G.A. Irwin

Never a dull moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch parliamentary election of 2002

The 2002 parliamentary election in the Netherlands will always be associated with the name of Pim Fortuyn. His murder only nine days before the election was the first political assassination in the Netherlands in more than 300 years. The sudden success of the new party he had founded, coupled with the major losses for the Labour and Liberal parties, made this an historic election. This article attempts to understand the motivations of the voters at this election, in particular the voters of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). It is first shown that the conventional wisdom, which assumes voting based on religion and social class, and voting along ideological issue lines, has lost its ability to explain voter behaviour in the Netherlands. An explanation based on retrospective economic voting is also rejected. The success of the LPF is accounted for by the popularity of Fortuyn and his appeal among those who had cynical attitudes towards government or who were dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbent government. The popularity of Fortuyn is shown to have been related to political issues, in particular those relating to asylum seekers and the integration of foreigners in the country.

Nomination Strategies in the Irish STV System: The Dail Elections of 1969, 1973 and 1977

In an innovative and carefully argued article (‘The Used Vote and Electoral Outcomes: The Irish General Election of 1973’, this Journal , V (1975), 363–83) on the Irish Single Transferable Vote (STV) system in the 1969 and 1973 Dail elections, A. S. Cohan, R. D. McKinlay and Anthony Mughan state a proposition that requires further analysis. They argue that ‘the optimal number of candidates for a party is equal to the largest number of seats that the party might hope to win’ in a constituency, instead of the more common practice of nominating a larger number of candidates. The reasoning behind this proposition is that the nomination of fewer candidates means a greater concentration of the partys vote on these candidates and hence fewer vote transfers and less potential wastage of votes.

The Dutch parliamentary election of May 1986

After a rather uneventful election campaign, the results of the May 1986 Dutch parliamentary election were a surprise to virtually all involved. Since the introduction of regular opinion polling in the 1960s, no election has taken place when the polls were ‘wrong’. However, in 1986 last minute shifts that were stronger than had ever occurred in the Netherlands produced results that differed significantly from the predictions based upon the polls published immediately prior to the election.

Where to go from here? Revamping electoral politics in the Netherlands

Despite its title, a special issue of this journal in 1989 seemed to stress continuity rather than change in Dutch politics. After the 1994 parliamentary elections, at least electorally this is certainly no longer the case. In this article it is shown that traditional explanations of Dutch voting behaviour, based upon religion, class and ideology, do not go far towards helping to understand the 1994 results. Short-term factors, especially the state of the economy and the popularity of party leaders, are shown to have had a considerable impact. The new issue of ethnic minorities proved relatively unimportant. Voters, politicians and scholars must now revamp their understanding of Dutch voting patterns.

A new kid in town : Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch parliamentary election of May 2002

No one really saw it coming, at least not until it was too late. As the 2000-2001 parliamentary year ended, some ten months before the general election in May 2002, the biggest question in Dutch electoral politics was whether the popular Prime Minister, Wim Kok of the Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA), would retire or return to lead his party during the upcoming campaign. His likely successor, Ad Melkert, was seen as a competent but not as a popular politician. Moreover, he was involved in a discussion concerning the appropriation of European funds while he was minister of social affairs in one of the preceding coalition governments. The emphasis at that time in the polls and in the media was on electoral stability. At the end of August 2001, the polls were showing that the affair over European funds was not costing the Labour Party votes. Labour was expected to lose two seats and remain the largest party in Parliament, while its major coalition partner, the Liberal Party (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratic, VVD), was expected to win one seat. The major opposition party, the Christian Democratic Appeal (Christen Democratisch Appel, CDA) stood at 28 seats, a loss of one seat {De Telegraaf, 21.8.2001).

Interests and Institutions in the Netherlands: An Assessment by the People and by Parliament

This article analyzes the background of the very dense and highly institutionalized network of interest groups in the Netherlands. This well-integrated system has recently come under some strain, as a large number of new action groups have sprung up next to the political parties and the older, more established interest groups. On the basis of surveys among members of the Dutch Parliaments in 1968 and 1972 and with a cross-section of the population in 1972, the article analyzes the relative influence—both actual and desired—which members of Parliament and the population ascribe to cabinet ministers, expert members of Parliament, civil servants and party executives; to the more important economic interest groups of employers, workers, farmers and retailers; to the churches; and to voters, action groups, newspapers, radio and tele vision and public opinion polls.

Political Recruitment and Drop-Out: The Netherlands and the United States

The analysis described below forms an extension to the Netherlands and the United States of research on British political recruitment that has already been reported in this Journal. The object of the research is to make quantitative estimates of the influence of personal characteristics in pushing the socially better endowed into active politics, and particularly to measure the extent to which advantages on some characteristics make up for disadvantages on others. These processes are of interest because they determine to a large extent what type of persons will emerge as elective politicians, with possible consequences for agenda-setting and policy-making.