J. Tillie

Political participation and political trust in Amsterdam: Civic communities and ethnic networks

Abstract This article examines the political participation and political trust of four ethnic groups in Amsterdam. We explore, first, the degree to which Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans participate and the extent to which they trust the democratic institutions of the city. Second, we address how differences in participation and trust can be explained. For this we will turn to the civic community perspective which was reintroduced powerfully by Robert Putnam in his Making Democracy Work (Putnam 1993). In order to measure the civic community of ethnic groups we focus on ethnic organisations in Amsterdam and the links between them. Additionally, we will also report data on the use of mass media. We conclude that there is a rank correlation between the degree of civic community of the various ethnic groups in Amsterdam and the levels of political participation and political trust in local ‐ non‐ethnic ‐ political institutions. Civic engagement and social capital are the most powerful determinants ...

Anti-immigrant Parties in Europe: Ideological or Protest Vote?

In this article we address the question whether or not the votes for anti-immigrant parties can be considered as protest votes. We define protest votes by the motives underlying electoral choices, building on earlier research done by Tillie (1995) and Van der Eijk & Franklin (1996). That research showed that ideological proximity and party size are the best predictors of party preference. On this basis we designed a typology of motives for party choice and how these motives would manifest themselves empirically. Analyzing the 1994 elections for the European Parliament for seven political systems we show that anti-immigrant parties attract no more protest votes than other parties do, with only one exception: the Dutch Centrumdemocraten. Voting for anti-immigrant parties is largely motivated by ideological and pragmatic considerations, just like voting for other parties. In addition, (negative) attitudes towards immigrants have a stronger effect on preferences for anti-immigrant parties than on preference for other parties. Social cleavages and attitudes towards European unification are of minor importance as determinants of preferences for anti-immigrant parties. The overall conclusion is that a rational choice model of electoral behavior has strong explanatory power for party preferences in general, but also for the support for anti-immigrant parties in particular.

Why Some Anti-Immigrant Parties Fail and Others Succeed: A Two-Step Model of Aggregate Electoral Support

Over the past 2 decades, some anti-immigrant parties have managed to gain substantial electoral support in various European countries, most notably, Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) and Flanders (Vlaams Blok). However, in other countries, the success of such parties either has been insignificant or did not last. The most popular models of support for anti-immigrant parties focus primarily on the demand side of the electoral process. The authors develop a model to explain differences in aggregate-level support for these parties, which also takes into account the supply side. This model builds upon an explanation provided by Kitschelt. The model is tested empirically for 13 European anti-immigrant parties in the period from 1989 to 1999, altogether yielding 25 party-year combinations. The authors test the sociostructural model and their alternative model at the level of political parties. The sociostructural model explains 3% of the variance in success, whereas the authors’ model explains 83%.

Civic community, political participation and political trust of ethnic groups.

We hope in this article to bridge the gap between all those researchers who in the trail of Almond and Verba (1963) have investigated the relationship between civic culture and political participation and those that are primarily interested in multicultural democracy. In earlier research we have found a correlation between political participation and political trust of ethnic minorities on the one hand and the network of ethnic associations on the other. (Fennema/Tillie, 1999) In this paper we treat the network of ethnic organizations a proxy for civic community. It is a long established assumption that voluntary associations create social trust, which, in turn can spill over into political trust. But if voluntary associations generate trust why would interlocking directorates among such organizations add to it? Our answer is that trust can travel trough a network of interlocking directorates and by doing so increase. Civic community building is the creation of trust among organizations.

Social capital of organisations and their members. Explaning the political integration of immigrants in Amsterdam

This paper studies determinants of the political participation of immigrants in Amsterdam. A distinction is made between determinants on the individual level and determinants on the group level. On the individual level gender, ethnic membership, cross‐ethnic membership and social activities in the network of the respondent are of relevance. On the group level the amount of social capital in the ethnic community is important. To explain individual political participation, the paper suggests an explanatory model, which entails an interaction effect between individual determinants (i.e. organisational membership and the social network of the individual citizen) and the structure of the ethnic civic community as it is reflected in the structure of the network of ethnic organisations.

