Securitisation in Electoral Campaigns

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Securitisation in Electoral Campaigns

An analysis of the usage of securitisation, and in particular the topics

securitised, in the 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections.

Master Thesis

Rutger Zomerdijk

S1914219

Supervisor: Dr. J. Matthys

Second reader: Dr. S.L. Kuipers

Leiden University

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

MSc Crisis and Security Management

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Abstract

The securitisation theory coined by the Copenhagen School of security studies has created waves in the field of security studies by stating no such thing is inherently a security problem but everything can be a security problem. The theory, interesting as it is, has seen few

empirical uses. The aim of this research is to see if securitisation is a viable theory to apply to elections in order to learn more about the way issues are framed in electoral campaigns. The research focussed on the 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections where a total of six cases were researched. By using data from party manifesto’s, frontrunner debates and frontrunner interviews the research tries to find out whether the party characteristics of inclination to use populist rhetoric and the relative position on the political Right-Left spectrum are of

influence on the topics securitised. Data analysis showed that while the inclination of a party to use populist rhetoric may not have an effect on the topics securitised, the relative position of a party on the political Right-Left spectrum might have. It would appear that right-wing parties are more inclined to use securitisation and the topics securitised deal with foreign influence and more specifically the (radical) Islam. These results show that further research of the application of securitisation theory in elections is interesting enough to consider.

My gratitude goes out to my thesis supervisor Dr. Joery Matthys for the kindness, patience and insight he showed guiding me through this process.

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4.3. VVD ... 31 4.3.1. Case introduction ... 31 4.3.2. Populism... 32 4.3.3. Securitisation ... 33 4.4. PVV ... 39 4.4.1. Case introduction ... 39 4.4.2. Populism... 39 4.4.3. Securitisation ... 40 4.5. D66 ... 44 4.5.1. Case introduction ... 44 4.5.2. Populism... 44 4.5.3. Securitisation ... 46 4.6. PvdA ... 53 4.6.1. Case introduction ... 53 4.6.2. Populism... 54 4.6.3. Securitisation ... 55 4.7. SP ... 62 4.7.1. Case introduction ... 62 4.7.2. Populism... 62 4.7.3. Securitisation ... 64 4.8. CDA ... 71 4.8.1. Case introduction ... 71 4.8.2. Populism... 72 4.8.3. Securitisation ... 73

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4.9. Political Right-Left spectrum scores ... 80

4.10. Summary ... 82

5. Conclusion and Recommendation ... 85

5.1. Conclusion ... 85

5.2. Recommendations ... 86

6. Bibliography ... Error! Bookmark not defined. Appendix A - Coding scheme Populism ... 90

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1. Introduction

1.1. Problem outline

The theory of Securitisation as coined by the Copenhagen School tries to enable the field of security studies to move on from the cold war. It sees ‘security’ not as a well-defined concept but as a speech act. Everything can be security when it is securitised. The theory is well discussed in the field of security studies but not very well used. Although the empirical usage is lacking, the theory is far from obsolete. Currently we live in times of political turmoil, the status quo has been defied. A billionaire real estate mogul became president of the United States on a campaign riddled with controversies and misinformation. The UK voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, the first country that enacts the procedure to leave this economic bloc. In the Netherlands, the PVV became the second biggest party in the Dutch Parliamentary Elections with a manifesto consisting of 1 page with no concrete plans. What connects these movements is the use of populist rhetoric but is that really al there is to it? As Rooduijn proved, the populist zeitgeist does not exist but what do these movements use that make them so successful? Here the theory of securitisation can be useful. When an issue has been successfully securitised, it enables the caster to use extraordinary measures. The threat must be dealt with, any means necessary. It might be that these movements cast issues as security issues that traditionally do not seem as security issues for electoral gain.

In this thesis the first step will be taken for the usage of securitisation theory in elections. The research tries to find out if party characteristics are of influence of the topics that are securitised in the 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections. Party characteristics consists of two dimensions, the relative position of a party on the political Right-Left (RILE) spectrum and whether the party employs populist rhetoric.

1.2. Research Question

What political party characteristics have an effect on the securitisation of topics by Dutch political parties in the 2017 Parliamentary elections?

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1.3. Relevance

1.3.1. Social relevance

The social relevance is twofold. It is relevant for actors that participate in the political arena and it is relevant for the electorate. For the political arena it is useful to know what securitisation is, how it can be used and what the effects are. It can be used as a tool or avoided if it is something a party does not want to use.

For the electorate it is useful to know the tactics the political arena uses to persuade a voter to vote for them. In an ideal situation a voter knows all the facts and bases their decision on these facts. This does not have to be a rational decision, it can be emotional as well as long as it is not based on lies and trickery. Since securitisation relies heavily on a person’s feeling of security, it can be used to ‘scare’ people into voting.

The other level is to create awareness for the ‘ordinary citizen’. If it is known that politicians might securitise topics to gain votes but while doing so play into fear, the public can respond in kind if they are aware.

1.3.2. Scientific relevance and knowledge gap

Securitisation as a theory has been discussed since it was first coined by members of the Copenhagen School (Buzan, Wæver, & De Wilde, 1998). Some rejected the theory as it opened the field of security studies to broaden, some were critical on the theory of security as a ‘mere’ speech act (Stritzel, 2007) since it would oversimplify the issue. Whether scholars agreed or not, the securitisation theory was highly discussed. It was, however, not implemented very often. In some studies, such as Abrahamsen’s study on Tony Blair’s Africa Policy (Abrahamsen, 2005) and Karyotis and Patrikios (2010) study on securitisation and immigration it was used but it was seen as a policy tool. Vultee (2010a), in his dissertation, tried to investigate the effects on media framing from securitisation. Although securitisation has been used in empirical research, it has not been applied to elections. This research tries to open the door for this application of securitisation by seeing if it is used in electoral campaigns and if party characteristics are of influence on the extent and topics it is used on.

The scientific relevance is by enlarging the securitisation literature and by broadening its use. Securitisation is not applied much empirically and has not been applied in electoral research.

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1.4. Reading guide

The goal of this research is to see whether Securitisation happens in the political arena, more specifically the Dutch 2017 parliamentary elections, and if it is influenced by certain party characteristics. In order to try and prove this the framework for the research has to be build. This happens in Chapter 2 were the theory of securitisation and the party characteristics are explained. In chapter 3, the methodology of the research will be tackled. Topics such as the research design, data collection and case selection will be covered in this chapter. Chapter 4 is the chapter were the data will be analysed. Firstly, the Dutch electoral system will be explained. Secondly, the cases will be shortly introduced and the data for all variables will be presented sorted per party. At the end of the chapter a summary of the data will be presented. In the final chapter, chapter 5, the conclusions will be drawn from the previous chapter. It is the chapter were the research question will be answered as well as recommendations for further research.

