Bertjan Verbeek

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Radboud University

Cambridge Core - American Studies - When Democracy Trumps Populism - edited by Kurt Weyland

Populism seems to be a well-established notion in public and academic debate alike. Nevertheless, several issues surrounding populism are still contested and thus merit closer attention. These contested issues encompass the extent to which populism is novel and ubiquitous; the scope of the phenomenon; the merits of the various definitions of populi...

The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis repositions the subfield of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to a central analytic location within the study of International Relations (IR). Over the last twenty years, IR has seen a cross-theoretical turn towards incorporating domestic politics, decision-making, agency, practices, and subjectivity—the s...

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the international dimensions of populism, by now a major political phenomenon around the world. This interest, however, has been confined largely to the state level, especially the influence of populism on foreign policy. In this Forum, we argue that it is important for analysis to move beyond t...

The results of the 2024 European elections for populist parties in the Netherlands are intimately related to the events in national Dutch politics since 2021. The relative success of the Party for Freedom (VVD) since 2023 has been related to its more moderate position on European integration and Islam. This change of tone was part of increasing the...

The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics presents a comprehensive longitudinal overview of the Dutch political system. It outlines the Dutch political system’s origins, historical development, key institutions, faults, processes, and key public policy dynamics. Old social cleavages of Dutch politics waned following the influence of long-term demograph...

The Russian-Ukrainian war that started on 24 February 2022 embarrassed several of Russia’s political friends in Europe. Until then, Russia had enjoyed the sympathy of quite some politicians in Europe, particularly of right-wing populists. In this chapter, we look at right-wing populist leaders in Italy and the Netherlands and investigate the extent...

Germany and the Netherlands have traditionally been supportive of European integration. As original signatories to the Treaty of Rome, both countries claim to have always been a strong pillar of the European project. In the relance européenne of the mid-1980s both countries did not shy away from proposing supranational solutions to the main challen...

The Suez Crisis of 1956 is a perfect case for crisis research in the domain of international relations: the events leading to an Israeli attack on Egypt and an Anglo-French military invasion in the Suez Canal area seriously endangered regional and global peace and security. It also had major long-lasting consequences, notably the end of British inf...

This volume presents three claims regarding the role of middle powers in the 21st Century: first, states aspiring to become or remain middle powers choose from three possible roles: to be a global middle power; to be a regional pivot; or to be a niche leader. Second, states seeking such roles need different mixes of hard and soft power sources. Thi...

This chapter discusses three possible types of middle powers in contemporary world politics: aspiring great powers, regional powers and niche middle powers.

This chapter discusses the tension between the role the Netherlands desires to play in international relations and the way its status is perceived by other states. In particular, it focuses on its attempts to become a so-called niche middle power.

Since the Maastricht Treaty (1993), subsidiarity has guided the political process surrounding the distribution of competences between administrative layers in the European Union (EU). The EU’s subsidiarity regime affects the politics and governance of the EU, because the notion of subsidiarity allows for continuous negotiation over its practical us...

This article investigates the impact of individual traits of political leaders of small states on their relative success in conducting foreign policy. Theoretically, it seeks to establish the conditions under which specific leadership traits are conducive to different styles in foreign policy. Empirically, it applies Leadership Trait Analysis in...

This chapter (written in Dutch) offers an analysis of the PVV's foreign policy preferences and its relative impact on Dutch foreign policy

In this chapter, we trace the impact of populist forces on the Italian party system. In doing so, we present the following claims: First, populism helped catalyse the collapse of the First Republic. Populism initially emerged with the Lega Nord (Northern League, LN). The LN presented itself as an unpolluted alternative to the corrupt political syst...

This article seeks to bridge the gap between the literature on international organisations (IO) and the field of crisis management (CM) by focusing on two themes: how crisis conditions lead organisations to centralise decision-making and how this subsequently affects an international organisation’s autonomy. We do this based on two dimensions inspi...

Combining insights from International Relations theory and Comparative Politics, this chapter discusses the effect of international politics on the political fortune of populist parties in the world as well as the impact of populist parties on their countries' foreign policies. It argues that at least four different types of populist parties can be...

Italy offers a unique opportunity to trace the reactions of political and societal actors to populists in government. We propose that it is necessary to examine not only how populism's opponents react, but also how fellow populists respond. Indeed, we observe in Italy, on the one hand, what we will call mutating populism and, on the other hand, a p...

