Parliaments: rules and behaviour

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The digital publication of parliamentary data has provided a great incentive for the study of parliamentary behaviour. My current work focuses mainly on the Netherlands, but also Belgium and Sweden as well as country-comparative analysis.

The main questions that I focus on are those of patterns of parliamentary (voting) behaviour, particularly with regard to party unity and the government-opposition division in parliament. In addition, I am interested in the concept of (positive and negative) parliamentarism as well as the government formation process.

parliaments
Tom Louwerse
Tom Louwerse
Associate Professor

Associate Professor in Political Science at Leiden University

Publications

Moving up or down: parliamentary activity and candidate selection
Although often theorised, empirical research concerning the relationship between parties’ candidate selection and MPs’ parliamentary …
PDF Code Dataset Project DOI
Parliaments in the Low Countries: Representing Divided Societies
Parliaments do not constitute the true epicentre of policymaking in traditional consociational democracies like Belgium or the …
PDF Project DOI
Do Anti-Elitist Parties Use Their Parliamentary Tools Differently?
Populist parties have become an important factor in opposition politics all over Europe. While we know a lot about the behaviour of …
PDF Project DOI Online Appendices
Opposition in times of crisis: COVID-19 in parliamentary debates
The COVID-19 pandemic presents an exceptional crisis situation not only for governments, but also for politicians in opposition. This …
PDF Code Dataset Project Project DOI Online Appendices
Derde keer op de evenwichtsbalk. Parlementair stemgedrag tijdens Rutte III
PDF Project Book website
The electoral cycle effect in parliamentary democracies
Does government party support decline in a monotonic fashion throughout the legislative cycle or do we observe a u-shaped “electoral cycle effect”? Moving beyond the study of midterm election results, this is the first comparative study to assess the cyclical pulse of government party support in parliamentary democracies based on voting intention polls from 171 cycles in 22 countries.
PDF Code Dataset Project DOI Supplementary Material
De PVV in het parlement
Bij de Tweede Kamerverkiezingen van november 2006 wist de Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) als enige rechtse nieuwkomer zetels te behalen. …
PDF Project Buy the book
How Populists Wage Opposition: Parliamentary Opposition Behaviour and Populism in Netherlands
This article analyses how populist parties wage opposition in parliament. Our findings indicate that populist opposition parties are particularly less likely to engage in policy-making behaviour and somewhat more likely to engage in scrutiny behaviour.
PDF Code Dataset Project DOI
The Netherlands: The reinvention of consensus democracy
We examine the development of opposition party behaviour in the Dutch Tweede Kamer between 1998 and 2015.
PDF Project View Chapter
Parliamentary Questions as Strategic Party Tools
This paper shifts the analysis of parliamentary oversight tools to the level of the political party, asking how political parties make use of written parliamentary questions.
PDF Code Dataset Project DOI
The Dutch Parliamentary Behaviour Dataset
The Dutch Parliamentary Behaviour Dataset contains a record of parliamentary (voting) behaviour in the Dutch Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber, House of Representatives) since 1945.
PDF Dataset Project DOI
Naar nieuwe verhoudingen tussen Kamer en kabinet?
We analyseren de relatie tussen parlement en regering aan de hand van interruptiepatronen in parlementaire debatten en een gedetailleerde lezing van geselecteerde Algemene Beschouwingen
PDF Project Order book
Reaching across the aisle: Explaining government–opposition voting in parliament
The divide between government and opposition is clearly visible in the way members of parliament vote, but the variation in …
PDF Project DOI Accepted Manuscript
Personalised parliamentary behaviour without electoral incentives: the case of the Netherlands
Most theories of legislative behaviour explain the behaviour of MPs through electoral incentives. However, they fail to explain variation in parliamentary activity when individual electoral incentives are largely absent.
Project DOI Accepted Manuscript
The Impact of Parliamentary Specialisation on Cosponsorship
This study seeks to establish the effect of parliamentary specialisation on cosponsorship of parliamentary proposals in parliamentary …
Project DOI Accepted Manuscript
Populists in Parliament: Comparing Left-Wing and Right-Wing Populism in the Netherlands
In parliament, populist parties express their positions almost every day through voting. There is great diversity among them, for …
Project DOI Accepted Manuscript
A Special Majority Cabinet? Supported Minority Governance and Parliamentary Behavior in the Netherlands
This article studies how the presence of the supported minority government Rutte-I affected patterns of legislative behavior. On the …
PDF Project DOI
Een middenkabinet of een minderheidskabinet?
PDF Project
Parliament without Government: The Belgian Parliament and the Government Formation Processes of 2007–2011
Parliamentary systems are characterised by strong links between the executive and the legislature. While the importance of …
Project DOI Accepted Manuscript
Een bijzonder meerderheidskabinet? Parlementair gedrag tijdens het kabinet Rutte-I
This article studies how the presence of the supported minority government Rutte-I affected patterns of legislative behaviour. On basis …
PDF Project

Events

Parlementaire data in politicologisch onderzoek
During the interal ‘Data month’ of the House of Representative of the Netherlands, we presented our work on the Dutch …
Apr 16, 2024 1:00 PM — 3:00 PM Tweede Kamer, Den Haag
Project Project
Parlementaire data in politicologisch onderzoek
During the internal ‘Data month’ of the House of Representatives, we presented how political scientists use parliamentary …
Apr 16, 2024 1:00 PM — 3:00 PM Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal
Project Project
Parlementaire oppositie: overal en nergens?
Op vrijdag 18 mei 2018 neemt prof. dr. R.B. (Rudy) Andeweg officieel afscheid van de Universiteit Leiden. Voorafgaand aan zijn afscheidsrede organiseert het Instituut Politieke Wetenschap een symposium. Als inleiders/sprekers van dit symposium, onder voorzitterschap van prof.
May 18, 2018 1:15 PM — 3:15 PM Leiden, the Netherlands
Project Project