%0 Journal Article
%T How Populists Wage Opposition: Parliamentary Opposition Behaviour and Populism in Netherlands
%A Simon Otjes
%A Tom Louwerse
%J Political Studies
%@ 1467-9248
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0032321718774717
%X This article analyses how populist parties wage opposition in parliament. We conceptualise opposition behaviour in terms of two independent dimensions: scrutiny (monitoring and criticising government actions) and policy-making (participating in or directly influencing legislative production). In line with the conceptualisation of populism as an opposition to the ruling elite in name of ¡®the people¡¯, our hypothesis is that populist opposition parties are more likely to use scrutiny and less likely to use policy-making tools than non-populist opposition parties. We study the Netherlands between 1998 and 2017 as a typical example of a consensus democracy, where populist parties have a greater opportunity to win representation and use parliamentary tools (compared to majoritarian democracies). 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
%K opposition
%K parliament
%K populism
%K consensus democracy
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0032321718774717