Introduction: Social Capital and Political Integration of Migrants

In recent years the social capital approach has been gaining importance in the study of political participation of (ethnic) minorities. Here we follow the research efforts of the Dutch political scientists Fennema and Tillie who claim that differences in political participation of ethnic minorities are linked to differences in ‘civic community’, primarily seen as the amount of ‘ethnic’ social capital (participation in ethnic associational life) of the relevant group. It is a challenge to try and test these claims in different national settings. This is the aim of the empirical contributions to this special issue of JEMS, which aims to pave the way for further comparative cross‐national research on the link between migrant associational life and political participation.

Different Effects of Ethnic Diversity on Social Capital: Density of Foundations and Leisure Associations in Amsterdam Neighbourhoods

This article examines the effect of ethnic diversity on social capital in Amsterdam neighbourhoods by looking at the effects of the ethnic diversity of a neighbourhood on the social networks that underpin civil society. A distinction is made between homogeneous, more individually oriented social networks, on the one hand, and horizontal heterogeneous networks on the other. The density of foundations—i.e. the number of foundations in a neighbourhood—is used as the indicator for the first type of networks and the density of leisure associations for the latter type. In addition, the study looks at the effect of a changing context in Amsterdam in which ethnic diversity has increasingly come to be perceived as problematic by inhabitants and local politicians. The results indeed show that ethnic diversity has a different effect on both forms of civil society: the horizontal heterogeneous networks suffer more from ethnic diversity than the homogeneous networks.

Muslims in their European societies of settlement: a comparative agenda for empirical research on socio-cultural integration across countries and groups

ABSTRACT Islam has become the key site for demarcating boundaries between majority populations and individuals of immigrant origin across Europe. This article outlines a research agenda on the socio-cultural integration of Muslims in their Western European societies of settlement. Integration issues with regard to Muslims have especially tended to focus on cultural and religious aspects. This raises questions. First, does culture/religion matter in shaping Muslims’ relative disadvantage in the socio-economic domain? Alternatively, does Muslim social disadvantage result from majority societys discrimination and bias against religious/cultural difference? Second, religious and cultural difference seems to matter in its own right. Do Muslims identify with their countries of settlement and accept the core liberal democratic values and norms? Or do persistent socio-cultural ‘gaps’ between Muslims and non-Muslims result from intolerance by the majority population? The article outlines a theoretical approach and empirical research programme. The framework is cross-national comparative, including France, Germany, Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. The main data source is a survey that includes four groups of Muslims from distinct countries of origin (Turks, Moroccans, former-Yugoslavians, and Pakistanis) plus a majority sample, which facilitates cross-group, cross-national comparison. This introduction concludes by introducing contributions that address a specific question embedded within the overall framework.

Discursive framing and the reproduction of integration in the public sphere: A comparative analysis of France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany

In this article we present a cross-national comparison of the discursive framing of political claims on Muslims and Islam in four European countries. We explore these issues empirically and relate the cross-national differences found in the data to a diverging logic in the different integration debates. We argue that persistent variations in discursive framing can be understood by looking at the unique conceptualisation of group categorisation and distinction used in the national integration debates. It is, furthermore, argued that these discursive and symbolic trends do not relate directly to observed differences in integration policies.

How crosscutting weak ties are established : The case of Muslims in Europe

ABSTRACT Building on the work of Granovetter [1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380.], weak ties are assumed to play a vital role in processes of integration. In this paper, the focus lies on weak ties that cut across ethnic boundaries, connecting Muslim immigrants to members of the ethnic majority in six European host societies. The aim is twofold: a descriptive analysis of the existence of those crosscutting weak ties amongst different groups of Muslim immigrants and an explanatory analysis focusing on the structural factors that make the establishment of such ties more likely. In the latter part, the native populations are also taken into account, allowing for a bidirectional perspective. Using ordinal logistic regression models, we found that emancipatory factors such as education and language skills are positively associated with having weak ties, whereas conservative values and religiosity decrease the likelihood of establishing many weak ties. A diverse neighbourhood appears to play a pivotal role in the formation of weak ties from both a native and an immigrant perspective.