Gemeenteraadsverkiezingen 2010: een blik achter de schermen

Dit rapport gaat over wat er komt kijken bij het organiseren van lokale verkiezingen, met name voor politieke partijen. Het onderzoek is gebaseerd op interviews met ruim dertig betrokkenen en een studie van documenten in de gemeenten Gouda en Meppel. De aandacht gaat vooral uit naar drie kernactiviteiten: schrijven van verkiezingsprogramma’s, opstellen van kandidatenlijsten, en voeren van campagne. In de praktijk gebeurt dat door drie aparte lokale commissies en spelen “gewone leden” geen noemenswaardige rol. De meeste partijen zien de gemeenteraadverkiezingen in het licht van de daarop volgende collegevorming. Zij denken daarbij verschillend over de plaats van de (beoogd) wethouder op de kandidatenlijst en zijn eventuele rol als lijsttrekker: vanzelfsprekend volgens sommigen, volstrekt ongepast vanwege de dualisering volgens anderen. De inhoudelijke verschillen tussen de partijen waren beperkt. In beide gemeenten weerspiegelde de uitslag landelijke trends en raakte de gemeenteraad meer gefragmenteerd. Hierdoor waren veel partijen nodig om tot een meerderheid in het college te komen. De onderhandelingen hiervoor hadden een eigen dynamiek en werden nauwelijks beinvloed door de verkiezingsuitslag. Het rapport is geschreven in opdracht van het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelatie

Input and output legitimacy in interactive governance

Session 2: Political representation and legitimacyThis contribution discusses the effects of new experiments of citizen participation for democratic legitimacy. Following Scharf’s distinction between input-oriented and output-oriented legitimacy, it is argued that both types of legitimacy pose different demands on citizen involvement. Using insights from the literature on deliberative democracy, two criteria are formulated to obtain both types of legitimacy. Input-oriented legitimacy derives from the extent to which the participative process meets the criterion of fairness, whereas a high level of competence is needed to achieve legitimacy on the output side. The question is to what extent these two criteria of fairness and competence can be realised simultaneously. It is argued that both criteria are rather conflictual, as a high level of fairness can only be achieved at the expense of the level of competence. Furthermore it is a rather naive ideal to strive for participative processes that completely live up to the principle of fairness. Therefore new forms of citizen participation should primarily focus on the criterion of competence. In this way citizen involvement may indeed contribute to achieve legitimacy on the output side

The European Union, borders and conflict transformation: the case of Cyprus

Much of the existing literature on the European Union (EU), conflict transformation and border dynamics has been premised on the assumption that the nature of the border determines EU intervention and the consequences that flow from this in terms of EU impact. The article aims to transcend this literature through assessing how domestic interpretations influence EU border transformation in conflict situations, taking Cyprus as a case study. Moreover, the objective is to fuse the literature on EU bordering impact and perceptions of the EU’s normative projection in conflict resolution. Pursuing this line of inquiry is an attempt to depart from the notion of borders being constructed solely by unidirectional EU logics of engagement or bordering practices to a conceptualization of the border as co-constituted space, where the interpretations of the EU’s normative projections by conflict parties, and the strategies that they pursue, can determine the relative openness of the EU border

Wat de vis eet, zal hij zaaien : Zaadverspreiding van water- en oeverplanten door vis

Het is essentieel voor planten om hun zaden te verspreiden over groteafstanden. Daarvoor maken ze gebruik van diverse vectoren zoals water,wind en dieren. Recent onderzoek laat zien dat ook vissen hierbij eenbelangrijke rol spelen

Life-history plasticity of riparian annual plants adapted to extreme variations in water level: mesocosm experiments

The riparian zones of reservoirs associated with regulated rivers in China experience annual fluctuations in water level of up to 30 m that may vary in timing from year to year. Few plant species can tolerate such hydrological perturbation but short-lived riparian annuals might be evolutionarily pre-adapted to such conditions. This study investigated plasticity of life history in four annual species: one typically associated with free-flowing rivers (Panicum bisulcatum) and three that colonize reservoir margins (Cyperus michelianus, Fimbristylis miliacea and Eclipta prostrata). We found that all four species produced non-dormant seeds that survived prolonged submergence; germination percentage was independent of the time of exposure by receding waters. Although growth was reduced as a result of shorter growing seasons, all four species completed their life cycles and produced seeds before winter. In addition, P. bisulcatum and C. michelianus allocated biomass to seed production, at the expense of roots and stems, in response to later establishment. All species responded to later establishment with a reduced vegetative growth period before seed production. C. michelianus, F. miliacea and E. prostrata could also delay the onset of flowering time by up to 2 months. P. bisulcatum, a plant that can flower only after exposure to short days, consequently had a fixed flowering time and could accommodate delayed establishment only with a progressively shorter period of vegetative growth. This lower flexibility might explain its absence from reservoir margins. The conceptual framework presented here offers a tool to predict the establishment of vegetation under hydrological disturbance in riparian environments and thereby provides insights into improved restoration practice

Turbary restoration meets variable success: does landscape structure force colonization success of wetland plants?

Peat ponds have been restored widely in the Netherlands to enhance the available habitat for species-rich plant communities that characterize the early succession stages toward land. Colonization success of 33 target aquatic species has been quantified in eight complexes of new ponds. It has been related to the lay-out of these ponds, the structure of the surrounding landscape, (historic) prevalence of source populations within the complex and within a perimeter of 10 km, and pond water quality. Colonization success was variable: between 6 and 26 target species had reached the complexes in 1998. This success was coupled to the first principal component (PC) in a principal component analysis (PCA) explaining 44% of the variation in 27 variables. This first PC correlated with historical perimeter and local within-complex species richness, the number of ponds in the complex, the SW orientation of ditches in these complexes and pH, and transparency of the water. Age of the ponds (1-9 years), area of open water (8-42%), and shoreline density (13-43 km/k