Hans Schmeets

Collecting Data among Ethnic Minorities in an International Perspective

This article examines strategies to reduce nonresponse rates among ethnic minorities. The authors review nonresponse rates and data collection strategies among ethnic minorities with respect to response rates and response bias in six European countries. The national statistical institutes of these six countries use different definitions of ethnic minorities. This is why the definitions of ethnic minorities and their impact on the number of members of ethnic minorities in the six countries are compared. Nonresponse rates are usually higher among ethnic minorities than among the native population. Dissecting the nonresponse phenomenon shows that contact rates among ethnic minorities are lower, nonresponse due to an inability to produce the required information is higher, and cooperation rates are higher among ethnic minorities than among the native population. Increasing the response rates among ethnic minorities should focus on enhancing the contact rate and reducing the number of nonrespondents who are unable to produce the required information.

Is international election observation credible? Evidence from Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe missions

While international election observations missions often aim to present generalizable claims about the quality and integrity of an election, their findings are rarely based on a representative sample of observations, undermining the credibility of the missions. Bias in the selection of polling stations, among other things, can inflate or deflate the percentage of polling stations where observers find significant flaws. This article uses original data from Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) election observation missions to illustrate the nature of the problem of selection bias in international election observation, and show how the percentage of ‘bad’ polling stations (in the absence of selection bias) can be estimated through a weighting procedure. The article finds that, while there is a strong degree of selection bias, this does not significantly impact the overall percentage of ‘bad’ polling stations that is reported by OSCE observation missions.

Increasing Response Rates and the Consequences in the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study 2006

This article deals with specific measures to enhance response rates in the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study (DPES) conducted around the elections on November 22, 2006. It demonstrates that a specific fieldwork strategy, including new advance letters, incentives, interviewer training sessions, and a reapproach of noncontacts and refusals, resulted in a response rate of 72% (first wave) and 64% (second wave). Moreover, the distributions of party choice in the DPES fit perfectly with the official election results. However, the 93.1% reported turnout is substantially higher than the official 80.1% turnout figure. Five percent of the 13% gap in reported and official turnout in the DPES is assigned to stimulus effects and the remaining 8% to a mixture of nonresponse bias and social desirability effects.

The ecology of immigrant naturalization: a life course approach in the context of institutional conditions

ABSTRACT Traditionally, immigrants’ propensity to naturalize is attributed to individual characteristics and the origin country. Recently scholars increasingly recognise that naturalisation decisions do not take place in a vacuum: they are conditioned both by the individual life course of immigrants, such as the age at migration and family situation, as well as the opportunity structure set by citizenship policies of the destination country. Yet it is less clear what impact specific policy changes have, and to whom these changes matter most. In this paper we address these questions by analysing citizenship acquisition among first generation immigrants in the Netherlands in light of a restriction in citizenship policy in 2003. We employ unique micro-level longitudinal data from Dutch municipal population registers between 1995 until 2012, which allow us to track naturalisation among different immigration cohorts. We find evidence that indeed naturalisation is part of a larger life course trajectory: immigrants who arrive at a younger age in the Netherlands naturalise more often and so do immigrants with a native partner, or a foreign-born partner who also naturalises. Policy also matters: migrants naturalise later and less often under more restrictive institutional conditions, especially migrants from less developed and politically unstable countries of origin.

Fortress Holland? Support for ethnocentric policies among the 1994-electorate of The Netherlands

The Dutch have a long tradition of hospitality towards ethnic immigrants. In the nineties, however, quite dramatic changes have taken place among the Dutch. The central question addressed in this contribution is: to what extent do specific categories within the electorate favour ethnocentric policies? This question is answered by deducing hypotheses that are tested using recent data polled within the framework of the Dutch National Election Studies. Our crucial conclusion is that a rather widespread support for ethnocentric policies is present in contemporary Dutch society, especially among manual labourers, self-employed and lowly educated people, but also among young cohorts and among modal income categories.

Anticipating the citizenship premium: before and after effects of immigrant naturalisation on employment

ABSTRACT Can citizenship improve the economic integration of immigrants, and if so, how? Scholars traditionally understand a citizenship premium in the labour market, besides access to restricted jobs, as the result of a positive signal of naturalisation towards employers. While we do not discard these mechanisms, we argue that explanations should also take into account that migrants anticipate rewards and opportunities of naturalisation by investing in their human capital development. We thus expect to observe improved employment outcomes already before the acquisition of citizenship. We use micro-level register data from Statistics Netherlands from 1999 until 2011 (N = 94,320) to test this expectation. Results show a one-time boost in the probability of having employment after naturalisation, consistent with the prevalent notion of positive signalling. However, we find that the employment probability of naturalising migrants already develops faster during the years leading up to citizenship acquisition, even when controlling for endogeneity of naturalisation. We conclude that it is not just the positive signal of citizenship that improves employment opportunities, but also migrants’ human capital investment in anticipation of naturalisation.

How World Bank Governance Indicators May Predict the Assessment of Elections by International Observers: Evidence From the OSCE-Region

ABSTRACT This paper outlines election monitoring in the OSCE-region, focusing on the analyses and interpretation of the aggregated findings of over 28,000 international election observers producing over 170,000 election observer report forms in 97 elections. Based on 86 elections, to which at least 100 observers were deployed, this paper reveals that: (1) the observers’ overall assessments of the voting and counting processes are strongly correlated; (2) the assessment of the voting process is rather stable, whereas the counting process deteriorated from 1996 onwards; (3) observers’ assessments of the election process tend to be more positive in societies with higher degrees of political openness and stability; and (4) particularly elections in Tajikistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan are assessed negatively.

The Problem of Selection Bias in OSCE Election Observation Methodology

One of the biggest problem in OSCE election observation methodology concerns the selection of polling stations where the observation is conducted: in practice, polling stations that are visited by observers are disproportionally urban and located in or around the national capital and in regional centers. Because visited polling stations are not representative of all polling stations, the observation mission risks getting an unbalanced picture of the shortcomings in the election. In this article, we present findings from original research that shed light on the scope of the problem of distortion in the selection of polling stations, and discuss potential ways to overcome the problem.

DOES INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION DETER AND DETECT FRAUD? EVIDENCE FROM RUSSIA

It is widely taken for granted that international election observation deters and detects election fraud, but little evidence exists that supports this conventional wisdom. This article employs a unique dataset on the 2011 and 2012 election observation missions by the OSCE to the legislative and presidential elections in Russia, to assess the claim that international election observation deters and detects fraud. The findings suggest that observers may have deterred fraud to some degree during the observation of counting procedures but less so, if at all, during the observation of voting procedures. , and that observers probably did not detect fraud to any significant degree during both voting and counting observations.