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2. Theoretical framework

The theoretical framework of this thesis will entail the theory of securitisation as a dependent variable to the independent variables of Populism and Place on the political Right-Left spectrum. This chapter will start with what securitisation theory is and where it came from will be mentioned followed by what populism means in this study and continued with what the political Right-Left spectrum is and how it will be used. After this, the framework will be outlined.

2.1. Securitisation

When talking about security, it is important to specify what one means with ‘security’. Security, according to Buzan(1984), is a contested concept which means that scholars do not agree on a single definition of what ‘security’ means. When one talks about ‘security’, one has to answer certain questions about what ‘security’ means according to them so the readers knows what is meant with ‘security’. Williams (2012), in his introduction to security studies, names four questions that have to be answered namely:

- What is security?

- Whose security are we talking about? - What counts as a security issue? - How can security be achieved?

The answers to these questions are the framework for security studies and throughout history, the answers to these questions have changed.

During the cold war, security studies were primarily focussed on the tension between east and west, the USSR and the USA. Security was for the nation-state and it had to be secured from the other nation-state. Primarily, the USA and its allies had to be protected from the USSR and its allies and vice versa. How security could be achieved was up for discussion. According to the COT (2007), there were 4 major notions about how security could be achieved namely: balance of power, bipolar world, containment and deterrence. Although these 4 notions were different answers to how security could be achieved, they agreed on what security was and whose security was the objective.

With the end of the cold war and one part of this bipolar world retreating as a superpower, the field of security studies was stunned. The abrupt end of the cold war had left policymakers and scholars doubting their current framework which did not predict this sudden event (COT Institute for Safety & Management, 2007). The answers scholars used to the question did not

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9 predict something and some started to doubt them. Although scholars such as Buzan (1983) argued for a broadening of security studies before the cold war ended, the sudden change of worldview opened up the field for discussion about broadening, or changing the answers to the questions (COT Institute for Safety & Management, 2007). But, as is tradition with change, there are opponents and proponents to said change. The questions had not changed but the field was arguing about how to answer them.

Opponents of the broadening of the field stood behind the neorealist conceptions of security. Neorealists, just as realists, study states in their struggle for survival in anarchical world. The only thing that differs between states is the capabilities they possess and thus states seek capabilities to protect themselves from others. The neorealists believed in their answers and still believed they were on the right track. Stephen Walt is one of them, he argued that the scientific discipline of security studies had, or was close to, discovering the ‘laws’ that govern the realm of security (Walt, 1991). According to Walt (1991), the main focus of security studies is the phenomenon of war and he argues that the prescription of non-military matters that can threaten national security expands the field of security studies excessively and that: "Defining the field in this way would destroy its intellectual coherence and make it more difficult to devise solutions to any of these important problems”(Walt, 1991, p. 213).

Proponents for the broadening of security studies argue: “for a ‘broadening’ of the security agenda to include other issues in addition to military issues and/or for ‘extending’ it in order to include other so-called referent objects for security in addition to the state”(Stamnes, 2004, p. 163). Focussing security only on states and war when other issues such as the environmental degradation and the consequences of this can be far more lethal and chaotic not only for states but individuals as well (Krause & Williams, 1996) seems lacking.

In the 90’s when the debate about the future direction of security studies was still ongoing, the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1998) came with a compromise in the form of the Securitisation Theory. For them, security was the alleviation of an existential threat to a referent object (Buzan et al., 1998). The special nature of threats against our security require extraordinary measures involving security actors to handle them and the framing of an issue as a security issue legitimizes the use of these extraordinary means (Wæver, 1993). They came to the conclusion that security is a speech act. This means that security as a concept is not observable nor does it have a clearly defined conceptualization, something is a security issue when it has been cast, or evoked, as a security issue. Security takes politics beyond the established rules and frames it as a special kind of politics or above politics, Securitisation can be seen as a more extreme variant of politicization (Buzan et al., 1998). With this definition,

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10 any issue can be placed on a spectrum from non-politicized (an issue the state does not deal with) through politicized (an issue that is part of public policy) ending at securitised(issue is seen as existential threat requiring emergency action involving security actors and justifying actions outside of normal bounds, extraordinary measures) (Buzan et al., 1998). The placement of issues on this spectrum is open, depending on circumstances, any issue can take any place on the spectrum. With this approach, security studies does not research a certain policy area or field but the usage of the speech act that is security (Buzan et al., 1998). This theory does not want to answer the questions about security, it investigates the answers formulated by others. The Securitisation theory is just that, a theory. The framework offered by the Copenhagen school is original and compromises between the traditional security studies and the critical security studies by broadening the field of security studies with threats other than military but keeping the primary focus on the nation state (Vultee, 2010a). But the theory itself is not applied by the Copenhagen school. Fred Vultee (2010a), in his dissertation, applies the Securitisation theory to media framing to see whether Securitisation has an effect on the success of framing. He identifies two conditions for when an issue is securitised, it has to be an existential threat and it has to require emergency action and extraordinary measures to alleviate this threat. When these conditions are met, an attempt has been made to securitise an issue. This attempt can only be successful when a significant part of the audience accepts it (Vultee, 2010b). The existential threat has to be to the nation but the ‘nation’ is more than its borders and armed forces as Vultee states: “The ability to invoke security thus involves a shared understanding of the need for extraordinary measures and, more importantly, a shared sense of peril to the ‘‘nation’’: Not just its borders or armed forces but its institutions and its sense of self”(Vultee, 2010a, p. 11). Security still affects the nation, but the idea of what the nation is, is expanded to include all facets of the nation; its culture, society, traditions, wealth etc. Vultee conceptualizes Securitisation as follows: “When an issue has been securitised, a political actor has cast it as an existential threat*an imminent peril to the physical, cultural, or social health of the community*and has gained a degree of public assent to use extraordinary measures to combat that threat”(Vultee, 2010b, p. 33). In this definition, Vultee incorporated criticism on the securitisation theory by authors such as Stritzel (2007), Balzacq (2005) and McDonald (2008). They believe that the securitisation theory as posed by the Copenhagen school is too superficial. They believe that securitisation is a process which is influenced by dominant actors, context and the nature of the utterance. The mere saying of ‘security’ is not enough. It has to be done by a believable actor in the right context with a

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11 certain degree of sincerity. Vultee uses this criticism by adding the ‘degree of public assent’ in his definition.

