly euro-enthusiastic compared to the general population; (b) the total share of eurosceptics among officials is practically the same as the general population, and (c) significantly more officials report to be ‘strongly eurosceptic’ than among the wider population. |
Article |
Aan de knoppen maar uit de pas?Euroscepsis en euro-enthousiasme onder Nederlandse ambtenaren |
Tijdschrift | Res Publica, Aflevering 4 2016 |
Trefwoorden | Euroscepticism, representative bureaucracy, civil service, public opinion, the Netherlands, public administration |
Auteurs | Caspar van den Berg, Sebastiaan Princen en Ellen Mastenbroek |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
Research Note |
Waarom zijn laagopgeleiden vaker tegen vrijhandel?Drie verklaringen getoetst in Nederland |
Tijdschrift | Res Publica, Aflevering 4 2016 |
Auteurs | Jeroen van der Waal en Willem de Koster |
Auteursinformatie |
Article |
Benadrukken partijen eigen thema’s in verkiezingstijd?Een onderzoek naar thematische aandacht van Nederlandse partijen rond de verkiezingen van 1994 tot en met 2012 |
Tijdschrift | Res Publica, Aflevering 3 2016 |
Trefwoorden | issue ownership, elections, Netherlands, political parties, issue convergence |
Auteurs | Fleur Vis en Jonas Lefevere |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
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. |
Article |
Vragen naar de bekende weg?Een analyse van informatiebronnen waarop schriftelijke vragen over Europese zaken in de Nederlandse Tweede Kamer zijn gebaseerd |
Tijdschrift | Res Publica, Aflevering 2 2016 |
Trefwoorden | national parliaments, European Union, parliamentary questions, the Netherlands |
Auteurs | Rik de Ruiter, Jelmer Schalk en Yorick van Rijthoven |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
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. |
Article |
Het effect van politieke sofisticatie op de (intentie tot) opkomst bij eerste- en tweederangsverkiezingen in België en Nederland |
Tijdschrift | Res Publica, Aflevering 1 2016 |
Trefwoorden | political sophistication, first- and second-order elections, turnout |
Auteurs | Dieter Stiers |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
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. |
Research Note |
Geen woorden maar dadenStemmen linkse en rechtse populisten hetzelfde in de Tweede Kamer? |
Tijdschrift | Res Publica, Aflevering 1 2016 |
Auteurs | Simon Otjes en Tom Louwerse |
Auteursinformatie |