The 2017 Netherlands election: polls suggest mid-sized parties are now the new norm in Dutch politics

The Netherlands will hold a general election on 15 March. Ahead of the election, Tom Louwerse takes a comprehensive look at the polling. He writes that the polls suggest a relatively large number of mid-sized parties, each commanding between 5 and 11 per cent support, will gain representation in parliament. If the final result is anything close to the predictions, then a complicated government formation process is highly likely

Evidence from the Netherlands: How do populist parties act in parliament?

Do populist parties behave differently from other parties when they enter parliament? Presenting evidence from a study of parties in the Netherlands, Simon Otjes and Tom Louwerse illustrate that both left-wing and right-wing populist parties tend to primarily voice opposition rather than offer policy alternatives. The growing representation of populist parties in West European parliaments is therefore likely to lead to an increase in confrontational politics focused on scrutiny rather than policy-making

COVID-19 in parliamentary debates: opposition sentiment started out relatively positive towards the government but increasingly became more negative

Or Tuttnauer, Tom Louwerse, Rudy Andeweg, and Ulrich Sieberer analyse opposition party sentiment in relation to government actions and policies during the first six months of 2020. Drawing on parliamentary debates in four countries, including the UK, they observe an initial positive opposition sentiment which turned more negative as the first wave abated

Design challenges in cross–national VAAs:the case of the EU Profiler

This paper analyses the design of the EU Profiler, the first truly cross–national VAA. We assess the convergent validity and scaling reliability of the low–dimensional models that are used to represent differences between parties and users. Convergent validity of the party positions in the EU Profiler is moderate to high, but scaling reliability is low for most of the issue dimensions included. We examine whether these problems are related to the EU Profiler's cross–national nature. The EU Profiler integrates the positions of parties from all over Europe into one pan–European model, even though students of European politics emphasise that there are structural differences between party competition in Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe. We find that the EU Profiler performs better in terms of scaling reliability in Western European party systems than in Central and Eastern European party systems. In addition, there are substantive differences between individual countries

Derde keer op de evenwichtsbalk:Parlementair stemgedrag tijdens Rutte III

Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviou

Research from Sweden and the Netherlands shows that ‘bloc’ politics leads to a greater degree of adversity in legislatures

Proponents of electoral reform in the UK often point to the more consensual nature of democracy in continental European countries as a justification for their position, but this isn’t always the case. For example, as Tom Louwerse, Simon Otjes, David M. Willumsen and Patrik Öhberg show, Sweden’s parliamentarians are notable for their adversarial behaviour when compared to the MPs of the Netherlands. They argue that adversarial ‘bloc’ politics is more likely to lead to adversarial behaviour