This article investigates to what extent national and/or local factors influence the performance of national parties in the most recent Flemish and Dutch municipal elections of, respectively, 2012 and 2014.Our analyses underscore the impact of local factors on the municipal election results, both in Flanders and in the Netherlands. The number of parties and previous election results have a negative effect on the vote share of national political parties. Contrary to the expectations, participation in local government does not have any influence on the national lists’ elections results.Although local factors have to be taken into account to get a better estimation of the performance of national lists in municipal elections, national factors have significant effects as well. Parties doing well at the national elections, are less successful at the local level.

J. Ackaert, L. De Winter, P. Dumont & S. Hennau - Met man en macht. Over mensen, macht en beleid bij lokale coalitievorming - in K. Deschouwer, T. Verthe & B. Rihoux, Op zoek naar de kiezers. Lokale partijafdelingen en de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van oktober 2012. Brussel: Academic and Scientific Publishers, 147-164

In response to a crisis of representative democracy in many Western countries, (local) governments have introduced instruments to circumvent political parties in order to establish more direct links between citizens and governments. One of these instruments is rendering electoral systems more personal, that is by giving more weight to preferential voting. Preferential voting is important since it constitutes a major element of the personal vote and it determines whether parties or voters are the main decision-makers in designating representatives. We have investigated, in relation to the local elections in Flanders (Belgium), in what kind of municipalities voters are most likely to cast a preferential vote, whether the electoral reform granting voters more power has had an effect, and if it has had an effect, in what kind of municipalities. We have put forward five groups of explanatory variables: socio-demographic, political, social capital, geographic and ballot form variables. Our analysis shows that variables from each group correlate significantly with the percentage of preferential votes, with population density and electronic voting as most important variables. A comparison between the 1994 and 2006 elections often yields the reverse picture: characteristics of municipalities that have a positive effect on the percentage of preferential votes cast have a negative impact on the evolution of preferential voting and vice versa (electronic voting being an exception). This results in the only obvious effects of the electoral reform being seen in urban municipalities, because elsewhere local politics was already to a large extent personalised by politicians being locally known. We could conclude that in these rural municipalities the electoral reform was superfluous.

The present research examines Whether the perception of neighborhood disorder differs between ethnic majority and minority group members and whether perceived disorder has the same impact on fear of crime among ethnic minorities as among the majority group. To answer the research questions, data are used from a survey among persons of Moroccan, Turkish, and Flemish descent (n = 960), gathered in three Flemish Belgian cities (Antwerp, Genk, and Ghent). Multiple regression analyses show differences between majority and minority group members with regard to the perception, of loitering youths, clog mess, and littering. Also, results provide support for the broken windows hypothesis in all ethnic groups, but the impact of perceived disorder on fear of crime is highest among the Flemish majority. Possible explanations are discussed. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.