In this research, the conceptualization used by Vultee will be used as well. The indicators for measuring securitisation will be derived from this definition as can be seen in chapter 3.4.1.

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2.2. Party characteristics (populism RILE) 2.2.1. Populism

Populism, just as security, is a concept with no uniform conceptualization, it is a contested concept. The idea behind populism dates back to the Roman Empire where the Populares, an unofficial faction in the Roman senate, tried to rule Rome by using the mobilization of the masses with their populist agenda (Zoch, 2012). They opposed the Optimates, or the Good Men, that wanted to reduce the power of the masses and the plebs and extend the power of the senate (Zoch, 2012). The word populism is based on the Latin word populus, which is translated to people but in the sense of folk, nation or ‘The Roman People’. Populism refers directly to the people, the masses.

With regards to the origins of populism, one can look at two tracks: The academic history and the political history. With the academic history, one looks at the history of the concept of populism. How scholars wrote about history and how events changed the views about the concept. The political history is, based on the three wave theory, is the history of populist movements in society. At what times did populism manifest itself in what places and in what political ideology?

In order to use populism as a concept, it is important to know both histories. I want to start off with the political history and follow up with the academic history.

An important note to make beforehand is that in this research, the methods of measuring and conceptualization of populism by Matthijs Rooduijn (2013) will be used in order to replicate his results. This has no influence on the political history of the concept but the academic history will be based on results of Rooduijn’s literature review.

Political history

The history of populism can be traced back to three waves of populism with a different political, social-economic and cultural context (Jagers, 2006). These three waves show the ‘evolution’ of populism and in what wave we currently are.

The First Wave

The first wave of populism described by Jagers(2006) is the Russian Narodniki and the American People’s Party. These were active in the second halve of the 19th_{century. Although} the Russian Narodniki (1869) existed before the American People’s Party (1892), the latter is

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13 often seen as the prototype of a populist movement (Jagers, 2006). The American People’s party was not based on a charismatic leader or a dream of a group of theorists (Jagers, 2006). The American People’s Party was a people’s movement based on ending the dominance of the economic elite and resisting the established political order (Jagers, 2006). It was the people vs the elite. The anger mostly came from farmers and livestock owners that were confronted with an economic crisis after the Civil War (Jagers, 2006). The movement was not based on a set ideology like communism or socialism, they wanted to reform the current system, end the monopoly position in some economic sectors and give the people more influence on the political decision making by using referenda (Jagers, 2006). Although the movement had some success, it was unable to end the bipartisanship of the Democrats and Republicans and after becoming part of the establishment it fought against, the movement fell apart (Jagers, 2006). In Russia, the Narodniki was not a populist movement, it was a revolutionary movement that used the populist ideology (Jagers, 2006). The Narodniki was a group of Russian intellectual youths that after hearing the idealisation of the common folk travelled to the countryside and attempted to assimilate in the Russian rural community (Jagers, 2006). They wanted to incite the farmers to revolt against the Tsarist regime because the introduction of capitalism by the Tsarist regime would destroy the solidarity in the rural community and lead to inequality (Jagers, 2006). The Narodniki wanted to protect the people from the dangers of capitalism which was introduced by the elite. In order to do this, they tried to incite a revolution and when that failed resorted to terrorism (Jagers, 2006). Although the movement itself was not populist, the goal they tried to achieve was a populist goal.

The Second Wave

The second wave of populism was in Latin America during the second half of the 20th_century after the Second World War (Jagers, 2006). More specifically, it was the Argentinian Peronism regime. This form of populism, in contrary to the first wave, actually did rise to power and the leadership was more important than the ideology or the movement (Jagers, 2006). During a coup d’état in 1943 Colonel Juán Domingo Perón became the minister of labour. In his position, he introduced several measures that improved the standing of the common worker such as minimum wage and paid vacation days (Jagers, 2006). These measures, together with his wife’s charity work, made him very popular among the common people (Jagers, 2006). When the liberal opposition tried to end the military regime, Perón was imprisoned as a part of the illegal military regime. The people protested his incarceration and only stopped protesting when Perón himself announced that he was released (Jagers, 2006). In 1946 Perón was able to use his

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14 popularity to become president and during his rule he transformed in an authoritarian ruler, banning opposition and criticism (Jagers, 2006). Perón was inspired by Mussolini and his way of influencing the masses for his own gain (Jagers, 2006). Perón wasn’t the leader of a populist movement or a populist revolution, he used the populist ideology as a way to rise to power and rule Argentina.

The third wave

The third wave of populism is the wave we are currently in, the manifestation of populism in politics primarily in Western-Europe (Jagers, 2006). In contrary to the first two waves, it is not a party or a movement but a group of parties in different nations that were successful by campaigning the same issues (Jagers, 2006). The third wave populist originate from the 70’s and 80’s when people were discontent with the traditional politics. From this discontent, the Green-Left parties (New politics) as well as the populist right wing parties (New Populist) rose. The new populists focused on issues as taxation, immigration and cultural identity. These issues are the core issues of modern day populism as seen in most West-European nations. Although there are small differences between the populist parties among nations, there is a common message they all adhere to. The established politicians do not care about the common folk, they only care about themselves and their parties. The established power is a system run by the elite and conspires against the people. The common people are neglected and the elite, instead of caring about their citizens, only care about themselves. The populist parties are opposing these established politics for only they care about the people and can defend the national identity of the people.

Academic history

In his piece about the ‘populist zeitgeist’, Matthijs Rooduijn (2013) researched political party manifestos using content analysis to see whether parties used populist rhetoric. In order to make meaningful conclusions about the populist zeitgeist, he researched the concept of populism quite thoroughly. Because Rooduijn’s method is used, his conceptualization and rational behind the conceptualization will also be used.

In his dissertation, Rooduijn (2013) often cites back to Jager’s dissertation (2006) on the history of populism. In Jager’s dissertation, he goes into depth about the history and the discussion around the concept of populism. As shown by Jager, Populism is an old concept with a history of contestation. Jager walks you through the last fifty years of academic literature of populism which I will summarize here. He starts with the work of Ionescu and Gellner (1970) which was

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15 based on the 1967 conference of the London School of Economics that gathered important minds in order to ‘define populism’. The most important conclusion of the work was that there is an apparent lack of unifying conclusions.

