Mathilde M van Ditmars | Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy) (original) (raw)

Peer-reviewed by Mathilde M van Ditmars

European party politics in times of crisis, 2019

The chapter studies the transformations of party competition in Austria, France, the Netherlands,... more The chapter studies the transformations of party competition in Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland since the onset of the Great Recession. In particular, we study the fate of the Radical Populist Right (RPR) in these four countries that are typical examples of party systems with a strong radical right. The economic crisis calls into question the electoral strategy that RPR parties adopt when campaigning in times of crises. We hypothesize that the Great Recession reinforces the RPR strategic move of combining anti-immigration stances with welfare chauvinism (“the new winning formula”), rather than economic liberalism (“the winning formula”), taking into account the economic fears of their electorate. Studying the political dynamics unleashed by the crisis with original media data, the chapter shows that in France and the Netherlands, the government parties’ widespread support for austerity measures coincided with the RPR moving from anti-immigration and pro-economic liberalism stances, to nativist welfare state protectionism. However, in Switzerland, we observe that the RPR remain strictly attached to the winning formula. Austria offers an interesting case, where the RPR embraced shortly (in one election) the welfare chauvinism position, but subsequently returned to its original position of anti-immigration and economic liberalism.

West European Politics, 2020

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of Marc... more This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.

Acta Politica, 2019

This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and nic... more This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and niche parties. It hypothesizes that mainstream parties represent their voters better on the socio-economic dimension and issues, while niche parties represent their voters better on the socio-cultural dimension and specific socio-cultural issues. To test these expectations, the congruence between Dutch local representatives of both mainstream and niche parties and their voters is measured using two surveys, one among Dutch voters and one conducted by the authors among a representative sample of municipal councillors. By analysing ‘many-to-many’ scores of congruence, which compare the distributions of the preferences of the representatives and their voters, it is concluded that mainstream parties do not consistently represent their voters better on specific issues or dimensions than niche parties, or vice versa. Instead, a mismatch between the preferences of representatives and their voters sometimes occurs particularly on issues that a party ‘owns’, because representatives tend to take more radical positions on these issues than their supporters.

Data by Mathilde M van Ditmars

Representative survey among local representatives in The Netherlands using a battery of DPES (Ned... more Representative survey among local representatives in The Netherlands using a battery of DPES (Nederlands Kiezersonderzoek, NKO) questions. N=796. Data collected November 2012-January 2013, using online survey tool, as part of research conducted at the University of Amsterdam.

Conference Papers by Mathilde M van Ditmars

This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in m... more This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in multi-party systems, using household data from Germany (G-SOEP) and Switzerland (SHP). Uniting classic political socialization theory and family dynamics and political gender gap literature, it studies what role gender plays in political socialization in the nuclear family. Not only are parent-child sex dyads taken into account, but also the siblings’ sex-mix composition. It is firstly hypothesized that a higher level of ideological transmission is found for same-sex parent-child dyads. Secondly, a next- older sister is expected to affect this transmission process and the ideology of her siblings directly, due to the gender gap in political ideology. Parents, children and siblings are included in the models, which are separately estimated for males and females. Although no next-older sister effect is found, the results of the study show that gender not only matters for political preferences, but also for political socialization, as differential effects are found for same-sex and different-sex dyads in terms of parental ideological influence.

The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-p... more The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-parent family. Yet, this traditional view of the family remains most often central to political socialization research. Therefore, this study investigates how parental separation affects the political socialization process, by comparing adults who did and did not experience parental separation. I expect that parental separation yields more left-wing ideologies and more favourable attitudes towards redistribution, respectively because of the parents breaking with social norms regarding family life, and the economic deprivation that is often caused by parental separation. Stronger effects are expected in countries where divorce is less common. Similarly, stronger effects are expected in older cohorts, and when parental separation took place during childhood. As a first step, pan-European multilevel analyses are performed using the European Values Study to investigate to what extent the political preferences of adult children with divorced parents differ from those without separated parents. Secondly, household data from Germany (G-SOEP) is used which allows using sibling fixed effect (FE) models in which siblings from the same family are compared, who differ in their age at parental separation. The results indicate indeed that adult children of separated parents hold more left-wing than those without. However, the effects for redistribution preferences are not so robust. Furthermore, the sibling FE models show no difference between siblings who experienced parental separation at different life stages. No support was found for the expectations regarding country and cohort differences.

