Jean Tillie

In this article we address the question whether or not the votes for anti–immigrant parties can be considered as protest votes. We define protest votes by the motives underlying electoral choices, building on earlier research done by Tillie (1995) and Van der Eijk & Franklin (1996). That research showed that ideological proximity and party size are the best predictors of party preference. On this basis we designed a typology of motives for party choice and how these motives would manifest themselves empirically. Analyzing the 1994 elections for the European Parliament for seven political systems we show that anti–immigrant parties attract no more protest votes than other parties do, with only one exception: the Dutch Centrumdemocraten. Voting for anti–immigrant parties is largely motivated by ideological and pragmatic considerations, just like voting for other parties. In addition, (negative) attitudes towards immigrants have a stronger effect on preferences for anti–immigrant parties than on preference for other parties. Social cleavages and attitudes towards European unification are of minor importance as determinants of preferences for anti–immigrant parties. The overall conclusion is that a rational choice model of electoral behavior has strong explanatory power for party preferences in general, but also for the support for anti–immigrant parties in particular.

This article examines the political participation and political trust of four ethnic groups in Amsterdam. We explore, first, the degree to which Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans participate and the extent to which they trust the democratic institutions of the city. Second, we address how differences in participation and trust can be explained. For this we will turn to the civic community perspective which was reintroduced powerfully by Robert Putnam in his Making Democracy Work (Putnam 1993). In order to measure the civic community of ethnic groups we focus on ethnic organisations in Amsterdam and the links between them. Additionally, we will also report data on the use of mass media. We conclude that there is a rank correlation between the degree of civic community of the various ethnic groups in Amsterdam and the levels of political participation and political trust in local ‐ non‐ethnic ‐ political institutions. Civic engagement and social capital are the most powerful determinants of the quality of multicultural democracy.