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Hans Schippers assesses the position of the Islamic AK Party led by Prime Minister Erdogan in the light of the relationship between religion and the state in Turkey. Although the AK Party won the general elections in 2002, Erdogan has the Damocletian sword of a military coup hanging above his head ever since. The military consider themselves to be the guardians of Kemal Atatürk's legacy of Turkey as a secular state. In the past decades they intervened four times in politics, the most recent one the 1998 'post modern' coup to oust the Islamic Prime Minister Erbakan, whose approach to Iran, critical opinions on the EU and NATO and favourisation of religious education had gone too far in the eyes of the military. Erdogan cleverly avoided the mistakes of his predecessor. He declared the AKP to be a conservative, pro-EU and pro-NATO party that would seek adherence to the mostly christian-democratic European Peoples Party. His government would be liberal and respect people with different opinions on religion. Erdogan did well in regional elections of 2004. However, he met with growing criticism in the following two years. The organisational structure of the AKP is undemocratic and the number of women active in the party is far too limited, his critics remarked. The party is accused of conducting a campaign of 'creeping islamisation' of Turkish society. The military closely monitor every decision of the government near two-thirds majority in parliament and he could They have the support of the secular president have a party member elected. This would increase Sezer who has amended or rejected a large number the chances of military intervention. Erdogan will of Erdogans proposals. A crucial moment for the probably opt for a compromise candidate. However, AKP-government will be the election by parliament until the arliamentary elections of November, the of a new president, coming May. Erdogan has a political.

The Anti-Revolutionary People behind the Voters. Fact or fiction? The Electoral Support of the ARP around 1885 and in 1918The rallying cry 'The people behind the voters' symbolised the political discrimination against the anti-revolutionaries. The restricted franchise, based on tax assessments, was supposed to favour the liberals. It is, however, doubtful whether this rallying cry represented any real form of discrimination or whether it should be regarded instead as part of the self-image of the antirevolutionaries. This is hard to determine. The number of seats gained during elections is not a very good benchmark because the absolute majority run-off system (constituency voting system with a second ballot) forced political parties to look for electoral cooperation. The size of the electoral support, on the other hand, can be estimated, when the election results of several carefully selected constituencies from the 1880s are compared with the election results of 1918. At this point, the votes were being cast under the regime of proportional representation and universal male suffrage. The anti-revolutionary electoral gains in 1918 turned out to be so small, that the rallying cry 'The people behind the voters' must be regarded as being out of touch with reality. Already, under the very restricted suffrage of the 1880s, the anti-revolutionaries had almost reached the peak of their electoral support.

Abstract It is essential for democracy that political parties should act within their promulgated policy frameworks, which are formally represented in election programmes. If political parties deviate from this principle, the election would lose its meaning, jeopardising democracy. In this respect, planning in Groningen in the 1970s, which realised progressive plans like the traffic circulation plan, was democratic, although it was criticised for lacking public participation. However, planning in the 1980s casts serious doubt on its democratic nature. Various large-scale projects were promoted, and they caused harsh criticism even within the government party, Labour Party. This paper focuses on four projects, that is, the PTT (office development), Brink (residential towers), Casino and Museum, all of which were planned in or next to the inner city of Groningen in the 1980s. This paper will examine these projects in terms of the policy frameworks of the Labour Party, which were created in the 1970s. These projects brought about drastic change of historical landscape, and were clearly contrary to the party frameworks or those measures that were introduced to guarantee the frameworks, such as the local land use plan. As a result, they gave rise to not only strong opposition among citizens, but also criticism of party members who still cherished those party frameworks.

The right-wing PVV and the left-wing SP are seen as populist parties who are fierce ideological adversaries in the Dutch political spectrum. We study the similarities and differences in municipal contexts that explain their electoral success. Results of the 2010 national elections at the municipality level are analyzed for nearly all (N=403) Dutch municipalities. Hypotheses are formulated based on integrated group threat theory and relative deprivation theory. Results indicate similarities but also clear differences in the contexts in which SP and PVV thrive. PVV is more successful in municipalities with more immigrants and a higher average perception of unsafety, SP thrives more under local socioeconomic deprivation.