He continues with Canovan’s 1981 piece ‘Populism’ (Canovan, 1981) which concluded that different cases of populism are not different cases of one phenomenon, “They are in many cases different sorts of things and not directly comparable at all” (Canovan, 1981). Canovan argues that the way the term populism is used in different contexts asks for different forms of analyses. This means that there is not one catch all method to study populism.

On the basis of looking at the three large ‘waves’ of populism, Jager’s concludes that the one thing that these waves have in common is the struggle between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’. Jager’s continues by looking at the ideal types of populism; populism as an organisation, populism as a political style and populism as an ideology. After a critical study Jager’s concludes that populism cannot be captured by a typical organisational form and that the definition of populism as a political style is too broad which opens the door for multiple interpretations. He defines populism as:

A thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be a clear expression of the general will of the people (Jagers, 2006).

This definition, as used by Mudde (2004) is also used by Rooduijn in his dissertation. An important note Rooduijn makes about this definition is that the ideology is thin-centred and thus not a ‘full’ ideology such as liberalism, socialism or conservatism. “Following Freeden (1998) and Canovan (2002), he has argued that populism is a ‘thin-centered ideology’: it does not offer an all-inclusive worldview, but only focuses on the relationship between the people and the elite. It can therefore be easily combined with other ideologies on both the left and the right (Mudde, 2004; Taggart, 2000)” (Rooduijn, 2013, p. 5).

Rooduijn argues that with this definition, populism consists of two elements: People-centrism and anti-elitism. It is people-centrist because it emphasizes the centrality and sovereignty of the people and claims that political decision-making should make the will of the people the main reason to act (Rooduijn, 2013). Populism is anti-elitist because it accuses the elite of hindering the centrality of the people. The elites are, according to their accusers, arrogant, selfish, incompetent and having no idea of what the ordinary people find important (Rooduijn, 2013).

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The consideration for using Jagers and Rooduijn’s definitions is that since this research will be replicating Rooduijn’s research and he used these definitions, the research should use these as well in order to replicate his method as detailed as possible.

2.2.2. Political Right-Left Spectrum

The separation of political ideas on the basis of a unidimensional scale, Right-Centre-Left originated from the First French Republic. The members of the national assembly were divided into supporters of the king and the aristocracy to the president’s right side and the supporters of the revolution to the president’s left side (Gauchet, 1997). The meaning of the sides changed throughout history, but the division on from the Right-Centre-Middle remained (Gauchet, 1997). The division was always on the position in the legislative assembly, not in an ideological side. This changed in the 1870’s with the start of the Third Republic in France and the adaption of the Right-Centre-Left positions by political parties (Gauchet, 1997). The seating was now not the way to place a party on the right-left scale but the party ideology. The divide between right and left was first based on class (Lipset & Man, 1960). The right supported the aristocracy and conservatism, the left was associated with social reform and egalitarianism. When democracy institutionalized and universal (male) suffrage was implemented, the conservative fear that land ownership would be abolished proved to be unrealistic (Lipset & Man, 1960). This meant, for the land owners, that democracy was nothing to fear and so the class struggle was no longer the only issue between right and left. This meant that the framework for dividing parties was oversimplified and possibly even distorted reality (Lipset & Man, 1960). The right-left dimension was however hard to abandon so scholars retained the idea but other aspects were added like religious or regional differences. The use of party division based on right-left spread to other countries but differs in ideology (Gauchet, 1997).

Since there is no all-encompassing theory or conceptualization for the division of party ideology on a single dimension, it is hard to use this division in research. It makes it even harder when taken in mind that right and left differentiates between countries (Gauchet, 1997), European left is not the same as American left and German left is not the same as French left. Even with these difficulties, scholars employ the right-left ideological scale in theoretical

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17 arguments about voting behaviour, political representation etcetera (Gabel & Huber, 2000). In order to gain information about a countries Right-Left division and the places the parties occupy on this scale, a scholar has two options. He can either use a survey on either experts or large groups of people, or use manifesto research (Gabel & Huber, 2000). Consulting experts using a survey is done by sending the survey to multiple local experts which generates the data necessary to make judgements about a parties positions (Gabel & Huber, 2000). A problem with this method is that it is time consuming and since it is done by multiple scholars the format differs and they have been administered infrequently. Another way is to use data from mass surveys such as the Eurobarometer (Gabel & Huber, 2000). This survey is done more frequent but in a limited number of countries and only the last 20 years.

An alternative to the Eurobarometer is manifesto research. In recent history, scholars have started using party manifesto’s to extract information about the national party system in countries. This is done by the Manifesto Research Group in their Manifesto Party Research (MAPOR). MAPOR does not use certain ideologies or seating arrangements to determine what is right and what is left in politics, it calculates it based on the party manifestos per country. How MAPOR operationalizes the political Right-Left index can be seen in chapter 3.4.3

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3. Methodology

3.1. Research design

The research design used in this research will be a holistic multiple case study (Yin, 2013) with each political party being a case. One independent variable is present, Party Characteristics. This variable consists of two dimensions, the relative position of a party on the political Right-left scale and the inclination to use populist rhetoric. The goal of the study is to try to find out whether party characteristics have an influence on the dependent variable, topics securitised during the 2017 Dutch Parliamentary elections.

The units of observation are topics, issues, or themes, discussed by a party in the campaign of the 2017 Dutch parliamentary election. The units of analysis are the political parties used as a case during the 2017 parliamentary campaign.

Illustration 1: Research Design

Dutch 2017 Parliamentary Election

Sample

Party

Characteristics

Inclination to

use populist

rhetoric

Position on

political

right-left spectrum

Topics

securitised

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3.1.1. Case Study

In a case study, the focus is on a single instance of some social phenomenon, there are not multiple measurements (Babbie, 2013). A holistic multiple case study is a study that studies multiple cases with each case being the whole unit of analysis (Yin, 2013). It is possible that a case consists of multiple units of analysis but that is not so with a holistic model. The decision for making a multiple case set-up instead of a single case is one that should not be made lightly since it involves a lot of extra work and restricts the rationale with which cases are researched (Yin, 2013). When choosing for a multiple case study, one should not employ sampling logic (having multiple cases increases your population which increases your validity) but replication logic (Yin, 2013). With replication logic, you use multiple cases to replicate your study in order to find out whether your findings are reliable (Yin, 2013). It is important that you either predict similar results or predict contrasting results for predictable reasons. The study is more reliable if multiple cases either prove the same result or differentiate in a manner that was predicted beforehand which would prove the theory being tested. In this research, the study is holistic because a case consists of a political party as the unit of analysis. The political party as a whole will be researched, not subunits of the party. Multiple cases will be used since political parties differ in ideology (right-left spectrum) and in populist tendencies in communication. In order to prove whether these variables are of influence on the extent of securitisation used it is necessary to see if this phenomenon occurs it happens in a single case or is influenced by a single variable, this is the reason several parties are chosen with different characteristics in order to try to replicate the research with different independent variables.

