De Moderne Tijd - Volume 1, Issue 3-4, 2017

BETWEEN MEETING AND ASSOCIATION The public debate about and experiments with candidate selection and voter organization preceding the first direct elections for the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament in 1848 In November 1848, for the first time direct elections took place for the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament. Until then, overt political organization and participation had been frowned upon in the Netherland Read More

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AS A CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE AMONG DUTCH FEMINISTS, 1870-1900 Female suffrage was not the Dutch women’s movement’s central issue from the beginning, nor did contemporary social reformers conceive it as part of the democratisation process they favoured. This article explores the public debate on women’s suffrage against the backdrop of the movement towards universal suffrage in its first thre Read More

WHAT HAPPENED TO GEERTJE AND WHAT MARIJTJE THOUGHT ABOUT IT The use of literature as propaganda by the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht On October 7th 1908, the board of the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (VvVK) invited the Dutch writer Johan de Meester (1860-1931) to one of their propaganda meetings where he presented fragments from his novel Geertje (1905). It is a remarkable fact t Read More

UNDEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS? Legitimacy, fraud and mistrust in democracy Even if elections are a contested aspect of democracy, the free and fair elections of political representatives play a pivotal role in the legitimation of political power. Election fraud was, and still is, a main threat to this form of democratic legitimacy. But even in countries with low levels of fraud and corruption, electoral democracy is undermined by a gr Read More