Simulating Political Stability and Change in the Netherlands (1998-2002): an Agent-Based Model of Party Competition with Media Effects Empirically Tested

Agent-based models of political party competition in a multidimensional policy space have been developed in order to reflect adaptive learning by party leaders with very limited information feedback. The key assumption is that two categories of actors continually make decisions: voters choose which party to support and party leaders offer citizens a certain policy package. After reviewing the arguments for using agent-based models, I elaborate two ways forward in the development of these models for political party competition. Firstly, theoretical progress is made in this article by taking the role of the mass media into account. In previous work it is implicitly assumed that all parties are equally visible for citizens, whereas I will start from the more realistic assumption that there is also competition for attention in the public sphere. With this addition, it is possible to address the question why new parties are seldom able to successfully compete with political actors already within the political system. Secondly, I argue that, if we really want to learn useful lessons from simulations, we should seek to empirically falsify models by confronting outcomes with real data. So far, most of the agent-based models of party competition have been an exclusively theoretical exercise. Therefore, I evaluate the empirical relevance of different simulations of Dutch party competition in the period from May 1998 until May 2002. Using independent data on party positions, I measure the extent to which simulations generate mean party sizes that resemble public opinion polls. The results demonstrate that it is feasible and realistic to simulate party competition in the Netherlands with agent-based models, even when a rather unstable period is investigated.Agent-Based Model, Voting Behaviour, Mass Media, Empirical Validation

The rise of right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn in the Netherland: A discursive opportunity approach

The question addressed in this paper is how to explain the dramatic rise of Pim Fortuyn's right-wing populist party during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands in 2002. Fortuyn succeeded in attracting by far the most media attention of all political actors and his new party won 17 percent of the votes. We analyze how this new populist party managed to mobilize such an amount of attention and support so suddenly and so rapidly. We use the notion of “discursive opportunities” and argue that the public reactions to Pim Fortuyn and his party played a decisive role for his ability to further diffuse his claims in the public sphere and to achieve support among the Dutch electorate. The predictions of the effects of discursive opportunities are empirically investigated with longitudinal data from newspapers and opinion polls. To study these dynamics of the competition over voters’ support and over space in the public debate during the election campaign, we use an ARIMA time-series model as well as a negative binomial event count model with lagged variables to account for the time-series structure of the data. We find that discursive opportunities have significantly affected the degree to which Fortuyn was successful in the competition for both voter support, and media attention. Public visibility, resonance and legitimacy in the media significantly affected the opinion polls and higher degrees of legitimacy and negative claims on the issue of immigration and integration in the media by others increased the opportunities for Fortuyn to further diffuse his viewpoints and to become the main political opinion-maker during the turbulent election campaign of 2002.Das vorliegende Papier geht der Frage nach, wie sich der dramatische Aufschwung der rechtspopulistischen Partei Pim Fortuyns während des Wahlkampfs zu den niederländischen Parlamentswahlen 2002 erklären lässt. Pim Fortuyn gelang es, verglichen mit den anderen politischen Akteuren die weitaus größte Aufmerksamkeit der Medien auf sich zu lenken, und seine Partei gewann auf Anhieb 17 Prozent der Stimmen. Die Autoren untersuchen, wie es dieser neuen populistischen Partei gelingen konnte, so plötzlich und schnell ein solches Maß an Aufmerksamkeit und Unterstützung zu mobilisieren. Unter Verwendung des Begriffes „diskursiver Gelegenheiten“ wird argumentiert, dass die öffentlichen Reaktionen auf Pim Fortuyn und seine Partei entscheidend dazu beitrugen, dass er seine Forderungen in der Öffentlichkeit weiter verbreiten und Unterstützung unter den niederländischen Wählern finden konnte. Die vorhergesagten Effekte der diskursiven Gelegenheiten werden empirisch mit Längsschnittdaten aus Zeitungen und Meinungsumfragen untersucht. Die Analyse der Dynamik des Wettbewerbs um die Gunst der Wähler und um öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit in den Debatten erfolgt mittels eines ARIMA Zeitreihenmodells und eines negativen binomialen event count Modells mit zeitversetzten Variablen, um die Zeitreihenstruktur der Daten angemessen zu berücksichtigen. Die Autoren stellen fest, dass der Erfolg von Fortuyn im Wettbewerb um sowohl Wählerunterstützung als auch Medienaufmerksamkeit signifikant von diskursiven Gelegenheiten beeinflusst wird. Öffentliche Sichtbarkeit, Resonanz und Legitimität in den Medien übten einen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Meinungsumfragen aus. Ein höheres Maß an Legitimität und eine größere Zahl von negativen Forderungen zum Thema Immigration und Integration, die von anderen in die Medien getragen wurden, erhöhten für Fortuyn die Gelegenheiten, seine Ansichten zu verbreiten und im Verlaufe des turbulenten Wahlkampfs 2002 zum wichtigsten politischen Meinungsmacher aufzusteigen