3.1.2. Qualitative Content Analysis

The research will be conducted using qualitative content analysis. Content analysis is an unobtrusive research method with the aim of researching recorded human communications (Babbie, 2013). It is unobtrusive in the way that the researcher does not influences what is being researched (Babbie, 2013). It is, according to Babbie, primarily concerned with “Who says what, to whom, how and with what effect?” (Babbie, 2013, p. 296). In this study, the focus will primarily be on ‘who says what’ and how it is said. A strength of content analysis is that it does not require a lot of time and money from the researcher (Babbie, 2013). There is no staff necessary to conduct interviews or surveys and it can mostly be done from a desk. An obvious limit is that content analysis restricts itself to written records (Babbie, 2013).

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3.2. Case selection 3.2.1. Reasoning

In the 2017 elections, 28 parties were on the ballot of which 11 were present in parliament already. Since the data from the Right-Left index is from 2012, this data is only available from the parties that were present in the last election. Of these 11 parties, 5 were chosen that represent the diversity in party characteristics the most, this is based on the results from the research done by Rooduijn (2013) and The Manifesto Project(Volkens et al., 2013). The 6th case was added later due to observing securitisations of this party in the data. From these results, two left-wing oriented parties, three right-wing oriented parties and one centre party have been chosen. From the two left-wing oriented parties, one has shown prone to use populist rhetoric while the other has been more conservative with populist rhetoric, on the right-wing one party showed inclination to use populist rhetoric while the other two did not. To represent the centre of the political Right-Left spectrum two parties would have been ideal but there was only one clear centre party, the others were either too left or right to consider them centre parties. The centre party chosen is not prone to use populist rhetoric according to Rooduijn’s research. While coding the debates between parties, debates were sometimes held between one of the parties that was selected as a case and a party that was not part of the research. One of these not-included parties was the CDA, the Christian Democrats. The CDA caught my attention because their frontrunner, Sybrand van Haersma Buma, used a lot of Securitisation rhetoric. He framed some issues, particularly immigration, repeatedly as a security issue. For this reason, the CDA has been added to sample since it was too interesting to ignore. The parties used as cases will be the VVD, PVV, D66, PVDA, SP and the CDA. In figure 1 you can see the right-left orientation and the tendency to use populist rhetoric.

The populist rhetoric scores as given here are an indication. The research done by Rooduijn that generated these results has been out-dated and will be replicated to generate up to date data.

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Figure 1: Case overview

Party Right-Left orientation Populist rhetoric

VVD Far-Right No PVV Far-Right Yes D66 Centre No PVDA Centre/Left No SP Far-Left Yes CDA Right No

I believe that with these cases, the Dutch parliamentary electoral arena has been represented. Both parties with and without populist rhetoric from both left and right are represented as is the only centre party. The parties included are all parties that existed for multiple elections with the PVV being the youngest with its inception in 2006. All parties are present in the Parliament since the 2012 elections with at least 12 seats.

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3.3. Data collection

Yin notes that one of the strengths of case studies is that you have the opportunity to collect data from multiple sources and this opportunity should be used (Yin, 2013). Any conclusion that is based on multiple sources is more convincing and accurate (Yin, 2013). The data will contain transcripts of publicized interviews with the frontrunners done in a standardized format, party manifestos publicized by the party ahead of the election and transcripts of debates done by the frontrunners with most of the cases being present. These three types of communication give a complete overview of a party’s stance about a certain issue. In most parties, the party manifesto is in the make for a long time and has to be approved by its party members. The party manifesto is the parties road map should they be able to rule. Laver and Garry (2000) recommend it because: ‘As an official document, it will be difficult for party members to resile from policies in the party manifesto, while party leaders can be charged with failure to implement published manifesto pledges when given the chance to do so’ (Laver & Garry, 2000, p. 620) Communications from the frontrunner have been chosen as a data source since he or she is the official face of the party in the campaign. The frontrunner is the embodiment of the party and talks on behalf of the party. Frontrunner communication is mostly the same across parties since television time has to be split among parties. Most of the parties are present during the large debates and interview formats where all frontrunners are interviewed in the same way are common. This ensures that the only difference between the data are the parties themselves to ensure validity of the data. The party manifesto is freely accessible to everyone from the website of the party. The debates used in this research will be the four largest debates that do not concern a certain issue or area (for instance the Northern Debate will be excluded because it was primarily focussed on issues that are present in the three Northern provinces). These debates are the Carre debate, Radio 1 debate, Rode Hoed debate and the NOS Slotdebat. The debates have different topics and different formats but they include almost all of our cases. The Carre Debate is hosted by the RTL 4 commercial broadcaster (RTL, 2017a). It has eight participants, The VVD, SP, CDA, PvdA, D66, GroenLinks, PvdD, and 50Plus. The format of the debate is that four out of the eight participants are able to debate about a prepared statement. The selection of participating frontrunners differs per statement so a debate never has the four same participants. The four frontrunners that did not participate in the debate about a statement are able to voice their opinion after the debate in 30 seconds. The debates are alternated with a one on one debate with a host of the debate. Every frontrunner has to answer ‘difficult

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23 questions’ prepared by the programme in order to shed light on some topics relevant in the public opinion. Every frontrunner gets a turn but the debate is strictly one on one.

The Radio 1 debate is a debate hosted every parliamentary election by the public radiobroadcaster (Radio1, 2017). The debate takes place during the news show ‘Nieuws & Co’. The debate of 2017 had nine frontrunners of parties in attendance, The VVD, PvdA, SP, CDA, D66, GroenLinks, CU, SGP and 50Plus. Except for the PVV, all cases were present. The debate has a format of three rounds with three frontrunners per round. Every frontrunner participates in one round which gives three unique rounds but a frontrunner only debates two other frontrunners. The topics are chosen by the participants, each frontrunner has prepared a statement and will debate about this statement in their round. A round consists of three statements, one of each of the participants.

