Research on economic voting shows that negative economic events typically reduce government support. However, we argue that external economic shocks may have the opposite effect: when faced with a foreign economic threat, voters will rally behind their government despite worsening economic perceptions. Using the unexpected collapse of Lehman Brothers (15 September 2008) as a case, we analyze European Social Survey data from six countries and find that while satisfaction with national economies declined, satisfaction with governments gradually rose. We document that rising media and political attention coincided with a rally effect fueled by past opposition voters and muted opposition elites. These findings demonstrate that foreign economic shocks influence democratic accountability and the ability of governments to act during hard times.

Right-wing parties are often stigmatised as extremists and racists. However, the extent to which voters perceive a party as stigmatised and the impact of such perceptions on voting behaviour remain unexplored. Drawing on European Election Studies, we mapped individual perceptions of the stigma associated with right-wing parties in 27 EU member states and identified contextual factors influencing these perceptions. We also evaluated the impact of perceived stigma on the propensity to vote for stigmatised parties. Multilevel analyses revealed that a communist legacy and prior government experience reduced the extent of stigmatisation of far-right parties. In contrast, a fascist legacy showed a weak correlation with the racist stigma associated with far-right parties. These contextual factors, however, had weak or null effects on the stigma perceptions of mainstream right parties. Individual attributes, including social class, gender, left/right ideology, residence, education, and age, also affected stigmatisation. Additionally, we tested the electoral consequences of stigma and found a negative correlation between stigma and voting for both mainstream right and far-right parties. This relationship, however, was conditional on the levels of political trust, immigration views, and economic evaluations. Our findings contribute to burgeoning research on party survival and debates on the mainstreaming of far-right ideas.

Niche parties have emerged in many democracies worldwide. Various aspects of these parties have been studied, including the role of mainstream parties in their electoral success. Key to that success, arguably, is news media attention. Is the media attention that niche parties receive affected by mainstream parties as well? In this paper, we combine news value theory with party competition theory to argue that other parties influence niche party visibility. Focusing on green parties in 11 countries between 1992 and 2021, we find evidence that the salience of green policies in mainstream parties' manifestoes enhance green party visibility in newspapers if these parties take an adversarial position. This positive effect turns negative as the mainstream party becomes greener, which suggests that it steals a niche party's thunder. The insight that mainstream parties can influence media attention to niche parties opens up new lines of research on the emergence of niche parties.

What explains whether and how much political parties give attention to a policy issue? Parties are expected to cater to the interests of privileged groups and to be dismissive unless an issue offers an electoral opportunity. How to test this? Most issues have been around for so long that it has become difficult to track party responses. Ideally, a multifaceted phenomenon would fall from the sky and become favored by privileged groups, after which we would observe party reactions. Bitcoin fulfills these criteria. It has become significant, suited for various ideologies yet disproportionally supported by wealthy, highly educated male voters. In this paper, we study how new issues emerge around Bitcoin, and how parties respond. Voter attitudes, preferences, expectations, and Bitcoin ownership are taken from our 2020-2023 four-wave British (N=5,121) and Dutch (N=5,002) voter surveys. Party positions on Bitcoin are derived from our surveys of MPs and party representatives, cross-validated by party communication. Using issue yield theory, we find that weak electoral incentives, particularly due to age-related internal divisions, prevent parties from catering to privileged groups on Bitcoin issues. This suggests that a party system will not embrace elite interests, even on low-salience issues, under unfavorable public opinion alignments.

This study addresses the question what makes hate crime incidents newsworthy and which factors are conducive to such incidents being reported on. Relying on news value theory, we identify criteria (cultural proximity, conflict) that explain why some hate crimes make the news and why others do not. We use a dataset of police-registered hate crimes in the Netherlands in 2017 (N = 3379). This is the entire population of hate crimes that the police reported in the whole country. This allows us to disentangle dynamics of the news selection process and identify bias. We find that both target group and type of hate crime affect the newsworthiness: hate crimes with victims targeted due to religious motives (Islamophobia, anti-Semitism) are more likely to be covered; hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and ethnicity are less likely to pass the gates. Hate crimes that are more conflictual in nature (i.e., violent hate crimes, vandalism) are more likely to be covered too. These selection effects likely have important effects on public awareness and political reactions.

A positive correlation between exposure to terrorism news reports and fear of terrorism has been documented, but less is known about factors moderating this relationship. Our focus is mostly on identifying relevant moderators. We argue that individuals' habitual patterns in news consumption (frequency, type of outlet, genre) and personal experiences (prior victimization, living in a diverse neighborhood, residing in an urban area) are relevant in this regard. In a between-subjects experiment (2 groups: exposure to terror threat story vs. control story) in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden (N = 786) we exposed participants to a news story on terror threat. Effects on fear of terrorism were especially strong for citizens that often consume soft, popular and commercial forms of news and live in urban areas.

