Research

Many empirical studies in the field of economics use survey measures of political ideology, intending to capture individuals’ trade-off between efficiency and equality. We examine the behavioural consistency of survey-measured left-right political ideology by conducting a distribution experiment in which decision-makers face a trade-off between allocating money equally or efficiently. We distinguish between decision-makers that receive the money to distribute as ‘manna-from-heaven’ and decision-makers that have earned the money to distribute in a real effort task. When decision makers receive money as ‘manna-from-heaven’, we find that self-reported ideology is not able to explain behaviour in the experiment. When money is earned in a real effort task, rather than given, behaviour is in line with self-reported ideology. We find that both left-wing and right-wing individuals behave more in line with their stated ideology. Individuals self-reporting as right-wing more often choose efficiency over equality relative to left-wing individuals when money is earned. 

We study whether and how identification with the nation state shapes voting behaviour. We argue that national identification is not unidimensional but consists of distinct archetypes reflecting different ways of identification with the nation. Using unique and representative survey data from the Netherlands, we identify three archetypes: one rooted in traditions and history; one grounded in civil liberties and religious freedom; and one characterized by indifference toward national identity characteristics. We propose that the archetypes structure issue salience and therefore influence turnout and party choice. Our findings show that the strength and type of national identification matter for voting behaviour across several elections. Tradition- and civic-oriented voters are more likely to turnout, while indifferent individuals are less likely to vote. The archetypes map onto distinct positions on anti-establishment, cultural and immigration issues. Overall, we show that the archetypes structure electoral behaviour and reflect competing normative understandings of the nation.

Climate change poses a collective action problem that requires not only policy interventions but also active citizen engagement. We explore how local public leadership can influence such engagement, focussing on two aspects of leadership: public action as 'leading-by-example' and individual public leadership. We conduct a pre-registered survey experiment in one of the largest municipalities in the Netherlands and measure citizens' willingness to act against climate change through an incentivised allocation decision. Based on a sample of over 6,000 citizens, we show that public action and individual public leadership significantly increase citizens’ willingness to act against climate change and positively affect beliefs about others’ climate actions. Our findings suggest that public action is particularly effective for individuals without strong prior beliefs. Unexpectedly, individual public leadership is most effective for individuals who are less concerned about climate change. Our findings highlight the potential of local public leadership to enhance the effectiveness of climate policy.

Identity cleavages increasingly shape political outcomes, including support for redistribution. National identity is particularly relevant in this regard, because it determines who is perceived as belonging to the in-group and out-group. If potential beneficiaries of redistribution are viewed as out-group members, support for redistribution may decline, even among individuals that would potentially benefit from redistribution themselves. We test this using a survey experiment among a representative sample of Dutch respondents. We include an incentivised dictator game and randomly varying the national identity characteristics of the recipient. At the same time, we allow for heterogeneity in the national identity conception of the decisionmaker. This enables us to examine whether the effect of national identity on redistributive preferences depends on how individuals demarcate ‘their’ in-group and ‘the’ out-group. While the national identity type of both the decisionmaker and the recipient affect distributional decisions, we find no evidence that decisionmakers allocate more to recipients they consider part of their in-group. Instead, decisionmakers that hold a more exclusionary view of national identity redistribute less overall, even if the beneficiary is part of the in-group. These findings reveal a trade-off between self-interest and identity concerns, with implications for the political sustainability of welfare states in polarised societies.

Recent budget cuts to "woke" foreign aid priorities in countries like the Netherlands and the U.S. raise the question whether these policy changes reflect citizens’ preferences or correspond to a political narrative. This project surveys over 11,000 people in four high-income, aid-giving countries to understand public opinion on foreign aid. Using an incentivized online survey experiment, it explores citizens' perceptions of foreign aid, identifies the causes citizens prioritize, and how this relates to support for policy. The findings offer insights into drivers of public support for aid and provide policymakers with evidence to better align aid decisions with citizens’ values.

We investigate whether and how partisan politics played a role in the Netherlands. To do so, we review existing literature and prepare descriptive statistics from recent datasets. We focus on two related questions: (i) Are there effects of partisan politics in the Netherlands in the past 60 years? (ii) Do developments in party and voter behavior influence the relevance of partisan influences for Dutch governance? As we find that there is only limited existing research on partisan politics in the Dutch context, we empirically explore the relationship between government ideology and typical, country-level partisan outcome variables. We find mixed evidence for partisan policymaking in the Netherlands. Some findings are in line with partisan theory, some are counter-indicative. Exploring the role of party and voter movements, we document a shifting political landscape in which the potential for traditional partisan influences has become smaller. 

We examine the effect of studying business on the beliefs and values of students and study the role of economics in influencing this effect. We observe significant differences between business students and students from other disciplines, among which economics, at the start of their first year. We also discover that some of these differences persist or are reinforced at the end of the year. Furthermore, we find changes in beliefs and values of business students that take only one year to manifest. Above all, while we observe that some values and beliefs of business students change over time, we observe no such changes for economics students. This suggests that the effect of studying business is not entirely driven by exposure to economics in business studies.

We re-examine the effect of prospects of upward mobility (POUM) on the support for redistribution. Unlike previous studies, we analyse this relation in an intragenerational context and consider the moderating effect of political ideology through which mobility expectations affect redistributive preferences. We find that the POUM effect is conditional on political preferences. That is, we find that only for right-wing individuals expected upward income mobility negatively affects support for redistribution. Left-wing individuals prefer redistribution, regardless of expected upward income movements.

We propose a novel measure of voter ideology and study the (socio-economic) determinants of political beliefs. We examine the dimensionality of contemporary voter ideology using survey data of a representative sample of Dutch citizens. Using factor-analyses, we identify and validate four relevant dimensions that capture (1) preferences for economic equality, (2) preferences for markets and efficiency, (3) preferences for personal and cultural freedom, and (4) nationalist, protectionist and populist preferences. We continue with a regression analysis on the determinants of multidimensional voter ideology and compare these to the determinants of the traditional left-right measure of ideology. We find that there is substantial heterogeneity in the determinants of political preferences. Moreover, using a one-dimensional left-right representation of voter ideology conceals most of this heterogeneity.

In this chapter, we study the role of political ideology in public choice research. Our first aim is to discuss how public choice researchers use ideology to study economic outcomes. We distinguish between studies on the microeconomic and the macroeconomic level, considering both voter and party/government ideology. Most studies within public choice regard ideology as a one-dimensional construct. That is, ideology is theorized and operationalized as a linear construct. However, the assumption of this one-dimensionality has also been criticized. Therefore, our second aim is to consider this criticism and challenge the conventional wisdom that political ideology is a one-dimensional construct.