The Rode Hoed debate is a debate hosted by the same commercial broadcaster as the Carre Debate, RTL 4 (RTL, 2017b). In previous elections, it was the prime-minister debate where the two largest parties in the polls would have a one on one debate but RTL decided to change the format and include the four largest parties. The third until fifth ranked parties were however so close that RTL decided to make it a five party debate. To this the PVV and VVD did not agree and decided not to join the debate. RTL still clung to their format and invited five parties; D66, CDA, PvdA, SP and GroenLinks. In this debate all present frontrunners discuss the statements prepared by the hosts. The frontrunners have the opportunity to invite one of their debating adversaries to a one on one during any statement but can only use this invitation once. The NOS Slotdebat is the final debate of the campaign on the eve before the elections (NOS, 2017 ). In this debate, the eight frontrunners of the eight largest parties, according to the polls, will be doing one on one debates. In this edition, the large parties were the VVD, PVV, D66, CDA, SP, D66, GroenLinks and CU. Every frontrunner will debate twice, with two different opponents. Every frontrunner has prepared a statement he or she will debate about, so in one debate a frontrunner uses his or her own statement and in the other debate he or she will use the statement from the opponent. The matchups were decided at random by blindly drawing ballots with the names of the parties on there. This is also the only debate the PVV did not cancel.

For interviews the Van Torentje naar Torentje series interviews will be used. The interviews are hosted by the University of Twente and the Tubantia newspaper. A senior political commentator and the editor of the Tubantia newspaper have conducted the interviews in a setting where they interview the frontrunner of one party at a time. In this series, frontrunners are invited to talk about three subjects, one of their own choosing, one that the hosts chose and

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24 one that the audience chose before the start of the interview. The interview is alternated with, if possible, relevant questions from the audience and social media.

The collected data will be analysed using qualitative content analysis. With content analysis, the data is being transformed from raw into a standardized form with the use of coding (Babbie, 2013). The human communications are coded or classified according to a theoretical framework. Coding can be done in two ways, manifest and latent. With manifest coding, the coder looks at the visible surface of the communication (Babbie, 2013). It is done for instance by counting certain words or phrases in and analysing the text based on these counts. In latent coding, the coder looks for the underlying message in the communication (Babbie, 2013). The coder makes a subjective assessment about the unit of analysis based on some indicators the coder identifies. In this research latent coding is used. A downside to latent coding is reliability. Since the coder makes subjective assessments on the text, these assessments may differ between coders. It is therefore very important to argument why a unit of analysis has been coded in the way it was and to have strict rules in the codebook. Another way to increase reliability is to used Berg’s (1989) ‘negative case testing’ which uses Popper’s falsification concept. Instead of trying to actively prove your hypothesis using your theoretical framework, one has to try to find evidence to disprove the hypothesis. In this method, you start with an examination of the data which may lead to a hypothesis. After a hypothesis is formed, you search the data for cases that contradict your hypothesis. When the contradictory cases have been found and reviewed you either give up on the hypothesis or fine-tune it in order for the contradicting cases to be no longer contradictory. This process is repeated until you either have no hypotheses or contradictory cases left. Berg talks however about cases while this research will use it on topics. The coder will not attempt to find evidence to code a topic in a certain way but to find evidence to not code it in a certain way.

Since the coding is done qualitatively, it will never be as reliable as quantitative studies but this pitfall is inherent to qualitative studies. Reliability can however be uphold by a certain standard by using the negative case testing, having strict rules in the codebook and having clear argumentation.

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3.4. Operationalization

To assess whether political party characteristics have an influence on the Securitisation of topics, party characteristics and Securitisation have to be measureable. As shown before, political party characteristics consists of two dimensions: the party’s inclination to use populist rhetoric and a party’s relative place on the political Right-Left spectrum. These two concepts, together with securitisation will be operationalised below.

3.4.1. Securitisation

As mentioned above, for operationalizing securitisation the conceptualization of Vultee (2010b) will be used: “When an issue has been securitised, a political actor has cast it as an existential threat*an imminent peril to the physical, cultural, or social health of the community*and has gained a degree of public assent to use extraordinary measures to combat that threat”(Vultee, 2010b, p. 33). This conceptualization has certain conditions that have to be met in order for a topic to be considered securitised. The following conditions can be derived from the conceptualization:

- It has to be cast by a political actor.

- It has to be cast as an existential threat to the Physical, Cultural or Social health of the community.

- The threat is cast as imminent and thus requires immediate action to alleviate it. - The threat calls for extraordinary measures that gained public assent to alleviate it. These conditions are there to measure whether a topic is securitised. Party manifestos are not approved by the masses, but in most cases have to be accepted by the members of the party (this with the exception of the PVV since the PVV has no members.) This means that the stage of securitisation this research looks at is not the final stage, it is an attempt. Since it is an attempted securitisation, the assent of the people is not required in this stage. The call for extraordinary measures and immediate action to alleviate an existential threat to the physical, social and cultural health however still needs to be present. Since party manifestos are made by political parties and the cases used in this research are political parties with at least some history and public backing, it is reasoned that all cases are indeed political actors which means that the first condition is void. Which means that the conditions for an issue to be securitised are:

- The topic cast as an existential threat to the Physical, Cultural or Social health of the community.

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26 - The threat calls for extraordinary measures to alleviate it.

The third indicator, the call for extraordinary measures, was later added after confirming that some issues that although contained both the other indicators (cast as existential threat and requiring immediate action) were unsatisfactory coded as securitised. Due to this, the operationalization was revisited and a third indicator, the extraordinary measures were derived from the conceptualization. Since securitisation draws something into the realm of security, it gains a higher priority and public assent to alleviate it with extraordinary measures. These measures can be evoked by either creating the measures (issuing legislation etc.) or by using actors with increased privileges to alleviate the threat (using military for policing etc.). When these three conditions have been met, securitisation is attempted by the political party in question. Not all issues are however relevant to be securitised. The issue of traditional security studies, national security, is already widely recognized as a security issue. Since this issue has been the focus of security studies since the inception of security studies I will omit it from research. Topics as defence will therefore not be researched. Another topic that will be omitted is law and order. Law and order has not been a security topic according to security studies since the focus of security studies has been the state and law and order is more concerned with the individual or communities as a subject. Law and order can however be seen as a security topic since in history it has been granted extraordinary measures to combat threats which threated the social health of the community. Any other topic is up for research and can be securitised if it meets the three conditions.

