Dutch municipal elections 1998-2018: more localism and fragmentation

Raymond Gradus (), Elbert Dijkgraaf and Tjerk Budding
Additional contact information
Tjerk Budding: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

No 20-022/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: Exploring the outcome of Dutch municipal elections between 1998 and 2018, this paper finds two dominant trends: increasing political fragmentation and localism. When explaining localism, the number of inhabitants, regional diversity and the election year dummies are significant. The last result gives some indication for a welfare hypothesis as a large decentralisation of Dutch social policy took place in 2007 and 2015. Some evidence is found for a merger effect of more or less equal municipalities. There is evidence as well that more fragmentation in the municipal council leads to more aldermen. The number of aldermen is also depending on the number of inhabitants and a merger effect in case of two municipalities.

Keywords: local elections; political fragmentation; localism; empirical research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H76 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/20022.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200022

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().