This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in m... more This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in multi-party systems, using household data from Germany (G-SOEP). Uniting classic political socialization theory and family dynamics literature, it studies to what extent children take over the political left-right positions from their parents, and how the number of children in the family and their sex mix composition influence this process. It is firstly hypothesized that the size of the family negatively affects the level of transmission of ideology from parents to children. Secondly, it is expected that the share of sisters in the household affects this transmission process and the ideology of the other siblings in the family more directly, because of the gender gap in political ideology and the reinforcement of gender roles in the family. In order to control for the shared family environment, sibling models are estimated in which ideological positions of siblings are compared to those of their parents and of each other. Although the hypotheses regarding the effects of family size and the share of sisters are not confirmed by the results, the paper finds a direct effect of family size on ideology; and relevant gendered socialization effects when models are estimated separately for males and females.

Ideological congruence between representatives and the represented is an important facet of polit... more Ideological congruence between representatives and the represented is an important facet of political representation. In this paper we analyze the extent to which local representatives in the Netherlands share similar preferences to the public at large. We employ unique data on local councillors who were surveyed using the exact same questionnaire that is fielded to the electorate by the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study. This enables us to measure the overlap in preferences between local representatives and the public at large on a variety of specific political issues. We specifically test key hypotheses from the descriptive representation literature that states that people are best represented by representatives with whom they share common characteristics. We therefore analyze whether subgroups among the Dutch electorate are better represented by local politicians with the same level of education. Our results indeed point towards an ideological mismatch between elites and masses when their educational attainment diverges.

Articles by Mathilde M van Ditmars

West European Politics, 2019

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of Marc... more This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.

Papers by Mathilde M van Ditmars

This chapter analyzes the class base of support for left-wing parties in Western Europe, in light... more This chapter analyzes the class base of support for left-wing parties in Western Europe, in light of early political socialization and patterns of intergenerational social mobility. We ask to what extent contemporary left-wing party support is a legacy of political socialization in the traditional social democratic constituency class of industrial workers-and if this is a sustainable model for future social democratic support considering post-industrial occupational transformation and upgrading. By investigating support for the Social Democrats (SD) in contrast to green and left-libertarian, radical left, moderate and radical right parties, we identify the main competitors of the Social Democrats among classes traditionally associated with social democratic support. Analyses using the European Social Survey (2002-2010) indicate three main findings. First, the composition of the electorates indicates that Social Democrats rely more than other parties on support from individuals socialized in the industrial working class, while contemporary patterns show that one-third of the social democratic electorate now stems from the middle class and workers make up the largest part of the radical right electorate. Second, as expected, contemporary middle-class social democratic support is largely a legacy from socialization in the working class, especially among older generations in Northwestern Europe. Third, new legacies are being built along post-industrially realigned patterns, as offspring of socio-cultural professionals is relatively more likely to vote for the Left, but for the Green Left or Radical Left instead of the Social Democrats. However, the impact of socialization among younger generations appears to be weaker than the one identified for working-class origins in older generations. These results imply that relying on middle-class support alone is not a viable long-term strategy for the Social Democrats, given the seemingly unique impact of past industrial alignments that is unparalleled by other class-party linkages among younger generations.

Electoral studies, Aug 1, 2024

Frontiers in political science, Jun 16, 2023

The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-p... more The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-parent family, as new family forms are increasingly more common. Yet, the traditional view of the family has remained central to political socialization research. Therefore, we propose and empirically test a theoretical framework regarding the consequences of parental separation for processes of political socialization. While the impact of parental divorce has been studied extensively by sociologists, the political implications of this impactful life event have remained largely uncovered. We identify two mechanisms that we expect to predict more leftist political orientations in children of separated parents compared to those from intact families: experiences of economic deprivation and single-mother socialization. Multi-level analyses using the European Values Study () and two-generational analyses with the Swiss Household Panel (-) support our expectations, indicating that in case of parental separation o spring tends to hold more leftist political orientations, controlling for selection into parental separation and the intergenerational transmission of political ideology. We find empirical support for mechanisms of economic deprivation and single-mother socialization across our analyses. The implications of our findings are that in the family political socialization process, o spring's political orientations are not only influenced by their parents' ideology, but also by formative experiences that result from the family structure.

