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

This article seeks 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 per cent of the votes. This article analyses how this new populist party managed to mobilise so much attention and support so suddenly and so rapidly. It uses the notion of 'discursive opportunities' and argues that the public reactions to Pim Fortuyn and his party played a decisive role in his ability to further diffuse his claims in the public sphere and 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 the dynamics of competition over voter support and over space in the public debate during the election campaign, an ARIMA time-series model is used as well as a negative binomial regression with lagged variables to account for the time-series structure of the data. It is found that discursive opportunities have significantly affected the degree to which Fortuyn was successful both in the competition for voter support, and regarding his ability to express his claims in the media. Combining these two results, a dynamic feedback process is identified that can explain why a stable political situation suddenly spiralled out of equilibrium. Visibility and supportive reactions of others positively affected the opinion polls. Consonance significantly increased Fortuyn's claim-making; dissonance undermined it. Furthermore, electoral support and negative claims on the issue of immigration and integration in the media by others enhanced Fortuyn's ability to further diffuse his viewpoints and to become the main political opinion-maker during the turbulent election campaign of 2002.     

The Danish parliamentary election of 1981

The parliamentary election of 8 December 1981 brought no solution to Denmark's perennial problem of unstable minority government. On the contrary, the election weakened the Social Democratic government without significantly strengthening the Liberal-Conservative opposition. Electoral victory went to two relatively small parties, the People's Socialists on the left and Centre Democrats to the right of the centre. The election was followed by a two weeks' government crisis, after which the Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen reassumed the office which he has occupied continuously since January 1975.     

The direct PM election and the institutional presidentialisation of parliamentary systems

The direct PM election model features as an ‘empty cell’ in typologies of political regimes. A more fine grained analysis of the model shows that it depends on the choices made on three institutional parameters (object of the election, electoral system, legislative/executive relationship) whether it constitutes a distinct regime type. A comparison of nine examples confirms that the label of a direct PM election covers a wide array of institutional designs. A direct PM election may involve a full-fledged presidentialisation, but it may also imply a marginal adaptation of the parliamentary system. The model can only be considered as an intermediate regime type when it combines the exclusive electoral origin of the executive with a parliamentary legislative/executive relationship.     

Campaign resources and electoral success: Evidence from the 2002 French parliamentary elections

We examine the factors that improve the candidates’ likelihood of winning an election by drawing on information from campaign resources used by candidates running in the 2002 French parliamentary election. The main effects that we wish to analyze are the candidates’ gender, political affiliation and possible incumbency. We find that the contributions the candidates received and their political affiliations determine their acceding to the second round of the elections. But surprisingly once they make it to the second round, the contributions cease to be relevant; only the candidates’ gender, incumbency and the actual spending rather than the contribution levels matter.     

Reordering the French election calendar: Forecasting the consequences for 2002

Abstract. French politicians sometimes change election rules for political advantage. In the Spring of 2001, the ruling Socialists pushed through the inversion of the 2002 election calendar despite stiff opposition. What were the consequences of scheduling the presidential election before the legislature elections? Employing new techniques for French election forecasting, we show that the inversion brought great vote gains to the Socialist-led coalition in both the legislative and presidential arenas. One advantage of this forecasting methodology is that it allows counterfactual comparisons in advance of the actual election contest. Comparing the scenarios 'inversion' versus 'no inversion', the Socialist leadership appeared highly strategic and successful.     

Politicians on TV news: Getting attention in Dutch and German election campaigns

Abstract. Different strategies apply in the Netherlands and in Germany when TV channels have to decide how often politicians are mentioned or shown in the news during national election campaigns. Extensive content analyses in the 1990s suggest that Dutch political and media traditions promote a more equally distributed attention to different political positions. In Germany, TV news focuses almost exclusively on the incumbent candidate for the top function of the national government (the office of Chancellor) and his challengers. The likely causes are not only the political system and the particular circumstances of the 1990s (with the pre–eminence of Helmut Kohl), but also recent developments in the way in which German journalists define their task.     

Small winners and big losers: strategic party behaviour in the 2017 Dutch general election

Abstract

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.     

Partisan politics and stock market performance: The effect of expected government partisanship on stock returns in the 2002 German federal election

Rational partisan theory suggests that firms perform better under right- than left-leaning governments. In the pre-election time, investors should anticipate these effects of government partisanship. This is the first study to investigate such anticipated partisan effects in Germany. Applying conditional volatility models we analyze the impact of expected government partisanship on stock market performance in the 2002 German federal election. Our results show that small-firm stock returns were positively (negatively) linked to the probability of a right- (left-) leaning coalition winning the election. Moreover, we find that volatility increased as the electoral prospects of right-leaning parties improved, while greater electoral uncertainty had a volatility-reducing effect.