The role of the past in public policy: empirical evidence of the long-term effect of past policy and politics on the local budget balance

Dutch municipal elections 1998-2018: what explains the electoral success of local parties?

“…After the election aldermen are chosen and they normally should get at least 50% of the council seats. Moreover, a powerful majority is also more capable of confronting the challenges presented by different interest groups (Vanneste and Goeminne 2020). In Figure 2, the power of Dutch coalitions is shown.…”

“…Goeminne, Geys, and Smolders (2008) show for Flanders that fragmented municipalities (measured by the number of parties in the board) are more optimistic in projecting tax revenues and therefore will have larger deficits. Recently, Vanneste and Goeminne (2020) calculated for municipalities in Flanders the power (measured by the share of seats of the government in the council) and show that deficits decrease with decreasing power. Gradus and Dijkgraaf (2019) found for the Netherlands evidence that political fragmentation of the council decreases the ability to introduce unit-based waste pricing.…”

“…As Dutch councils have become more fragmented in recent decades (see Gradus and Dijkgraaf 2019), we present two fragmentation indexes in section 2.3. In addition, power which is the share of seats of the government in the council, is calculated as well (see Vanneste and Goeminne 2020). In section 3 we present different models and their estimation.…”