Early voting procedures boost voter participation and have therefore been suggested as institutio... more Early voting procedures boost voter participation and have therefore been suggested as institutional remedies for the problem of unequal turnout. Scholars have, however, raised concerns that making voting more convenient may actually lead to a less representative electorate. We contribute to this debate by leveraging large-scale Swedish registry data to analyze persons expecting a child around the time of the election. Our results indicate that politically engaged high-status voters are more likely to use the opportunity to vote in advance when faced with the risk of not being able to vote on election day. Given the large number of obstacles to election-day voting that individuals face throughout life, it is therefore conceivable that efforts to make voting more convenient and less costly for citizens may in the end lead to less representative electorates.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jun 27, 2019

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Aug 9, 2022

This article investigates how class of origin and intergenerational social mobility impact left-w... more This article investigates how class of origin and intergenerational social mobility impact left-wing party support among new and old core left-wing electorates in the context of post-industrial electoral realignment and occupational transformation. We investigate the remaining legacy of political socialization in class of origin across generations of voters in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. We demonstrate that part of the contemporary middle-class left-wing support is a legacy of socialization under industrial class-party alignments, as many individuals from working-class backgroundstraditional left-wing constituencieshave a different (post-industrial) class location than their parents. These enduring effects of production worker roots are weaker among younger generations and in more realigned contexts. Our findings imply that exclusively considering respondents' destination class underestimates the relevance of political socialization in class of origin, thereby overestimating electoral realignment. However, these past industrial alignments are currently unparalleled, as newer left-wing constituencies do not (yet) demonstrate similar legacies.

Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Nov 1, 2020

This study investigates the consequences of intergenerational social mobility for the transmissio... more This study investigates the consequences of intergenerational social mobility for the transmission of political ideology from parents to adult children, taking the parental ideology explicitly into account. Analyses using German and Swiss household data show that especially the vertically upwardly mobile are less influenced by the parental ideology. However, longitudinal analyses do not indicate causal effects, but a self-selection mechanism into social mobility. These findings have consequences for the perception of social mobility effects.

European Journal of Political Research, Mar 9, 2022

While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the fam... more While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the family socialization of citizens has mainly been studied in terms of partisan preferences rather than identification with these ideological blocks. Therefore, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of left‐right ideological positions in two European multiparty systems. To investigate expectations regarding gendered patterns in political socialization, ideological transmission between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons are analyzed, making use of German and Swiss household data. The results underline the relevance of the family in the transmission of political ideology in multiparty systems, showing high contemporary parent–child concordance in ideological positioning in line with classic work in political socialization. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the gender‐generation gap in political ideology is consequential for this process. Young women consistently place themselves on the left of men across all combinations of parental ideology, which indicates that the gender‐generation gap trumps other gendered patterns in intergenerational transmission. Consequently, daughters are less likely than sons to take over their parents’ rightist positions, while parent–son transmission is equally large on the left and the right. This also means that left‐leaning parents have a general advantage over right‐leaning parents in having their ideological identification reproduced by their daughters. The study highlights the importance of differentiating between the transmission of left‐ and right‐wing ideology in political socialization processes. Moreover, it demonstrates that the distinction by offspring gender is imperative when studying the intergenerational transmission of traits that display gender differences within and between parental and offspring generations. The findings point at the active role of especially female offspring in the political socialization process, as they seem to be more strongly impacted by influences outside the family that sustain generational processes of further gender realignment.

