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Although often framed as politics ultimate 'other', it is hard to ignore that sport and the political are intimately connected. Historians, however, have up until now hardly reflected on the nature of this connection in the postwar years, on how the politicisation of sport has actually taken shape, and how actors and institutions have delineated, navigated, and crossed the boundaries between the two. This article tackles these questions through an analysis of three vectors of politicisation: political communication, struggles over the use of space, and governance and policy making. Based on a discussion of recent work at the intersection of political history, sport history, political science, geography, and communication studies, the article unearths the relationship between sport and personalised modes of political representation, explores the role of sport spaces as sites of community building and conflict, and the instrumentalisation of sport in policy schemes of the welfare state. It shows how policy schemes and governance arrangements drew sport into the orbit of the state; maps the various actors and institutions at the intersection of sport and politics, ranging from local residents' groups to international non-governmental organisations; and highlights the gendered, exclusionary nature of new, popular forms of political communication through sport. All in all, the article makes the case for sport as a highly relevant field to engage with for those who are interested in the postwar history of political power, representation, communication, and governance.

Abstract: This article discusses the post-war history of the Dutch social-democratic Partij van de Arbeid. It takes as its point of departure the fact that the two elements at the heart of contemporary discussions about the future of social democracy – struggles over the definition of its constituency, particularly the role class should play in it, and attempts to revitalize its interaction with the electorate – are present throughout the post-war history of the PvdA. The article explores both the content and mode of political representation: it investigates the representative claims of the Dutch social democrats and the communicative practices through which these claims were made in order to establish how the PvdA imagined and tried to constitute its constituency. Who, which groups of voters, were the social democrats claiming to represent? How did they try to reach voters? How did their interaction with the electorate develop against the background of the rise of – new forms of – mass media? ; Abstract: This article discusses the post-war history of the Dutch social-democratic Partij van de Arbeid. It takes as its point of departure the fact that the two elements at the heart of contemporary discussions about the future of social democracy – struggles over the definition of its constituency, particularly the role class should play in it, and attempts to revitalize its interaction with the electorate – are present throughout the post-war history of the PvdA. The article explores both the content and mode of political representation: it investigates the representative claims of the Dutch social democrats and the communicative practices through which these claims were made in order to establish how the PvdA imagined and tried to constitute its constituency. Who, which groups of voters, were the social democrats claiming to represent? How did they try to reach voters? How did their interaction with the electorate develop against the background of the rise of – new forms of – mass media?

Introduction: Repertoires of representation / Harm Kaal and Danielle Slootjes -- Emperors and councillors : imperial representation between Republic and Empire / Olivier Hekster -- Politics of access at the court of the caliph / Maaike van Berkel -- Representative bodies in medieval religious orders : a discarded legacy? / Bert Roest -- The political rhetoric of capitals : Rome and Versailles in the Baroque period, or the "Power of Place" / Peter Rietbergen -- Repertoires of access in princely courts, 1400-1750 / Dries Raeymaekers and Sebastiaan Derks -- The image of Prime Minister Colijn : public visualisation of political leadership in the 1930s / Marij Leenders and Joris Gijsenbergh -- Postwar popular politics : integrating the voice of the people in postwar political history / Harm Kaal and Vincent van de Griend -- Majdan : presence and political representation in post-communist Ukraine / Wim van Meurs and Olga Morozova -- Regulation without representation? Independent regulatory authorities and representative claim-making in the Netherlands, 1997-now / Adriejan van Veen.

This introductory text presents the overarching question that informs the articles in this special section: How have notions of neighborhood and community determined urban planning discourse and practice in mid-twentieth century Europe? Against the backdrop of World Wars, crises and recovery schemes, aspirations to repair – or create – social cohesion among urban dwellers were manifest in the parlance and actions of a range of historical actors, many of which were at the heart of urban planning and reconstruction: architects, sociologists, administrators, planners and local officials. This special section covers different temporal and geographical contexts in Europe (and the US) to disentangle multilayered notions of 'the social' that have permeated neighborhood and community planning schemes. Moreover, taken together, the articles will show how persistent dichotomies in urban planning historiography, such as top-down versus bottom-up or organic versus mechanic, obscure historical understandings of how urban communities were conceived spatially, socially and politically.

The 'scientisation of the political', understood as the increasing influence of social science within twentieth century (party) politics, provides insight into politicians' conceptions of political representation and the shifts in those conceptions over time. Social science based knowledge exerted a profound effect on how parties approached political identity formation and on their perceptions of the electorate. Based on a Dutch case study, this article tracks the impact of electoral geography and mass psychology and, from the 1940s onwards, electoral research and polling data on party strategies, showing the important role played by party political think tanks which acted as hubs of social-scientific knowledge. Comparisons with British and West German political parties reveal the complex reception and negotiation of social scientific insights regarding the nature and behaviour of the electorate, as well as the persistence of ingrained stereotypes.

Abstract
In contrast to the image of the Netherlands as a solid state since the early modern period, this article argues that Dutch statehood was the product of a hard-won process that required a good part of the 19th century to reach any sort of administrative consolidation. We look at state building from a decentered perspective, not so much from above or below, but rather from the middle, concentrating on the province of South Holland, and from within, foregrounding the piecemeal fine-tuning of the administrative system at the provincial level. We show that every administrative intervention had a spatial element or – to put it differently – created its own spatiality. The province, in that sense, was not a fixed territorial entity, but an amalgamation of spatial properties, depending on the administrative issue at stake.

Today, the demand for transparency is omnipresent. In particular, transparency is considered a prerequisite for good governance, for political participation and democracy. On closer inspection, however, transparency proves to be ambivalent. For complete transparency has not yet been achieved anywhere. Moreover, measures to increase transparency can have the opposite effect and stir up mistrust. Historians are just beginning to discover this topic. The volume assembles contributions covering European history since the 19th century. The contributors focus on political and cultural history, but include also economic and media history as well as the history of ideas. They analyse publicly debated demands and efforts for transparency, conceived as the access to information or ist disclosure.