Suchergebnisse

A methodologically focused report on an experimental survey (N = 457 first-year students at 6 Dutch universities) that measured the extent to which attitudes of Dutch citizens reflect a willingness to cooperate voluntarily in helping to achieve environmental goals thought to involve collective action problems. The experiment tests whether respondents (Rs) exhibit rationally cooperative or noncooperative attitudes toward the issue. Findings predominantly indicate that Rs would cooperate, usually unconditionally. The motives reported only rarely express the narrow self-interest characteristic of free riders, thereby lending little support to current formulations of collective action problems. Results suggest that an ethos prescribing unconditional protection of the environment exists for the sample. The application of surveys such as the one utilized here to designing appropriate government policies is endorsed. Suggestions for future research are provided. 8 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 18 References. D. Schwartz

Like many party systems across Western Europe, the Dutch party system has been in flux since 2002 as a result of a series of related developments, including the decline of mainstream parties which coincided with the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties and the concurrent dimensional transformation of the political space. This article analyses how these challenges to mainstream parties fundamentally affected the structure of party competition. On the basis of content analysis of party programmes, we examine the changing configuration of the Dutch party space since 2002 and investigate the impact of these changes on coalition-formation patterns. We conclude that the Dutch party system has become increasingly unstable. It has gradually lost its core through electoral fragmentation and mainstream parties' positional shifts. The disappearance of a core party that dominates the coalition-formation process initially transformed the direction of party competition from centripetal to centrifugal. However, since 2012 a theoretically novel configuration has emerged in which no party or coherent group of parties dominates competition.