The framing of a message can affect the way people think about an issue, and the framing of attitude questions influences the opinions expressed. Current research investigated political emphasis framing in the context of Voting Advice Applications. In an online survey regarding the European Elections (2019), a conservative vs. progressive frame was manipulated across 15 questions. As the original VAA did not include introductory texts to the questions, a control condition without introduction texts was also added. Participants (N = 106) were randomly assigned to one of these three conditions. Results show that there is an effect for conservative introductions to elicit answers reflecting more progressive attitudes, but only for the group of respondents with conservative voting positions (PTV). This pattern could not be explained by political sophistication: higher political sophistication is related to a main effect of more progressive answering behaviour, but does not explain the framing effect for conservative frames in the conservative group.

In a well-functioning democracy voters should elect parties and representatives with whom they agree on policy issues. The current paper investigates the extent to which Dutch voters in the 2017 parliamentary election had accurate information about parties' policy positions. We elicit the extent to which voters think they vote for parties with whom they maximally agree (subjective congruence) and the extent to which this is actually true (objective congruence). Results show voters in our sample to have accurate information about approximately half of the policy positions of a random large party. Only 21.5 percent voted for a party with whom they were maximally objectively congruent. Objective congruence does not increase with information accuracy. Voters appear to consciously accept losses in terms of subjective congruence, as only 34.7 percent votes for a party with whom they think to be maximally congruent. These results are compatible with the interpretation of voters first choosing a party, and then (to some degree) adapting their personal policy positions to those of the chosen party.

The central aim in our NWO 'Comprehensible Language' project (2012-2016) was to investigate to what extent Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) intentionally and unintentionally affect political knowledge and political attitudes. In this article, we present an overview of four years of research. First, we investigated reasons for use of VAAs, distinguishing three types of users: checkers (well-informed, enjoying to check the VAA), seekers (looking for political information to base their vote on) and doubters (looking for information but cynical about politics). The proportions of these groups differ for first vs. second order elections. Second, we investigated whether VAAs increase users' political knowledge. We found that users report an increase of internal efficacy due to their VAA use, but we did not find an increase in actual political knowledge. Third, a field experiment showed systematic effects of framing variation on the answers to VAA assertions, which might suggest different underlying knowledge representations. Finally, think aloud research showed that users experience considerable problems with understanding the assertions semantically and pragmatically, as well as with interpreting the results screen. Additionally, we found that users view the result screen as an end point rather than as a starting point for deliberation. We discuss some implications for theory and practice.

Hans Schippers surveys the position of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics and its relations with Iran and Syria. Hezbollah is an organisation with two faces. Together with Amal it represents the Shia in Lebanon. It participates in elections and the government. However, in the Southern part of the country Hezbollah constitutes a state within a state, with a militia and a social and medical network of its own. Most of the costs of this structure are paid for by Iran. The Shia leadership of Iran also played a vital role in the establishment of the organisation in 1982. Syria acted as the protector of Hezbollah in its agitation against Israel. With the departure of Syrian troops following the Cedar Revolution in the spring of 2005 most non-Shia Lebanese wanted to see the Hezbollah militia, seen as a pro-Syrian force, dissolved. However, this was refused by leader Nasrallah. The militia protected Lebanon against Israeli aggression, he declared. It is unclear what motivated Hezbollah to kidnap the Israeli soldiers. This action seemed to be co-ordinated with Iran and Syria to divert attention from the Iranian troubles with the United Nations about Iran's uranium enrichment programme. However, also solidarity with Hamas and the personality of Nasrallah may have played a role. The War of Summer 2006 made it clear once more that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict maybe exploited by forces not directly involved, like Iran. The strong presence of European soldiers in the new peace force presents an opportunity for the EU to take the initiative for a restart of the peace process in the region. A new Madrid type conference may offer away out of the deadlock.