In this paper we study both long term and short term individual effects of political participation at the local level. Participatory theorists argue that political participation could lead to individual emancipation in terms of a rise of political knowledge and, in the long term, political trust. Indeed, in the short term the increased political knowledge associated with participation might enable citizens to better define their self-interest, which may be inconsistent with actual policies pursued by the local authorities and thus might be conductive to distrust. In the empirical part we will test these assertions using two-wave panel data for a random sample of 457 individuals in the district of Deurne (Antwerp – Belgium). Our results suggest that in the short term participation leads to more local political knowledge and distrust in the local administration. However, we do not find a significant increase in political trust in the long term.

If the impact of party leaders on the electoral fate of their parties may be called first order personalization, this paper addresses second order personalization: a preference for an individual candidate having to do with that person embedded in a prior choice for the candidate’s party. Using survey data and election results with respect to intraparty preference voting in The Netherlands, this study explores the characteristics of both voters casting a vote for a candidate other than the party leader and candidates receiving preference votes. Given the increase in intraparty preference voting, second order personalization has increased considerably in recent decades. Moreover, the correlates of second order personalization differ from those identified for first order personalization: intraparty preference votes are cast more often by higher educated, politically interested and efficacious female voters. Intraparty preference voting also seems to be a form of expressive rather than instrumental electoral behaviour: female candidates, and to a lesser extent ethnic candidates, receive more preference votes, but such votes are cast predominantly for the highest placed female (or ethnic) candidate on the list – candidates who would be elected on the basis of their position on the party list anyway.

This study analyses the news coverage of female politicians in Flanders (Belgium). We investigate whether the deficiency of media attention for female politicians is due to structural factors or whether the news media themselves create a gender bias. For this purpose, we examine eleven possible explanations for the gender bias. On one hand the characteristics of the politicians, such as their function, can influence their news exposure and on the other hand the features of the news media, such as the broadcasting station, can be of importance. Overall, our evidence suggests that mainly the function determines the news exposure of female politicians and not their gender. Nevertheless, female politicians still get less speaking time, even when controlling for all other variables. We can conclude that a real gender bias exists in the Flemish television news: journalists and editors give significantly less attention to female politicians compared to their male colleagues.