Suchergebnisse

This article analyses how populist parties wage opposition in parliament. The authors conceptualise opposition behaviour in terms of two independent dimensions: scrutiny (monitoring and criticising government actions) and policy-making (participating in or directly influencing legislative production). In line with the conceptualisation of populism as an opposition to the ruling elite in name of 'the people', the authors hypothesis is that populist opposition parties are more likely to use scrutiny and less likely to use policy-making tools than non-populist opposition parties. Otjes and Louwerse study the Netherlands between 1998 and 2017 as a typical example of a consensus democracy, where populist parties have a greater opportunity to win representation and use parliamentary tools (compared to majoritarian democracies). Their findings indicate that populist opposition parties are particularly less likely to engage in policy-making behaviour and somewhat more likely to engage in scrutiny behaviour.

This article shifts the analysis of parliamentary oversight tools to the level of the political party, asking how political parties make use of written parliamentary questions. It theorises that the use of parliamentary questions is related to the ideological and electoral competition between political parties, borrowing from theories on issue competition and negative campaigning. It provides an empirical test, using data on written questions from the lower house in the Netherlands (1994-2014). The analysis shows that parties tend to put questions to ministers whose portfolios are salient to them, in line with issue ownership theories. Moreover they ask questions of both ministers from parties that are ideologically distant and those with whom they have considerable electoral overlap in line with studies of negative campaigning.

The authors examine the development of opposition party behaviour in the Dutch Tweede Kamer between 1998 and 2015. They look at the effect of three major events on opposition party behaviour: the entry of a major radical right-wing populist party (in 2002), the global financial crisis (in 2008) and the advent of minority governments (in 2012). The authors find that consensus democracy is alive. During the economic crisis, the established rules of the game were reinvented to allow for productive cooperation between effectively a minority government and 'constructive' opposition parties. Since the crisis, opposition parties with earlier government experience have been increasingly active.

Austrian Research Association (ÖFG) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under grant P25490.