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In this paper we show that women's earnings attenuate inequality between coupled households, even though the earnings of spouses are positively correlated. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS, 2013) on 572,222 coupled households, covering the period from 1981 to 2005 in 18 OECD countries. Three trends are described. Firstly, over time women's earnings increasingly contributed to total household earnings, thereby increasing equality within households. Secondly, the positive correlation between spouses' earnings increased over time. Thirdly, earnings inequality among women declined. With a counter-factual decomposition technique on earnings inequality, we show that the combined effect of these trends was that women's earnings increasingly attenuated earnings inequality between households. The trend towards women's earnings increasingly attenuating the inequality between households was mainly driven by decreasing inequality among women. If inequality among women had not declined as it did in recent decades, inequality between households would have been 25% higher than it actually was in 2005.

For the first time since Athenian democracy, political authorities allocated decisive policy-making power to the people. Recently in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario, a group of randomly selected citizens was asked to design the next electoral system. Instead of simply voting, sanctioning or being consulted, they had the chance to develop a new political institution. These three citizen assemblies were organized similarly: each unfolded over an almost year-long process were participants learned about electoral systems, consulted the public, deliberated, debated and decided. The three assemblies came up with three different solutions. However, none has yet resulted in electoral reform. The two Canadian proposals were rejected by the public in referenda, while the Dutch recommendation was submitted to cabinet and mostly ignored. This paper analyzes reactions to the unprecedented and exceptional democratic experiments. It deals with how the assemblies and their proposals were received by political actors (governments, political parties, interest groups, media, and citizens). Empirically, it draws on media content analyses and public opinion surveys. First, a content analysis of the quantity and tone of newspaper coverage was conducted in British Columbia and Ontario throughout the assembly proceedings and the referendum campaign. Second, a rolling cross-sectional survey captured the opinions of a random sample of the population of each province during the campaign. We use this evidence to document the views of both elites and masses toward the assemblies and the electoral systems they proposed, and to explain the failure of all three citizen assemblies to get reform implemented.

In three recent instances, politicians have let a group of ordinary people decide important public policy. Citizen assemblies on electoral reform were implemented in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. Participants were selected through a combination of random draw and self-selection. They spent almost an entire year learning about electoral systems, consulting the public, deliberating, debating and ultimately deciding what design should be adopted. This paper examines the structure and quality of individual and collective decisions reached by citizens during these lengthy deliberations dealing with a complex, technical and unfamiliar issue. Specifically, we ask: To what extent are individual preferences driven by general political values and specific objectives of electoral reform in a logical and coherent way? Did the structure of opinion determinants evolve (increasing or decreasing) over the span of the proceedings? Are there important differences in the decisions made by the (initially) better informed as compared to the less knowledgeable? And were the final collective recommendations to the public and the government reasonable? In sum, this paper evaluates the capacity of citizens to overcome their typical political ignorance and to articulate well-reasoned policy proposals.

In dit boek staat de verkiezing van de Tweede Kamer op 22 november 2006 centraal. Over deze verkiezing is al veel geschreven; en er zullen ongetwijfeld nog vele andere journalistieke en wetenschappelijke beschouwingen volgen. Wij menen met dit boek echter een waardevolle bijdrage te leveren aan de kennis van verkiezingen en aan het inzicht in hun betekenis voor het functioneren van de democratie. Dat doen we door een breed en samenhangend beeld te schetsen van de verkiezing van 2006 tegen de achtergrond van verschillende maatschappelijke en politieke ontwikkelingen. Hiervoor maken we gebruik van een unieke combinatie van recente wetenschappelijke onderzoeksgegevens.

Voor een goed functionerende democratie is betrokkenheid van de burgers een vereiste. Als er in een samenleving bijvoorbeeld geen enkele belangstelling bestaat voor de totstandkoming en de uitvoering van het overheidsbeleid, kan de overheid haar gang gaan zonder dat dit op enige wijze wordt gecorrigeerd. Als politieke belangstelling ontbreekt, is het immers lastig voor te stellen dat mensen serieuze meningen vormen over politieke problemen en daarop vervolgens ook hun stemgedrag baseren. Politieke belangstelling kan dus worden gezien als een noodzakelijke voorwaarde voor het functioneren van een democratie.