De trends in (on)tevredenheid, vertrouwen, maatschappelijke zorgen en politieke prioriteiten van ... more De trends in (on)tevredenheid, vertrouwen, maatschappelijke zorgen en politieke prioriteiten van de bevolking. In dit kwartaalbericht: Burgers somberder over eigen financiele toekomst Politiek vertrouwen stijgt tijdens kabinetsformatie Samenleven en economie hoog op de publieke agenda Tegenstelling tussen opleidingsniveaus leeft meer Nederlanders door crisis sterker op Nederland gericht De politiek is vaak te ingewikkeld voor niet-stemmers Meer informatie: Kwartaalberichten van het Continu Onderzoek Burgerperspectieven

European party politics in times of crisis, 2019

The chapter studies the transformations of party competition in Austria, France, the Netherlands,... more The chapter studies the transformations of party competition in Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland since the onset of the Great Recession. In particular, we study the fate of the Radical Populist Right (RPR) in these four countries that are typical examples of party systems with a strong radical right. The economic crisis calls into question the electoral strategy that RPR parties adopt when campaigning in times of crises. We hypothesize that the Great Recession reinforces the RPR strategic move of combining anti-immigration stances with welfare chauvinism (“the new winning formula”), rather than economic liberalism (“the winning formula”), taking into account the economic fears of their electorate. Studying the political dynamics unleashed by the crisis with original media data, the chapter shows that in France and the Netherlands, the government parties’ widespread support for austerity measures coincided with the RPR moving from anti-immigration and pro-economic liberalism stances, to nativist welfare state protectionism. However, in Switzerland, we observe that the RPR remain strictly attached to the winning formula. Austria offers an interesting case, where the RPR embraced shortly (in one election) the welfare chauvinism position, but subsequently returned to its original position of anti-immigration and economic liberalism.

West European Politics, 2020

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of Marc... more This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.

Acta Politica, 2019

This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and nic... more This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and niche parties. It hypothesizes that mainstream parties represent their voters better on the socio-economic dimension and issues, while niche parties represent their voters better on the socio-cultural dimension and specific socio-cultural issues. To test these expectations, the congruence between Dutch local representatives of both mainstream and niche parties and their voters is measured using two surveys, one among Dutch voters and one conducted by the authors among a representative sample of municipal councillors. By analysing ‘many-to-many’ scores of congruence, which compare the distributions of the preferences of the representatives and their voters, it is concluded that mainstream parties do not consistently represent their voters better on specific issues or dimensions than niche parties, or vice versa. Instead, a mismatch between the preferences of representatives and their voters sometimes occurs particularly on issues that a party ‘owns’, because representatives tend to take more radical positions on these issues than their supporters.

Representative survey among local representatives in The Netherlands using a battery of DPES (Ned... more Representative survey among local representatives in The Netherlands using a battery of DPES (Nederlands Kiezersonderzoek, NKO) questions. N=796. Data collected November 2012-January 2013, using online survey tool, as part of research conducted at the University of Amsterdam.

This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in m... more This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in multi-party systems, using household data from Germany (G-SOEP) and Switzerland (SHP). Uniting classic political socialization theory and family dynamics and political gender gap literature, it studies what role gender plays in political socialization in the nuclear family. Not only are parent-child sex dyads taken into account, but also the siblings’ sex-mix composition. It is firstly hypothesized that a higher level of ideological transmission is found for same-sex parent-child dyads. Secondly, a next- older sister is expected to affect this transmission process and the ideology of her siblings directly, due to the gender gap in political ideology. Parents, children and siblings are included in the models, which are separately estimated for males and females. Although no next-older sister effect is found, the results of the study show that gender not only matters for political preferences, but also for political socialization, as differential effects are found for same-sex and different-sex dyads in terms of parental ideological influence.

The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-p... more The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-parent family. Yet, this traditional view of the family remains most often central to political socialization research. Therefore, this study investigates how parental separation affects the political socialization process, by comparing adults who did and did not experience parental separation. I expect that parental separation yields more left-wing ideologies and more favourable attitudes towards redistribution, respectively because of the parents breaking with social norms regarding family life, and the economic deprivation that is often caused by parental separation. Stronger effects are expected in countries where divorce is less common. Similarly, stronger effects are expected in older cohorts, and when parental separation took place during childhood. As a first step, pan-European multilevel analyses are performed using the European Values Study to investigate to what extent the political preferences of adult children with divorced parents differ from those without separated parents. Secondly, household data from Germany (G-SOEP) is used which allows using sibling fixed effect (FE) models in which siblings from the same family are compared, who differ in their age at parental separation. The results indicate indeed that adult children of separated parents hold more left-wing than those without. However, the effects for redistribution preferences are not so robust. Furthermore, the sibling FE models show no difference between siblings who experienced parental separation at different life stages. No support was found for the expectations regarding country and cohort differences.

