Explaining Government-Opposition Distinctiveness
Image: State Opening December 2019 by UK Parliament/Jessica TaylorThis sub-project explains the level of government-opposition distinctiveness in parliament. It employs a mixed method design. In the quantitative part the distinctiveness measures from project 1 are connected to hypothesized explanations of government-opposition distinctiveness. In order to better understand the causal mechanisms, the quantitative analyses will be complemented by elite interviews with (former) party politicians in the four country cases. These interviews will focus on MPs’ parliamentary behaviour, with particular emphasis on government-opposition relations. Respondents will be asked to discuss a number of recent examples of (non-)cooperation between government and opposition.
Posts
Dutch podcast episode on coalition-opposition dynamics
Rick van Well was invited to talk about opposition-coalition dynamics in the Dutch parliament in the Dutch podcast Het Spel en de Macht (The Game and the Power). This podcast series about Dutch politics is released by the Centrum voor Nederlandse Politiek en Bestuur (Centre for Dutch Politics and Governance) from Leiden University and the Montesquieu Institute at The Hague, the Netherlands.
Practitioners' Workshop on Opposition Politics in the Dutch Parliament
During a practitioners' meeting on parliamentary opposition and executive-legislative relations in The Hague, Tom Louwerse, Rick van Well, and Elina Zorina presented preliminary research results on the differentiation between government and opposition in parliament, the explanations for this differentiation, and its implications for democratic legitimacy.
Dutch radio broadcast with Rick van Well about government-opposition relations
On 22 September project team member Rick van Well joined the Dutch radio programme ‘De Nacht van NTR’ (The Night of NTR) to talk about parliamentary debates on the Dutch government’s budget proposals, government-opposition relations in general, and about his research project on explanations of government-opposition distinctiveness.
Rick van Well starts his work as 'face of science'
Every year, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences appoints a select number of PhD students as ‘face of science’. From the Institute of Political Science of Leiden University, doctoral candidate Rick van Well starts work as ‘science ambassador’.