The Politicisation of Migration by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Freedom
ISBN: 9781317527565
Google: avCTBwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28022966
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Formal political institutions

First, the rules on formal political institutions largely determine which part of the political system is likely to be open or closed to certain issues. This approach builds on the earlier observation of Schattschneider (1957: 936) that ‘the function of institutions is to channel conflict but they do not treat all forms of conflict equally, just as football rules discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence’. This means that in some countries certain channels and their actors are more likely to be engaged in politicisation than in other countries. For instance, the UK media system, with its strong tabloid press, seems more open to popular, anti-immigrant voices than the German media system that is more strongly affiliated with established party positions (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Akkerman, 2011). Another obvious example is the existence of electoral thresholds; in countries with high thresholds (Germany, United Kingdom) it is more difficult to politicise issues via the establishment of new political parties. Existing parties and other political channels, such as social movements, are thus more likely to be relatively common venues for politicisation. We provide here a snapshot of the POS in the Netherlands keeping in mind that there has not been a substantial change in rules and formal political institutions over the time period studied.

Because of the very low electoral threshold (of just 0.67 per cent), the Dutch party system is very open to small new parties, which contributes to a plurality of parties gaining representation in parliament. When parties win seats in parliament, they qualify for governmental party funding (Lucardie et al., 2010). The effective number of parties in the national Parliament has fluctuated between 4.7 and 5.5. When it comes to non-party mobilisation, the traditional elite-controlled corporatist state strategy of ‘informal inclusion’ of challengers neither closes nor really opens up the system (Kriesi, 1995: 37).

Lijphart classifies democracies along two power-sharing dimensions: the executive–parties and the federal–unitary dimensions. Strongly ‘executive’ and very unitary countries could be considered relatively ‘closed’, whereas party-oriented and federal states may be understood to be more open (e.g. Kriesi, 1990). The Netherlands has comparatively low scores on the executive dimension, indicating strong parties and weak executives. The federal–unitary scores are close to zero, reflecting neither federal nor unitary state structures (Lijphart, 1999: 248, 312). This suggests that, in general, political parties provide access points to politics, and, to a lesser extent, some semi-federal aspects (especially local and not regional level authority) of the Dutch political process provide opportunities for politicisation. Systemic characteristics have remained stable over time and no major institutional change happened in the 15 years under study. As such, the open and stable institutional set-up has actually provided a favourable environment for politicisation of political issues in general, and cannot easily explain variation in or the absence of ‘politicised politics’ on integration and immigration. The second component of the POS, the party system, has been less steady over time, and it may provide a sensible explanation for the short-term politicisation of migration and integration issues.

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