W. van der Brug

Structural and Ideological Voting in Age Cohorts

In most West European countries the effects of long-term determinants of the vote − in particular social class, religion and left–right ideology − have slowly weakened since the late 1980s. This paper first describes differences between the EU member states in the extent of structural and ideological voting in the period 1989–2004. It then focuses on the causes behind the changes over time. It is hypothesised that the decline is partially caused by generational replacement (H1). More specifically, it is assumed that structural voting is most important for the generation born before 1950, and politically socialised in the years of the mass party (H2) and that ideological voting is most important for the generation born between 1950 and 1970, who were politically socialised after the decline of cleavages and before the fall of the Berlin Wall (H3). To test these hypotheses, the study employs the European Elections Study 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004. The country by year combination provides data from 62 politic...In most West European countries the effects of long-term determinants of the vote − in particular social class, religion and left–right ideology − have slowly weakened since the late 1980s. This paper first describes differences between the EU member states in the extent of structural and ideological voting in the period 1989–2004. It then focuses on the causes behind the changes over time. It is hypothesised that the decline is partially caused by generational replacement (H1). More specifically, it is assumed that structural voting is most important for the generation born before 1950, and politically socialised in the years of the mass party (H2) and that ideological voting is most important for the generation born between 1950 and 1970, who were politically socialised after the decline of cleavages and before the fall of the Berlin Wall (H3). To test these hypotheses, the study employs the European Elections Study 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004. The country by year combination provides data from 62 political contexts. To analyse the determinants of party choice across different countries and years, a methodology is employed that was developed by Van der Eijk and Franklin in Choosing Europe (1996). The study provides support for all three hypotheses.

The Immigration and Integration Debate in the Netherlands: Discursive and Programmatic Reactions to the Rise of Anti-Immigration Parties

Immigration and integration issues have become increasingly important in West European politics, partly as a consequence of the rise of anti-immigration parties. This article investigates how immigration and integration issues have become politicised in the Netherlands since the beginning of the 1990s, what role anti-immigration parties have played in this process and the extent to which party positions on these issues are structured by a left-right dimension. It examines changes in debates about immigration and integration issues by means of a content analysis of party programmes, measuring changes in frames, positions and salience. It concludes that (1) immigration and integration issues have been given more attention by parties since the early 1990s, (2) parties have replaced their discourse of socio-economic integration by a discourse of cultural integration and (3) parties have adopted a monoculturalist instead of a multiculturalist position in the immigration and integration debate. However, despite these changes to the immigration and integration debate, it remains structured by a left–right divide, with left-wing parties being in favour of more lenient, multiculturalist policies and right-wing parties being in favour of more restrictive, monoculturalist policies. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that many of the changes were already set in motion by mainstream parties prior to the successful electoral breakthrough of anti-immigration parties.

When the Stakes Are High Party Competition and Negative Campaigning

This article examines the conditions under which different kinds of parties resort to negative campaigning in three Western European countries: the Netherlands, Britain, and Germany in the period between 1980 and 2006. Data were collected for 27 parties, participating in 23 elections, yielding a total of 129 cases. The study uses a cross-nested multilevel model to estimate the effects of party characteristics as well as the electoral context in which these parties operate. It contributes to the state of the art on negative campaigning in two ways. First, being the first comparative and across-time study on negative campaigning, it compares negative campaigning across 23 elections, which is more than in any other study so far. It therefore contributes to the development of a more general theory on this type of campaign strategy. Second, it is the first study outside the American context to empirically estimate the effect of the electoral context on the use of negative campaigning. The results show that party characteristics are much more important than the electoral context in explaining when parties go negative.