Populists as Chameleons? An Adaptive Learning Approach to the Rise of Populist Politicians

This paper envisions populism as a vote- and attention-maximizing strategy. It applies an adaptive learning approach to understand successes of populist party leaders. I assume that populists are ideologically flexible and continually search for a more beneficial policy position, in terms of both electoral support and media attention, by retaining political claims that yield positive feedback and discard those that encounter negative feedback. This idea is empirically tested by analyzing the Dutch populist leader Pim Fortuyn and the development of his stance about immigration and integration issues. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, the results do not show any empirical support for the claim that Fortuyn was ideologically driven by the opinion polls or by media publicity during the 2002 Dutch parliamentary election campaign. The findings thus suggest that populist parties are perhaps less distinctive in their strategies from mainstream parties than often claimed

Who deserves welfare and who does not? Comment on "A scoping review of populist radical right parties’ influence on welfare policy and its implications for population health in Europe"

To what extent has the rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties in Europe affected welfare policies? Based on a scoping review of studies that address the relationship between PRR parties and welfare policy, Chiara Rinaldi and Marleen Bekker conclude that, due to their welfare chauvinistic positions, the participation of PRR parties in government coalitions is likely to have negative effects on the access to welfare provisions and health of vulnerable population groups. This short commentary reflects on this review article and critically examines its conclusion. It suggests some conceptual clarifications, raises some reservations about the review’s main claim, and provides some follow-up questions

Examining political participation in Lithuania: The direct and mediated effects of social trust

This article investigates the effects of social trust, both direct and mediated – via internal and external efficacy – on different forms of political participation in post-communist Lithuania. The relationship between social trust and participation features prominently in the social capital and civic culture literature, but little empirical evidence exists that supports it, especially in post-communist democracies. We use the Lithuanian National Elections Study 2012 to test our hypotheses and replicate our analysis with the European Social Survey waves of 2014 and 2016. Our results show that social trust increases turnout, because it is related to a sense of external efficacy, which in turn enhances the likelihood that people vote. There is, however, no association between social trust and being involved in other institutionalised politics, namely, working for a political party. Interestingly, we find a positive indirect effect for non-institutionalised political participation: social trust increases external efficacy, which in turn enhances protest behaviour. Overall, however, social trust does not lead to more protesting, because the former is at the same time positively related to political trust, which seems to decrease, rather than increase non-institutionalised participation. In sum, our findings demonstrate that explanations for political participation based on the core element of social capital – social trust – work out differently for different forms of political participation

The rise of right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands: a discursive opportunity approach

