In election times more and more voters consult voting advice applications (VAAs), which show them what party or candidate provides the best match. The potential impact of these tools on election outcomes is substantial and hence it is important to study the effects of their design. This article focuses on the method used to calculate the match between voters and parties. More specifically, we examine the use (explicit or implicit) of alternative spatial models and metrics. The analyses are based on the actual answers given by users of one of the most popular VAAs in Europe, StemWijzer in the Netherlands. The results indicate that the advice depends strongly on the spatial model adopted. A majority of the users of StemWijzer would have received another advice, if another spatial model had been used. At the aggregate level this means that how often a particular party is presented as best match depends strongly on the method used to determine the advice. These findings have important implications for the design of future VAAs.
In parliament, populist parties express their positions almost every day through voting. There is great diversity among them, for instance between left‐wing and right‐wing populist parties. This gives rise to the question: is the parliamentary behaviour of populists motivated by their populism or by their position on the left/right spectrum? This article compares the parliamentary voting behaviour of the Dutch SP and PVV, the only left‐wing and right‐wing populist parties that have been in a Western European parliament for more than four years. We find that for their voting behaviour the left/right position of these populist parties is more important than their shared populism. Only on one core populist issue (opposition to supranational institutions) do we find strong similarity in their voting behaviour.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents an exceptional crisis situation not only for governments, but also for politicians in opposition. This article analyses opposition party expressed sentiment visa -vis government actions and policies during the first six months of 2020. Based on an original content analysis of parliamentary debates in four established parliamentary democracies (Germany, Israel, Netherlands, United Kingdom), relatively positive opposition expressed sentiment in parliament early on during the crisis is observed, in line with a 'rally effect' observed in public opinion. Sentiment turned more negative as the first wave of the crisis abated. Larger opposition parties with considerable prior government experience were more positive than larger parties without such experience.
The design of government portfolios – that is, the distribution of competencies among government ministries and office holders – has been largely ignored in the study of executive and coalition politics. This article argues that portfolio design is a substantively and theoretically relevant phenomenon that has major implications for the study of institutional design and coalition politics. The authors use comparative data on portfolio design reforms in nine Western European countries since the 1970s to demonstrate how the design of government portfolios changes over time. Specifically, they show that portfolios are changed frequently (on average about once a year) and that such shifts are more likely after changes in the prime ministership or the party composition of the government. These findings suggest a political logic behind these reforms based on the preferences and power of political parties and politicians. They have major implications for the study of institutional design and coalition politics.
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