The Effect of Associative Issue Ownership on Parties’ Presence in the News Media

Some studies suggest that challenger parties push new issues onto the agenda, especially when they ‘own’ these issues. Others claim that established parties largely determine how prominent issues appear on the agenda. This article contributes to this debate by focusing on an issue on which challenger parties have most ‘ownership’: immigration. Political claims on this issue made by political parties in newspapers in seven West European countries after three events that could potentially trigger attention to immigration were studied. Large and government parties appear most prominent in the news. However, findings show a significant, positive effect of associative issue ownership on claims-making in the news, while controlling for party size and government status. So, when challengers have issue ownership they appear as claim-makers on the issue. These results paint a balanced picture of the role that challenger and established parties have in setting the agenda.

The Electoral Trade-Off: How Issues and Ideology Affect Party Preference Formation in Europe

Political science has shown increasing interest in cross-country differences in the extent of structural voting, ideological voting and issue voting. Several studies have identified how voting behaviour is structured in post-communist democracies of East-Central Europe and established democracies of Western Europe. This article looks beyond a simple East–West distinction by developing a more sophisticated general model to explain cross-country variations in the effects of issues and left–right on party support. We demonstrate that the more issues are related to left–right, the stronger is the effect of left–right on party preferences. This effect occurs at the expense of the effects of issues on party preferences, which become weaker. These general findings help explain why the effect of left–right on party preferences is weaker in post-communist democracies than in more established democracies. Our proposition is empirically substantiated in a two-stage analysis using the European Election Study 2009.

Mediated Leader Effects: The Impact of Newspapers’ Portrayal of Party Leadership on Electoral Support:

Conventional wisdom holds that party leaders matter in democratic elections. As very few voters have direct contact with party leaders, media are voters’ primary source of information about these leaders and, thus, the likely origin of leader effects on party support. Our study focuses on these supposed electoral effects of the media coverage of party leaders. We examine the positive and negative effects of specific leadership images in Dutch newspapers on vote intentions. To this end, we combine an extensive automated content analysis of leadership images in the media with a panel data set, the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP), consisting of more than fifty thousand unique respondents and 110 waves of interviews conducted between September 2006 and September 2012. The results confirm that media coverage of party leaders’ character traits affects voters: Positive mediated leadership images increase support for the leader’s party, while negative images decrease this support. However, this influence is not unconditional: During campaign periods, positive leadership images have a stronger effect, while negative images no longer have an impact on subsequent vote intentions.

Priming religion: The effects of religious issues in the news coverage on public attitudes towards European integration

Abstract Religion can affect public support for the European Union (EU). However, specifying the circumstances under which religion may become a stronger predictor of EU-support has so far been neglected. This article shows that the media play a role in this process and it is investigated to what extent the presence or absence of references to religious issues in EU news coverage primes peoples religious attitudes to contribute to their evaluation of the EU. For this purpose, a content analysis of the amount of religious news items in EU coverage in German and Dutch newspapers between 1997 and 2007 was conducted. Two points in time were chosen — 1998, when only a small amount of religious news items appeared in EU coverage, and 2005, when religious items reached a peak. Eurobarometer data were used to test the media priming proposition. The findings show that an increasing religious dimension in media coverage about the EU primes a linkage between religious and political considerations and thus influences the strength of the impact of religion on attitudes towards the EU.

Een populistische tijdgeest? Discursieve reacties op het succes van populistische partijen in West-Europa

In dit artikel onderzoeken wij de discursieve reacties van gevestigde partijen op het electorale succes van populistische partijen. Ons vertrekpunt is de claim dat populisme in toenemende mate ook is terug te vinden bij gevestigde partijen. Op basis van de resultaten van een inhoudsanalyse van verkiezingsprogramma’s van politieke partijen in vijf West-Europese landen concluderen we dat gevestigde partijen de afgelopen decennia niet populistischer zijn geworden, en dat zij hun vertoog niet aanpassen wanneer zij geconfronteerd worden met electoraal verlies of met succesvolle populistische partijen. Uit ons onderzoek blijkt echter wel dat populistische partijen hun vertoog matigen na een verkiezingsoverwinning.