Despite the populist radical right’s (PRR) popularity among political scientists, little scholarship has focused on its influence on foreign policy. This lack of study is due, in part, to a general lack of attention to the role of political parties in foreign policy, both in comparative politics and international relations (IR). This is unfortunate...

This chapter discusses the general context of analyses of leadership of international organizations in political science and the attempt to understand this leadership from the 1950s to the 1970s, when Haas, Cox, and Jacobson elaborated a research programme to see the internal dynamics of international organizations, also paying attention to leaders...

In times of crisis, international organizations (IOs) are often called upon for help. Such crises may have both domestic and transnational features. In 2012 the domestic revolt in Syria, which had started the previous year, escalated and the United Nations (UN) was asked to help work towards a permanent solution. When in 2011 the situation in Somal...

Theories of International Relations take various positions regarding the role of international law in international politics. This article identifies four different perspectives on that role by making two distinctions: first, between approaches that assume that states act on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis and approaches that assume that state...

This article (written in Dutch) investigates Belgian-Dutch diplomatic relations regarding the Scheldt estuary between 1918 and 1927 on the basis of Robert Putnam's Two Level Game. Focus is on Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Van Karnebeek who failed to guide a treaty regulating the Scheldt issue through parliament. Theoretically, the article expan...

Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have become more salient actors both in international and in national policymaking. The consequences of globalization have made national governments increasingly look upon IGOs to help them solve global, regional, and national policy problems. The more frequent delegation of tasks to IGOs has allowed members o...

This article analyses Dutch European and foreign policy-making since the end of the Cold War as a two-level game that changed because of alterations in the polarity and interaction density of the international system, intensified European integration and a greater involvement of domestic actors. On the basis of an analysis of four policy areas (sec...

Theories on the role of norms in international relations generally neglect the possibility that after their adoption a new battle over their precise meaning ensues, especially when a norm remains vague and illusive. Norm implementation is not only a matter of internalization and compliance, but also of redefinition. Building on insights from ration...

Crisis management has become a defining feature of contemporary governance. In times of crisis, communities and members of organizations expect their leaders to minimize the impact of the crisis at hand, while critics and bureaucratic competitors try to seize the moment to blame incumbent rulers and their policies. In this extreme environment, poli...

Subsidiarity has been introduced at the 1991 Maastricht conference as a principle of European governance. This article traces its development over the past 15 years and attempts to assess the effect of the subsidiarity principle on European governance. The impact of subsidiarity varies across time and across issue area. This is related to the fact...

Following the end of the Cold War and in the context of globalization, this book examines the extent to which member states dominate decision making in international organizations and whether non-state actors, for example non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations, are influential. The authors assess the new patterns of decision-...

Few researchers in international and comparative politics and public administration would disagree with the observation that, as a result of the spectacular rise of internationalization and globalization — ‘the spatial and temporal implosion of the globe’ (Ruggie, 1993: 168) — the nation state is in full retreat. For such people it is more or less...

Editor's Note: Unlike previous essay reviews in this journal, this review is a symposium with a number of different experts reflecting on governmental politics from a variety of perspectives. Eric Stern and Bertjan Verbeek both organized and have served as editors of the symposium. They wrote the introduction and conclusion to the piece. The variou...

Editor's Note: Unlike previous essay reviews in this journal, this review is a symposium with a number of different experts reflecting on governmental politics from a variety of perspectives. Eric Stern and Bertjan Verbeek both organized and have served as editors of the symposium. They wrote the introduction and conclusion to the piece. The variou...

Unlike previous essay reviews in this journal, this review is a symposium with a number of different experts reflecting on governmental politics from a variety of perspectives. Eric Stern and Bertjan Verbeek both organized and have served as editors of the symposium. They wrote the introduction and conclusion to the piece. The various authors repre...

The adoption of cognitive variables at the individual and group level serves in accounting for British decision-making during the 1956 Suez crisis, thus contradicting explanations which are framed in terms of rational actor models. An analysis in terms of cognitive variables, however, requires the formulation of a relevant empirical puzzle which se...

The demystification of erroneous fashions has been an important element in Susan Strange’s contribution to the study of international relations: her efforts to point out the dangers of uncritically accepting the theory of hegemonic leadership and, consequently, the apparent decline of American power are well known (Strange, 1987; 1990). The same is...