Weet het electoraat nu wel of niet wat het wil? In dit hoofdstuk gaan we in op de vraag naar het wat en het wie van het stemmen op 22 november 2006. Daarbij plaatsen we de verkiezingen van 2006 in perspectief door ook naar cijfers uit eerdere jaren te kijken. We richten ons daarbij op het twijfelen van kiezers, op hun pogingen houvast te zoeken in bijvoorbeeld de diverse StemWijzers en op hun uiteindelijke stemgedrag. Omdat tijdens de verkiezingen van 2006 ook de wijze waarop wordt gestemd (met potlood of met computer) ter discussie heeft gestaan, gaan we ten slotte kort in op de manier waarop kiezers de werkwijze bij verkiezingen in Nederland beoordelen.

De regering regeert en het parlement controleert. Zo worden de verhoudingen tussen ministers en Kamerleden vaak kernachtig samengevat. Het feitelijke politieke spel is minder eenduidig. Politieke conflicten spelen zich niet alleen af tussen regering en parlement, maar ook binnen de regering en binnen het parlement. Andere belangrijke tegenstellingen zijn die tussen Tweede Kamer en Eerste Kamer, tussen individuele bewindslieden en hun eigen Kamerfracties, tussen Kamerfracties en individuele leden uit deze fracties, tussen de ‘Haagse afdeling’ van politieke partijen (bewindslieden en Kamerleden) en de partijelite of partijleden, en ten slotte tussen individuele politici. Politiek is eigenlijk een spel waarbij door vele actoren tegelijk op vele borden wordt geschaakt. Waar in het vorige hoofdstuk vooral de knikkers centraal hebben gestaan, richten we in dit hoofdstuk de aandacht op het spel.

In de verschillende bijdragen aan dit boek is de verkiezing van november 2006 vanuit diverse perspectieven belicht. In dit concluderende hoofdstuk maken we de balans op. Na een terugblik op de polarisatie en de opkomst van nieuwe strijdpunten, die in de overige hoofdstukken in dit boek regelmatig terugkeerden, worden maatschappelijke modernisering en haar politieke gevolgen nog eenmaal nader beschouwd.

Op 24 mei werd in Leeuwarden een referendum gehouden. Het referendum ging over de herinrichting van het Zaailand, een groot plein in het centrum. Onderdeel van het project was de bouw van een nieuw Fries Museum. De bevolking stemde in meerderheid tegen het plan van de gemeente, maar de benodigde drempel van 30 procent van alle kiesgerechtigden werd niet gehaald. De gemeenteraad besloot daarom dat het plan kon worden uitgevoerd. In dit onderzoeksrapport wordt het Leeuwarder referendum beschreven, wordt geïnventariseerd wat er goed en verkeerd is gegaan, en worden aanbevelingen gedaan met het oog op toekomstige referenda. De belangrijkste conclusie is dat de vraagstelling niet goed was en dat dit de uitslag heeft beïnvloed.

Op 2 maart 2005 werd in Zwolle een referendum gehouden. Het referendum ging over het besluit van de gemeenteraad om de vestiging van een grote gokhal in een nieuw stadion mogelijk te maken. De bevolking stemde massaal tegen, waarna de raad het besluit introk. In dit onderzoeksrapport wordt het proces van het Zwolse referendum beschreven, wordt geïnventariseerd wat er goed en verkeerd is gegaan, en worden aanbevelingen gedaan met het oog op toekomstige referenda.

In de discussie over de rechtstreekse verkiezing van de burgemeester staat tot nu toe vooral de vraag centraal hoe de functie van de burgemeester eruit moet zien en hoe dit orgaan zich moet verhouden tot de andere bestuursorganen. Veel minder aandacht wordt besteed aan de verkiezingsprocedure. In deze bijdrage zal het uitsluitend gaan over de verschillende manieren waarop de burgemeester kan worden gekozen. De vraag of het invoeren van een gekozen burgemeester wenselijk is en de vraag hoe de positie van de gekozen burgemeester vorm zou moeten worden gegeven, komen niet aan de orde.