This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in m... more This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of political ideology in families in multi-party systems, using household data from Germany (G-SOEP). Uniting classic political socialization theory and family dynamics literature, it studies to what extent children take over the political left-right positions from their parents, and how the number of children in the family and their sex mix composition influence this process. It is firstly hypothesized that the size of the family negatively affects the level of transmission of ideology from parents to children. Secondly, it is expected that the share of sisters in the household affects this transmission process and the ideology of the other siblings in the family more directly, because of the gender gap in political ideology and the reinforcement of gender roles in the family. In order to control for the shared family environment, sibling models are estimated in which ideological positions of siblings are compared to those of their parents and of each other. Although the hypotheses regarding the effects of family size and the share of sisters are not confirmed by the results, the paper finds a direct effect of family size on ideology; and relevant gendered socialization effects when models are estimated separately for males and females.

Ideological congruence between representatives and the represented is an important facet of polit... more Ideological congruence between representatives and the represented is an important facet of political representation. In this paper we analyze the extent to which local representatives in the Netherlands share similar preferences to the public at large. We employ unique data on local councillors who were surveyed using the exact same questionnaire that is fielded to the electorate by the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study. This enables us to measure the overlap in preferences between local representatives and the public at large on a variety of specific political issues. We specifically test key hypotheses from the descriptive representation literature that states that people are best represented by representatives with whom they share common characteristics. We therefore analyze whether subgroups among the Dutch electorate are better represented by local politicians with the same level of education. Our results indeed point towards an ideological mismatch between elites and masses when their educational attainment diverges.

West European Politics, 2019

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of Marc... more This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.

This chapter analyzes the class base of support for left-wing parties in Western Europe, in light... more This chapter analyzes the class base of support for left-wing parties in Western Europe, in light of early political socialization and patterns of intergenerational social mobility. We ask to what extent contemporary left-wing party support is a legacy of political socialization in the traditional social democratic constituency class of industrial workers-and if this is a sustainable model for future social democratic support considering post-industrial occupational transformation and upgrading. By investigating support for the Social Democrats (SD) in contrast to green and left-libertarian, radical left, moderate and radical right parties, we identify the main competitors of the Social Democrats among classes traditionally associated with social democratic support. Analyses using the European Social Survey (2002-2010) indicate three main findings. First, the composition of the electorates indicates that Social Democrats rely more than other parties on support from individuals socialized in the industrial working class, while contemporary patterns show that one-third of the social democratic electorate now stems from the middle class and workers make up the largest part of the radical right electorate. Second, as expected, contemporary middle-class social democratic support is largely a legacy from socialization in the working class, especially among older generations in Northwestern Europe. Third, new legacies are being built along post-industrially realigned patterns, as offspring of socio-cultural professionals is relatively more likely to vote for the Left, but for the Green Left or Radical Left instead of the Social Democrats. However, the impact of socialization among younger generations appears to be weaker than the one identified for working-class origins in older generations. These results imply that relying on middle-class support alone is not a viable long-term strategy for the Social Democrats, given the seemingly unique impact of past industrial alignments that is unparalleled by other class-party linkages among younger generations.

Electoral studies, Aug 1, 2024

Frontiers in political science, Jun 16, 2023

The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-p... more The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-parent family, as new family forms are increasingly more common. Yet, the traditional view of the family has remained central to political socialization research. Therefore, we propose and empirically test a theoretical framework regarding the consequences of parental separation for processes of political socialization. While the impact of parental divorce has been studied extensively by sociologists, the political implications of this impactful life event have remained largely uncovered. We identify two mechanisms that we expect to predict more leftist political orientations in children of separated parents compared to those from intact families: experiences of economic deprivation and single-mother socialization. Multi-level analyses using the European Values Study () and two-generational analyses with the Swiss Household Panel (-) support our expectations, indicating that in case of parental separation o spring tends to hold more leftist political orientations, controlling for selection into parental separation and the intergenerational transmission of political ideology. We find empirical support for mechanisms of economic deprivation and single-mother socialization across our analyses. The implications of our findings are that in the family political socialization process, o spring's political orientations are not only influenced by their parents' ideology, but also by formative experiences that result from the family structure.