Political tolerance—the willingness to extend civil rights to political antagonists—is a key democratic norm. We argue that because voters with populist attitudes have an ambiguous relationship with democracy and keep a narrow definition of the people, they are more likely to be politically intolerant. We study the Netherlands, a less likely case to find political intolerance. Using data from a representative household panel survey ( n = 1999), we investigate the extent to which populist attitudes translate into general intolerant attitudes and specific intolerance toward political antagonists. Our analyses show that voters with stronger populist attitudes are less supportive of democratic norms, more intolerant of opposing views online, and of specific political opponents. However, they are not explicitly intolerant by limiting individual civil rights or supporting intolerant measures toward political antagonists. These findings show that even in a system engrained with compromise, populist citizens show signs of political intolerance.

Democratic systems need some degree of openness to new ideas and to new competitors. New parties depend on news media to survive. Which new parties receive news media coverage, and what kind of coverage do these parties receive? This article brings in the media into the literature of new parties. Based on two original datasets compiled for this study, the news media coverage of dozens of parties in a variety of offline and online news media sources since 1947 is analyzed to address the two research questions. In terms of visibility, new parties receive more attention when already represented in parliament and when mobilizing on the main axis of political contestation. In terms of framing, new parties are hardly ever trivialized, stigmatized, or criminalized. Compared to established parties, new parties are more trivialized, just as little criminalized, and even less stigmatized. Our findings put complaints about the media by new party leaders into perspective, and let political and media practitioners reflect on their practices, inform debates about interactions between news media and new voices. They may also open new lines of research about political transformations that we witness in Western democracies today.

AbstractThis study examined if and for whom prosecution of politicians for hate speech undermines support for the legal system and democracy. Three research designs were combined to investigate the case of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who was convicted for hate speech against minorities in 2016. First, an experiment showed that observing a guilty verdict decreased support among ‘assimilationists’ who oppose the multicultural society. This deterioration of support was found among the entire group of assimilationists, regardless of whether they voted for Wilders. Secondly, a quasi-experiment demonstrated that assimilationists who were interviewed after Wilders' conviction indicated less support than those who were interviewed before the verdict and compared to a pre-test. Thirdly, a nine-year panel study suggested that these effects accumulate into long-term discontent. This case therefore demonstrates that hate speech prosecution can damage the democratic system it is intended to defend.

Terror threat has been theorized to affect political attitudes. Most prior studies have focused exclusively on Islamist terror threat, while effects of right-wing extremist terrorism on voting behavior have been understudied. We argue that effects on the propensity to vote (PTV) for an anti-immigration party (AIP) depend on the type of threat and is moderated by right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and internal motivation to control prejudice (IMCP). Using a cross-country experiment in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (N = 1,187), we find that Islamist terror threat increases PTV for AIPs amongst voters high in RWA; similarly, right-wing extremist terror threat reduces PTV for AIPs amongst participants high in RWA. IMCP did not moderate the relationship between terror threat and PTV for an AIP.

The idea that journalists make use of framing is widespread. However, systematic studies of the role of frame sponsors—that is, nonmedia actors who advocate a certain frame package—in influencing the patterns in frame package use by journalists are limited. Which characteristics make frame sponsors successful in frame building, and why? In this study, we propose a new way of understanding the relationship between journalists and frame sponsors, by studying to what extent high authority and having a strong stake in an issue are important predictors of frame coverage, and whether a bidirectional relationship between frame sponsors and journalists can be discerned in frame building. We examine the two court cases against Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), for alleged hate speech (2009–2020). Based on a content analysis of media input, such as statements, social media posts, and press releases ( N = 220) of relevant frame sponsors as well as news stories about the court cases ( N = 691), we demonstrate that there is a reciprocal relationship between frame sponsors and journalists in frame building. Frame sponsors influence journalists in the use of frame packages, but framing in news reports also stimulates frame sponsors to communicate similar frame packages in the future. Actors with high levels of authority and a strong stake in the issue are more successful in getting their preferred frame packages across. By acknowledging the bidirectional relationship and expanding knowledge on who benefits most from this relationship, this study advances literature on frame building.

The emergence of anti-immigration parties in mature democracies has triggered various reactions. These reactions, including stigmatization of these parties and prosecution of their members for hate speech, may have unintended consequences. What are the effects of these responses on the electoral support for these parties? Using an experimental approach, we confront a sample representative of the Dutch electorate with one of six versions of a manipulated news video about a new anti-immigration party. We find that stigmatization of the party reduces the propensity to vote for that party, and even more so if it is mentioned that a prominent member is prosecuted for hate speech than if not. Either way, the effect is moderated by anti-immigrant attitude and mediated by the party's perceived legitimacy.

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.