Solving complex societal problems demands wide societal support for policies to be legitimate. The societal support can be delivered by political parties, but given the strong divide between parties about many topics, and given the dwindling societal embedding of those parties (declining party memberships), there is a need for additional ways to retain societal support. Moreover, in response to the growing awareness that many of these societal problems (e.g., climate change mitigation; the Dutch nitrogen crisis) cannot be solved by the state on its own, calls for a more inclusive participatory society and more democratic renewal are becoming louder from various groups in society (see e.g., Tweede Kamer, 2020; “Betrokken bij Klimaat,’’ 2021). In doing so, the importance of involving the interests and wishes of citizens in political decision-making is increasingly highlighted. At the same time, the last decade has seen a growing interest worldwide in deliberative mini-publics, such as citizens’ juries, consensus conferences, deliberative polls, and the Belgian and Dutch G1000 initiatives. Some see in these innovative practices a way to increase citizens’ involvement in political decision-making and thereby make contemporary representative democratic institutions more inclusive of citizens’ wishes and interests. But despite the growing interest in these deliberative practices, knowledge about the functioning of different mini-publics, in general, is still in its infancy. Therefore, this dissertation aims to learn more about the functioning of deliberative mini-publics by examining the following central research question: To what extent can deliberative mini-publics contribute to the greater involvement of citizens in local decision making? To answer this research question, we focus in this dissertation on a certain ‘new’ type of deliberative mini-public that has become quite popular in the Netherlands in recent years: the Dutch G1000 initiatives. To gain a better understanding of how the G1000 functions, we used a longitudinal case study design and a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative data. By following three G1000 initiatives in the Dutch province of Overijssel over three years (period 2017 - 2020), we systematically analyse and compare the effects of the G1000 initiatives on citizen participation in local government.

Referendums on European integration play a prominent role in the decision-making processes in current European democracies. Between 1972 and 2016, 61 EU-related referendums took place across 28 countries. In his dissertation, Joost van den Akker (1984) investigates under which conditions governments win such EU-related referendums. The fact that the government won in 46 cases demonstrates that overall governments have been quite successful in securing popular support for their EU policies. The study locates the EU-related referendum in the historical perspective of referendums in Europe after the French revolution. It develops a model to explain the current potential and practice of EU-related referendums in European democracies. The most prominent contribution lies in explaining the referendum result by politicalinstitutional and socio-economic conditions at the aggregate level. It is argued that a unifi ed majority government and economic development are the main drivers for winning referendums. If the economy is deteriorating, however, the government only wins if it is only recently in offi ce and backed by a wide consensus among elites. The dissertation explains why EU-related referendums are held, under which conditions governments win or lose them, and how governments cope with inconvenient outcomes. In this way, it contributes to the strategies which governments can deploy to win a referendum, or to deal best with a referendum defeat.

This thesis set out to answer the research question How do Commissioners’ characteristics influence their behaviour and consequently the EU’s legislative process? Given the Commission’s central position in the EU’s system of governance as legislative agenda-setter, improving our understanding of individual Commissioners is very relevant. It was argued that the responsible Commissioner enjoys ministerial discretion (within limits) and that consequently the preferences of individual Commissioners matter. It was expected that a Commissioner’s nationality and membership in a political party are characteristics that have a decisive impact on how a Commissioner fulfils her tasks once in office. The first part of the research question about the consequences of Commissioner characteristics for their behaviour was evaluated using the speeches as a directly observable behaviour. The text analysis method Wordfish was used to extract the positions Commissioners took in the individual speeches that were part of 62 Commissioner – Topics. The positions were traced over time to test whether a change in the Commissioner’s home country leads to a change of positioning. This was not the case. Instead, Commissioners changed positions they took in speeches on topics in which policy developments were observed. Likewise, in seven out of nine Commissioner –Topics expected to be affected by the financial crisis, the positions taken before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy were indeed different from those taken afterwards. For the second part of the research question about the impact on the legislative process, a more indirect measure was used. In this case, the voting records of the other legislative institutions – the Council and the EP, respectively – were analysed. The analyses conducted in this thesis suggest that neither nationality nor party membership have a decisive impact on Commissioner behaviour in terms of speech-making. Still, these characteristics seem to impact inter-institutional relations in the EU’s legislative process. In their relation with the Council, a Commissioner’s nationality takes precedence over her partisanship. In their relation with the EP, national party competition seems to be continued. To answer the research question, nationality and party membership – two central characteristics of Commissioners as European politicians – do not seem to solely determine Commissioners’ behaviour.

Women's employment and earnings, as well as earnings inequality, have been rising in OECD countries in recent decades. This dissertation answers questions pertaining to how family policies have facilitated women in combining motherhood and employment, and how women's earnings have affected the inequality between households. Based on well over a million person-level observations, this study covers 18 OECD countries and a period from 1975 to 2005. Reconciliation policies were shown to reduce the employment gap between mothers and women without children, while policies financially supporting families with children enlarge this motherhood-employment gap. Very long periods of leave, however, negatively affect the employment of mothers. More educated women benefit more from reconciliation policies than less educated. Women's rising earnings were found to have attenuated inequality between households. Family policy rrangements that facilitate women's employment not only contribute to smaller inequalities within households, but also between households.