Early voting procedures boost voter participation and have therefore been suggested as institutio... more Early voting procedures boost voter participation and have therefore been suggested as institutional remedies for the problem of unequal turnout. Scholars have, however, raised concerns that making voting more convenient may actually lead to a less representative electorate. We contribute to this debate by leveraging large-scale Swedish registry data to analyze persons expecting a child around the time of the election. Our results indicate that politically engaged high-status voters are more likely to use the opportunity to vote in advance when faced with the risk of not being able to vote on election day. Given the large number of obstacles to election-day voting that individuals face throughout life, it is therefore conceivable that efforts to make voting more convenient and less costly for citizens may in the end lead to less representative electorates.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jun 27, 2019

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Aug 9, 2022

This article investigates how class of origin and intergenerational social mobility impact left-w... more This article investigates how class of origin and intergenerational social mobility impact left-wing party support among new and old core left-wing electorates in the context of post-industrial electoral realignment and occupational transformation. We investigate the remaining legacy of political socialization in class of origin across generations of voters in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. We demonstrate that part of the contemporary middle-class left-wing support is a legacy of socialization under industrial class-party alignments, as many individuals from working-class backgroundstraditional left-wing constituencieshave a different (post-industrial) class location than their parents. These enduring effects of production worker roots are weaker among younger generations and in more realigned contexts. Our findings imply that exclusively considering respondents' destination class underestimates the relevance of political socialization in class of origin, thereby overestimating electoral realignment. However, these past industrial alignments are currently unparalleled, as newer left-wing constituencies do not (yet) demonstrate similar legacies.

Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Nov 1, 2020

This study investigates the consequences of intergenerational social mobility for the transmissio... more This study investigates the consequences of intergenerational social mobility for the transmission of political ideology from parents to adult children, taking the parental ideology explicitly into account. Analyses using German and Swiss household data show that especially the vertically upwardly mobile are less influenced by the parental ideology. However, longitudinal analyses do not indicate causal effects, but a self-selection mechanism into social mobility. These findings have consequences for the perception of social mobility effects.

European Journal of Political Research, Mar 9, 2022

While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the fam... more While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the family socialization of citizens has mainly been studied in terms of partisan preferences rather than identification with these ideological blocks. Therefore, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of left‐right ideological positions in two European multiparty systems. To investigate expectations regarding gendered patterns in political socialization, ideological transmission between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons are analyzed, making use of German and Swiss household data. The results underline the relevance of the family in the transmission of political ideology in multiparty systems, showing high contemporary parent–child concordance in ideological positioning in line with classic work in political socialization. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the gender‐generation gap in political ideology is consequential for this process. Young women consistently place themselves on the left of men across all combinations of parental ideology, which indicates that the gender‐generation gap trumps other gendered patterns in intergenerational transmission. Consequently, daughters are less likely than sons to take over their parents’ rightist positions, while parent–son transmission is equally large on the left and the right. This also means that left‐leaning parents have a general advantage over right‐leaning parents in having their ideological identification reproduced by their daughters. The study highlights the importance of differentiating between the transmission of left‐ and right‐wing ideology in political socialization processes. Moreover, it demonstrates that the distinction by offspring gender is imperative when studying the intergenerational transmission of traits that display gender differences within and between parental and offspring generations. The findings point at the active role of especially female offspring in the political socialization process, as they seem to be more strongly impacted by influences outside the family that sustain generational processes of further gender realignment.