3.4.2. Populism

As seen in the theoretical framework, Rooduijn’s research on populism will be used. Unfortunately the data used by Rooduijn in his research is outdated. This calls for a replication of his research to bring the results up to date. Rooduijn conducted his research by comparing mainstream parties against non-mainstream parties to see whether mainstream parties were ‘contaminated’ with populism. To do this, he found a way to quantify populism by measuring how often ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ were mentioned in a party manifesto (Rooduijn, 2013). The end result being that all political parties received a score and the higher the score, the more populist rhetoric a party employed. What is usable from Rooduijn’s dissertation is his framework to measure populism. In order to see if populist tendencies have an influence on the choice topics that are securitised by a party, Rooduijn’s framework will be used to measure the populist tendencies of the political parties in the Dutch 2017 Parliamentary elections.

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27 In his research, Rooduijn conceptualizes populism as: “a ‘thin-centered ideology’: it does not offer an all-inclusive worldview, but only focuses on the relationship between the people and the elite. It can therefore be easily combined with other ideologies on both the left and the right” (Rooduijn, 2013). To make sure the replication is reliable, rooduijn’s conceptualization, operationalization and methodology will also be used. Rooduijn used content analysis on party manifestos with paragraphs being the unit of analysis. Rooduijn operationalised people-centrism with the question: “Do the authors of the manifesto refer to the people?” (Rooduijn, 2013, p. 83). The people needed to be referenced contextually, not literally so if the text referred to ‘citizens’, ‘our country’ or ‘the society’, it was coded as ‘the people’. Anti-elitism was operationalised using the question: “Do the authors of the manifesto criticize elites?” (Rooduijn, 2013, p. 84). A paragraph is only coded as populist if it satisfies both criteria, so when it is both anti-elitist and people-centrist. Rooduijn measures populism on a scale between 0-100. The score of a manifesto is determined by calculating the percentage of populist paragraphs out of the total amount of paragraphs.

Rooduijn’s research will be replicated in this fashion with the exception of one part. Rooduijn used trained coders to code the manifestos. This is a resource I do not have access to so I will be doing the coding. Since I am not an extensively trained coder, the inter coder reliability may be lacking. This is, taking the time and money constraints in mind, unavoidable.

3.4.3. Political Right-Left Spectrum

To determine the position of a political party on the Political Right Left spectrum, data from the MAPOR (Volkens et al., 2013) will be used. The MAPOR is research project that continues the work of the Manifesto Research group (1979-1989) and Comparative Manifesto Project (1989-2009). It compares data from 1000 political parties over 50 different countries since 1945 by using the party manifestos. The data from the MAPOR is freely accessible for everyone.

The MAPOR framework, derived from Budge and Laver’s Party Policy and Government Coalitions (1992), does not define the ideological stances of the right or left. It codes the manifestos per sentence using a non-exclusive code sheet so that every sentence belongs to a category. The codes are dichotomous, they are either positive or negative of nature about certain categories. It uses statistics to decide per country which codes are left and which codes are right so a certain code can be a right-wing code in one country and a left-wing code in another. In order to determine the position of a party on the Right-Left (RILE) scale, MARPOR

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28 then calculates the occurrences of left oriented codes and right oriented codes and subtracts left from right. This result is then taken as a proportion of the total which makes it a score with a minimum of -100 (everything was coded as left) and a maximum of +100 (everything was right). For every political party in its database it calculates a RILE score based on the manifesto. For every manifesto, a new score is calculated and these calculations can be used to track a party’s position on the RILE over time.

In this research the exact numbers of the RILE will not be used since the latest data is from the manifestos of 2012 and not 2017. What will be used is the position of a party relative from the other parties over time. The average position of a party relative to another party over time will be the determining factor whether a party is right, centre or left. The relative position of a party will be derived from data from the 2006, 2010 and 2012 manifesto. These years have chosen since the PVV first participated in the 2006 elections. Beginning by 2006 means that all parties have the same amount of data available.

Figure 2: Operationalization overview

Variable Indicators

Securitisation * - Topic is cast as an existential threat to the Physical, Cultural or Social health of the community.

- The threat is cast as imminent and thus requires immediate action to alleviate it.

- The threat calls for extraordinary measures to alleviate it.

Populism * - Do the authors of the manifesto refer to the people?

- Do the authors of the manifesto criticize the elites?

Political Right-Left Spectrum - The value the MAPOR gives

between -100 – 100 relative to the 0 point.

*Mutually necessary, all indicators of the variable have to be present for the variable to be coded as present.

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4. Analysis

4.1. Introduction

In this chapter, the collected date of the cases will be analysed. This means that the data, the party manifestos, frontrunner interviews and frontrunner debates, has been coded so that the values of the variables can be determined. The chapter is structured as follows: Firstly, the Dutch electoral system will be explained to provide some background in why the chosen cases are relevant. Secondly, each case has a dedicated chapter where they are introduced with a short historic overview of the party and their results in the 2017 elections. This chapter also contains the values of the variables of Securitisation and party characteristics. Finally, an overview will be given of the results.

4.2. Dutch democratic system

The arena in which this research takes place is the Dutch Parliamentary elections of 2017. In this election, the seats for the Dutch Second Chamber (parliament) are under contention. The Dutch democracy is based on the Trias Politica, or the separation of powers as proposed by Charles de Montesquieu (1748). This separation of power divides authority in three separate pillars that are independent and are able to check one another. The three pillars are the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary pillars. The Dutch Legislature pillar consists of the Senate (first chamber) and the Parliament (second chamber). The parliament is the body tasked with creating, approving and amending legislature, all proposed national legislature comes from Parliament. The senate can only approve or reject legislature, they cannot propose or amend legislature. For legislature to be enacted it has to be approved by both the senate and parliament. The parliament consist of 150 seats which are divided in a representative way, if a party receives 1/150th of all the votes, they obtain a seat. The Netherlands consists of one electoral area which means that all votes are combined into one election result, there are no voting districts. To be able to run in the parliamentary elections one has to register before a certain deadline at the Political Parties Register and make a deposit of €11.250. The deposit is done to discourage people to register on a whim and will be returned if the party manages to win 0.5% of the votes in the election. They also have to submit a list with at least 30 signatures from all of the 19 constituents that endorse the party. One can only appear on the ballot in the constituency if one has submitted the signatures but one does not have to submit for all constituents. If one submits a list for a certain constituent, one will appear on the ballot in that constituent.