Historical classifications of journalistic traditions are the backbone of comparative explanations for political news coverage. This study assesses the validity of the dominant media systems framework and proposes and tests a novel framework, which states that a history of authoritarianism affects today's coverage. To facilitate a clean cross-national comparison, we focus on the same person and measurement in 12 Western democracies, that is, the use of the pejorative terms "sexist," "racist," "dictator," and equivalents to describe Donald Trump. Our manually validated automated content analysis (2016-2018; N = 27,830) shows that content varies along with countries' media and authoritarian history: pejoration is more common in countries with a polarized pluralist media system and former authoritarian countries than elsewhere. Newspapers' ideology does not matter, irrespective of countries' level of political parallelism or experiences with authoritarianism. Combined, we provide new methodological and theoretical handles to further comparative communication research in Western democracies.

Conventional wisdom dictates that the more citizens lean towards either end of the ideological spectrum, the lower their support for democracy. The main model pitted against this "rigidity-of-the-extremes model" is the "rigidity-of-the-right model". This model assumes that rightist citizens are less supportive. This study proposes and empirically demonstrates the validity of an alternative model, which we call "the authoritarian legacy model". This model predicts that whether leftist or rightist citizens are less supportive of democracy depends on countries' experience with left- or right-authoritarianism. To evaluate its validity, we present a systematic comparative investigation of the relation between citizens' ideological and democratic beliefs, using European and World Values Survey data from 38 European countries (N =105,495; 1994-2008). In line with this model, our analyses demonstrate that democratic support is lowest among leftist citizens in former left-authoritarian countries and among rightist citizens in former right-authoritarian countries. We find that this relation persists even among generations that grew up after authoritarian rule. These findings suggest that traditional ideological rigidity models are unsuitable for the study of citizens' democratic beliefs.

Western democracies have witnessed gradual decline of voting according to socio-economic background factors. However, the emergence of elderly parties suggests increasing mobilization along generational lines, which would partly reverse this pattern. While religion and class voting have decreased, such new generational divide might make age, education and income salient (again). However, to what extent is support for these parties driven by such mobilization—rather than by a-political protest, or by politics as usual? Focusing on 50Plus in the Netherlands, the most successful current Western elderly party, we find evidence for mobilization on a new divide. Many older, less educated voters who feel poor vote for 50Plus, irrespective of their feelings of mere protest or their position on dominant policy issues. Furthermore, perceptions of 50Plus substantially vary with age and income combined. Our findings suggest that 50Plus heralds the emergence of a novel divide. To what extent this divide revitalizes socio-economic background factors in Western politics remains to be seen.

Prosecuting anti-immigration party leaders for hate speech is theorized to yield electoral ramifications. We assess to what extent these trials are mediatized and whether news visibility of hate speech prosecution affects levels of anti-immigration party support. We compare four Western European countries (Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands) for which aggregate-level media and public opinion data are combined. We find that hate speech trials were highly mediatized, and dominated the headlines for protracted periods. This short-term news attention drives general news visibility for anti-immigration party actors. Thus, news about hate speech prosecution of anti-immigration politicians creates a reinforcing spiral of attention by increasing the general newsworthiness of a political actor. The findings seem to point to the cautious conclusion that hate speech prosecution is either directly or indirectly related to increased electoral support. While in France and Germany, general news visibility of anti-immigration party actors is associated with higher levels of electoral support, in the Netherlands and Belgium, news about hate speech prosecution has a weak and direct positive relationship with anti-immigration party support. This finding yields implications for political communication strategies of parties by suggesting that hate speech prosecution does not undermine the electoral performance of anti-immigration parties. In fact, initiating legal actions yields unintended effects by granting these parties a media platform.

Fig. 3 was incorrectly published in the original publication of the article. Error bars of control condition have been corrected, and correct Fig. 3 is given below:

Nowadays, registered hate crimes are on the rise in many Western societies. What explains temporal variation in the incidence of hate crimes? Combining insights from the grievance model and the opportunity model, we study the role of three types of contextual factors: security (terrorism), media (news about terrorism and immigration), and political factors (speech by anti-immigration actors, hate speech prosecution, and high-profile anti-immigration victories). We apply time-series analysis to our original dataset of registered hate crimes in the Netherlands, 2015-2017 (N = 7,219). Findings indicate that terrorist attacks, (both print and online) news on refugees, immigration, and terrorism boost nonviolent hate crime. Similarly, news of the hate speech prosecution of Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders increases nonviolent crime as well. Tentative evidence points to a contagion effect of speech by anti-immigration actors. With regard to violent hate crime, only terrorist attacks had an effect. This effect was modest and only found in one of our models. Hence, the grievance and the opportunities model each partially explain nonviolent hate crime, although the security and media context seem most influential. Our findings help to identify the contextual factors contributing to a climate for hate and suggest that perceived threats play a key role.

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties? issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats ? who severely lost ? hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.