"The question addressed in this paper is how to explain the dramatic rise of Pim Fortuyn's right-wing populist party during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands in 2002. Fortuyn succeeded in attracting by far the most media attention of all political actors and his new party won 17 percent of the votes. We analyze how this new populist party managed to mobilize such an amount of attention and support so suddenly and so rapidly. We use the notion of 'discursive opportunities' and argue that the public reactions to Pim Fortuyn and his party played a decisive role for his ability to further diffuse his claims in the public sphere and to achieve support among the Dutch electorate. The predictions of the effects of discursive opportunities are empirically investigated with longitudinal data from newspapers and opinion polls. To study these dynamics of the competition over voters' support and over space in the public debate during the election campaign, we use an ARIMA time-series model as well as a negative binomial event count model with lagged variables to account for the time-series structure of the data. We find that discursive opportunities have significantly affected the degree to which Fortuyn was successful in the competition for both voter support, and media attention. Public visibility, resonance and legitimacy in the media significantly affected the opinion polls and higher degrees of legitimacy and negative claims on the issue of immigration and integration in the media by others increased the opportunities for Fortuyn to further diffuse his viewpoints and to become the main political opinion-maker during the turbulent election campaign of 2002." (author's abstract)"Das vorliegende Papier geht der Frage nach, wie sich der dramatische Aufschwung der rechtspopulistischen Partei Pim Fortuyns während des Wahlkampfs zu den niederländischen Parlamentswahlen 2002 erklären lässt. Pim Fortuyn gelang es, verglichen mit den anderen politischen Akteuren die weitaus größte Aufmerksamkeit der Medien auf sich zu lenken, und seine Partei gewann auf Anhieb 17 Prozent der Stimmen. Die Autoren untersuchen, wie es dieser neuen populistischen Partei gelingen konnte, so plötzlich und schnell ein solches Maß an Aufmerksamkeit und Unterstützung zu mobilisieren. Unter Verwendung des Begriffes 'diskursiver Gelegenheiten' wird argumentiert, dass die öffentlichen Reaktionen auf Pim Fortuyn und seine Partei entscheidend dazu beitrugen, dass er seine Forderungen in der Öffentlichkeit weiter verbreiten und Unterstützung unter den niederländischen Wählern finden konnte. Die vorhergesagten Effekte der diskursiven Gelegenheiten werden empirisch mit Längsschnittdaten aus Zeitungen und Meinungsumfragen untersucht. Die Analyse der Dynamik des Wettbewerbs um die Gunst der Wähler und um öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit in den Debatten erfolgt mittels eines ARIMA Zeitreihenmodells und eines negativen binomialen event count Modells mit zeitversetzten Variablen, um die Zeitreihenstruktur der Daten angemessen zu berücksichtigen. Die Autoren stellen fest, dass der Erfolg von Fortuyn im Wettbewerb um sowohl Wählerunterstützung als auch Medienaufmerksamkeit signifikant von diskursiven Gelegenheiten beeinflusst wird. Öffentliche Sichtbarkeit, Resonanz und Legitimität in den Medien übten einen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Meinungsumfragen aus. Ein höheres Maß an Legitimität und eine größere Zahl von negativen Forderungen zum Thema Immigration und Integration, die von anderen in die Medien getragen wurden, erhöhten für Fortuyn die Gelegenheiten, seine Ansichten zu verbreiten und im Verlaufe des turbulenten Wahlkampfs 2002 zum wichtigsten politischen Meinungsmacher aufzusteigen." (Autorenreferat

Dividing between ‘us’ and ‘them’:The framing of gender and sexuality by online followers of the dutch populist radical right

This article investigates the ways in which online followers of the Dutch populist radical right discuss gender and sexuality. Analysing comments on the Facebook pages of the Party for Freedom and Forum for Democracy, we show that they use these issues to pit ‘us’ against ‘them’ – groups that are defined differently, depending on the context. Women’s emancipation and gay acceptance are defended and used to divide ‘civilised’ Dutch and ‘backward’ immigrants. This ‘liberal’ immigration critique is especially characteristic of Party for Freedom followers. Other progressive causes, such as transgender rights and feminism more broadly, are framed as elite projects, out of touch with ‘ordinary people’. This backlash standpoint is more often articulated by Forum for Democracy followers

Arrived in Power, and Yet Still Disgruntled? How Government Inclusion Moderates ‘Protest Voting’ for Far-Right Populist Parties in Europe

While debates about far-right populism often concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe, research on these parties predominantly focuses on Western countries. Addressing this remarkable gap, this article revisits the 'protest voting' explanation for electoral support for the far right. Using European Social Survey data (2002-16) from 22 countries, we show that political dissatisfaction is a stronger explanatory factor when far-right parties are in opposition, but is a less important determinant of electoral support when they are in government. Previous findings based on Western Europe - which similarly showed that the anti-elite hypothesis is less relevant when far-right parties join government coalitions - travel well to post-communist European countries. In Hungary and Poland, we even find that far-right voters have become less distrustful of national political institutions than the rest of the electorate. Our conclusion implies that anti-elite populism is context-dependent and has limited use for understanding successes of leaders such as Wilders, Salvini and Orbán

Dissecting electoral support for the far right. A comparison between mature and post-communist European democracies

This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way. Our main contribution is that we contrast far-right voters with voters of centre-right parties, traditional left-wing parties and abstainers. Equally innovative is the comparison between mature and post-communist democracies. Using European Social Survey data (2014–16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups. Yet, these differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, far-right voters are not the so-called socioeconomic ‘losers of globalization’: this is only true when compared with centre-right voters. Concerning protest voting, distrust of supranational governance particularly enhances far-right voting. Overall, our study concludes that more fine-grained distinctions pay off and avoid misleading generalizations about ‘European far-right voters’ often presented in public debates