De trends in (on)tevredenheid, vertrouwen, maatschappelijke zorgen en politieke prioriteiten van ... more De trends in (on)tevredenheid, vertrouwen, maatschappelijke zorgen en politieke prioriteiten van de bevolking. In dit kwartaalbericht: Burgers somberder over eigen financiele toekomst Politiek vertrouwen stijgt tijdens kabinetsformatie Samenleven en economie hoog op de publieke agenda Tegenstelling tussen opleidingsniveaus leeft meer Nederlanders door crisis sterker op Nederland gericht De politiek is vaak te ingewikkeld voor niet-stemmers Meer informatie: Kwartaalberichten van het Continu Onderzoek Burgerperspectieven

The enduring influence of the parental home in the development and transmission of political ideo... more The enduring influence of the parental home in the development and transmission of political ideology Mathilde M. van Ditmars Ph.D. thesis defence on

Acta Politica, May 22, 2018

This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and nic... more This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and niche parties. It hypothesizes that mainstream parties represent their voters better on the socioeconomic dimension and issues, while niche parties represent their voters better on the socio-cultural dimension and specific socio-cultural issues. To test these expectations, the congruence between Dutch local representatives of both mainstream and niche parties and their voters is measured using two surveys, one among Dutch voters and one conducted by the authors among a representative sample of municipal councillors. By analysing 'many-tomany' scores of congruence, which compare the distributions of the preferences of the representatives and their voters, it is concluded that mainstream parties do not consistently represent their voters better on specific issues or dimensions than niche parties, or vice versa. Instead, a mismatch between the preferences of representatives and their voters sometimes occurs particularly on issues that a party 'owns', because representatives tend to take more radical positions on these issues than their supporters.

Politics and the Life Sciences

This article uses a behavioral genetics approach to study gender differences in expressed politic... more This article uses a behavioral genetics approach to study gender differences in expressed political interest, applying the enriched environment hypothesis to gendered political socialization. As girls are less stimulated to develop an interest in politics than boys, we theorize that these differences in the socialization environment reduce the expression of girls’ genetic predispositions compared to boys’, leading to a gender gap in the heritability of this trait. Analyses using data on German twins (11–25 years) demonstrate relevant differences by gender and age in heritability estimates. While differences in political interest between boys are largely explained by genes, this is less the case for girls, as they have considerably higher shared environment estimates. Our results imply that gender differences in expressed political interest are sustained by both genetic variation and environmental influences (such as socialization), as well as the interaction between the two.

Frontiers in Political Science

The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-p... more The increase in divorce rates over the past decades challenges the traditional image of the two-parent family, as new family forms are increasingly more common. Yet, the traditional view of the family has remained central to political socialization research. Therefore, we propose and empirically test a theoretical framework regarding the consequences of parental separation for processes of political socialization. While the impact of parental divorce has been studied extensively by sociologists, the political implications of this impactful life event have remained largely uncovered. We identify two mechanisms that we expect to predict more leftist political orientations in children of separated parents compared to those from intact families: experiences of economic deprivation and single-mother socialization. Multi-level analyses using the European Values Study (2008) and two-generational analyses with the Swiss Household Panel (1999–2020) support our expectations, indicating that i...

British Journal of Political Science

This article investigates how class of origin and intergenerational social mobility impact left-w... more This article investigates how class of origin and intergenerational social mobility impact left-wing party support among new and old core left-wing electorates in the context of post-industrial electoral realignment and occupational transformation. We investigate the remaining legacy of political socialization in class of origin across generations of voters in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. We demonstrate that part of the contemporary middle-class left-wing support is a legacy of socialization under industrial class–party alignments, as many individuals from working-class backgrounds – traditional left-wing constituencies – have a different (post-industrial) class location than their parents. These enduring effects of production worker roots are weaker among younger generations and in more realigned contexts. Our findings imply that exclusively considering respondents' destination class underestimates the relevance of political socialization in class of origin, thereby overest...

Representative survey among local representatives in The Netherlands using a battery of DPES (Ned... more Representative survey among local representatives in The Netherlands using a battery of DPES (Nederlands Kiezersonderzoek, NKO) questions. N=796. Data collected November 2012-January 2013, using online survey tool, as part of research conducted at the University of Amsterdam.

European Journal of Political Research, 2022

European Party Politics in Times of Crisis, 2019

West European Politics, 2019