Maurits J. Meijers

• PhD, MA, MSc
• Professor (Assistant) at Radboud University

Experimental research has shown that political parties often, but not always, suffer reputational costs when they change their policy positions. Yet, it is not clear who accepts and who rejects party policy change. Using newly collected observational data from five European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom),...

Research on policy shifts has found that repositioning can be costly as it affects candidates’ perceived honesty, reliability, and competence. It remains unclear, however, whether a politician’s gender affects perceptions of repositioning. Research on gender stereotypes has found that while male politicians are viewed as more competent, decisive, a...

Many citizens are sceptical of policies implemented to mitigate climate change. Existing research shows that citizens’ populist beliefs are significant determinants of climate scepticism. However, little is known about the underlying factors driving populist opposition to climate policies. To address this gap in the literature, this study develops...

In the ideational approach to populism, populism and pluralism do not go together. While evidence indeed suggests that populist politicians consider a politically pluralist parliament as an obstacle to the expression of the true people’s will in politics, it is however an open question whether ‘the people’, and especially those with high populist a...

Populism has become a pervasive concept in political science research. However, a central and basic question remains unanswered: which European parties are more populist than others? Despite the increasing wealth of studies on populism in parties, we lack data that measures populism in political parties in a valid and precise manner, that recognize...

While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has prima...

As scholars explore opportunities for democratic renewal, the potential of ballot structures to improve the quality of representation has been largely neglected. We argue that expressive ballots can improve the congruence of political preferences between voters and their vote choice and, subsequently, decrease parliamentary polarization. Recognizin...

The extent to which a government’s policies mirror the preferences of its citizens is often deemed a key feature of a representative democracy. While research on this topic has traditionally been done at the national level, scholars have also increasingly been examining the European Union (EU). This debate section takes stock of the research done i...

The European Union (EU) is an unlikely case for responsive policy-making. Yet, in recent years scholars have found that the EU’s overall decision-making output is correlated with the average preferences of the European citizens toward European integration. Despite recognizing the value of this systemic approach, we argue in this contribution that s...

Recent research has shown that mainstream political parties shift their positions on European integration in response to threats from niche parties. Whether or not this strategy affects the electoral fortunes of mainstream parties remains unclear, however. Drawing on both spatial and issue competition models of party competition, this study examine...

The governments of Hungary and Poland have been accused of sliding toward semi‐authoritarianism. Systematic analyses of the responses of political actors at the EU level to these instances of alleged democratic backsliding are scarce, however. This article therefore investigates the responses of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to the issu...

Verschiedene Fallstudien suggerieren, dass antieuropäische Parteien einen Einfluss auf die Positionierung etablierter Parteien zur europäischen Integration haben. Eine systematisch-vergleichende Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage, ob etablierte Parteien auf euroskeptische Parteien reagieren, hat es allerdings noch nicht gegeben. Daher prüft dieser Be...

With the lingering Euro crisis, personalized competition for the Commission presidency, and a surge of Eurosceptic parties, the 2014 European Parliament elections took place against an unknown level of European Union politicization. How does this changing context affect the supply side of party competition on European issues in EP election campaign...

This article examines whether the support for Eurosceptic challenger parties influences mainstream party position change on European integration in Western Europe. The key finding is that Eurosceptic challenger support is capable of influencing mainstream position shifts on European integration provided that, on average, EU issues are regarded as i...

In this paper it is analyzed whether the the euro-crisis has induced a change in the degree of Europeanization of national public spheres. It is argued that ‘mediatizing politics’ on TV is a prerequisite for the accountability structures of liberal democracies. Examining the degree of Europeanization of public broadcaster news in Germany and the Ne...