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30 An absolute majority, 76 out of 150 seats, is almost never reached. It is therefore necessary for parties to cooperate to reach a majority. This majority of seats is formed after the election with the largest party being able to start finding a coalition. This coalition will negotiate on all topics until they have reached an agreement. When an agreement is reached they will be presented to the monarch (pure ceremonially) and the people after which they will begin their duties.

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4.3. VVD

4.3.1. Case introduction

The VVD is a liberal, right wing party founded on the liberal principles of individual freedom and a small government (Parlement.com, 2017f). The government should interfere as less as possible with regards to its subjects individual freedoms and make the security of its subject its main priority (Parlement.com, 2017f).

The history of the VVD can be traced back to 1814 when liberalism as a political ideology entered the Netherlands. In 1848, the liberal principles were anchored in the Dutch constitution which was crafted by Johan Rudolf Thorbecke. The liberals were also at the basis of some social reforms including the legislation to end child labour in 1874. In 1885 the first liberal party was founded called the Liberal Union. After the LU, more liberal parties were formed. The Second World War was a focussing event for Liberalism in the Netherlands. During the occupation, Liberal parties were forbidden. After the Second World War, the two largest pre-war Liberal parties, one of which came from dissidents of the Labour Party (PvdA) which is another case in this research, got together to discuss the future and in 1948 founded the ‘peoples party for freedom and democracy’, or the VVD (Bouwer, 2017). The term Liberal was not included since the public opinion about Liberalism was low due to the big depression in the 30’s which was blamed on the Liberals (Bouwer, 2017).

After its foundation, the VVD had a strong start as a coalition party from 1948 until 1952. The VVD grew and continued to grow in the 1950’s but stagnated in the 60’s. This due to internal disagreements about the future course of the VVD. The disagreement led to some key figures to leave and start their own movement in 1966, the Democrats ’66 which is another case in this research. The 70’s were however a new time of growth for the VVD with the young Hans Wiegel as a leader. With his populist style he transformed the VVD from elitist into a party which was supported by the working and middle class as well. In the 80’s, the growth period was once again ended by internal disagreements which put the party in the opposition until the early 90’s where they once again had a resurgence. In the 00’s, two key figures left the VVD due to conflict about the course of the party. One of these, Geert Wilders, would later found the Freedom Party (PVV) which is another case in this research. The VVD however, remained steadfast in their course through the 00’s and 10’s which led them to be the largest in the 2010 and 2017 elections. In the 2017 elections the VVD earned 33 seats which made them the largest party.

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4.3.2. Populism

The VVD manifesto, counting 102 pages and 438 paragraphs, has no paragraphs that contained populist rhetoric. The manifesto explains each subtopic in a paragraph but formatted the paragraphs in an enumerating style. Out of the 438 paragraphs, 11 were coded as referencing the people. An example of what has been coded as referring to the people is in the introduction of the manifesto. It states that: “We as the Dutch People (Netherlanders) have an important question to answer on the coming March 15th”(VVD, 2016). In this sentence, the VVD clearly identifies itself with the people. By including themselves in a term that encompasses all of the Dutch citizens, they identify as the people and refer to them to the choice they have to make during the coming election. Another example is: “Our society is based on the Enlightenment and liberal traditions that have led to a free and tolerant society. … We stand for a society where everybody participates”(VVD, 2016). In this example, the VVD actively includes themselves in ‘society’. Everybody participates in the society and so does the VVD. They, as part of society, want to make policy for society. By including themselves in their definition of society, the VVD identifies itself with the people and wants to enact measures for the people. In the VVD manifesto, there was no critique towards the ‘elite’. Since the VVD is a right wing party which favours market solutions, which according to leftist parties are ‘the elite’, the VVD does not criticize its ‘voter’s base’ this can explain why there is no critique to the elite and thus no populist rhetoric. The VVD can be categorised as a party that is not inclined to use populist rhetoric.

Figure 3: VVD Populism

Total amount of paragraphs: 449 Paragraphs coded as referring to the people: 11 Total amount of populist paragraphs: 0 Paragraphs coded as criticizing the elite: 0

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4.3.3. Securitisation Manifesto

For the manifesto with regards to securitisation, the unit of analysis differs from populism. Topics were coded for Securitisation but not the large over-arching topics, but the smaller subtopics or single-issues. For the VVD manifesto, 401 subtopics or issues have been identified. Topics about issues related to defence or the police were seen as security topics and were left out of the analysis, 32 topics of these topics were identified. A topic was coded as ‘securitised’ if it was framed as an existential threat to society that needed extraordinary measures and immediate action to be dealt with. A number of issues were framed as an existential threat, 12 to be precise, but only 5 issues were seen as requiring immediate action. Two issue was coded as both an existential threat and requiring immediate action but did not need extraordinary measures to alleviate the threat and were thus not coded as securitised. One of the issues containing two of the three indicators was the issue of the national budget. “A government should not spent more than it raises. Spending more than raising is structurally impossible because debt is pushed towards the future. High debts make a country vulnerable …. We want a balanced budget with a clear maximum for government spending” (VVD, 2016, p. 98). In this excerpt, the VVD talks about the risks of an unbalanced budget. With the statement about how high debts increase a country’s vulnerability, an unbalanced budget threatens the security of a country. At the end of the topic, the VVD states that they want a balanced budget when elected, so the next budget, and clear rules about a spending maximum. Since they want a balanced budget now and not in the near future, it can be seen as requiring immediate action. For creating a balanced budget however, no extraordinary measures are required. It is already possible for a government to make a balanced budget and the rules the VVD proposes are to ensure that other governments actually use this opportunity. Therefore, the topic is not securitised.

The other topics that were seen as an existential threat but did not mention immediate action or extraordinary measures are mostly migration issues and Islamic terrorism or other subtopics of foreign affairs. Affairs outside of Europe that involve migrants or Islamic terrorists are seen as the largest threats to the Dutch society according to the VVD manifesto.

One of these topics did however ask for immediate action: “These past few years the Netherlands has witnessed a large migration wave heading towards Europe. Tens of thousands of people that after paying human smugglers board rickety boats looking for a better life … Daily our country experiences the consequences. Not only is there an end to the amount of shelters municipalities can provide, also in other areas the end of our societal capacity is in

Securitisation in Electoral Campaigns