Uitdagers, profeten, en underdogs. Hoe politieke actoren openbaar beleid gebruiken voor imagovorming: een case-gebaseerde benadering

Research on public policy often focuses on policy as such (its design, implementation, and impact) or on the actors involved in the public policy process. Comparatively little is known about the affordances of public policy as a tool for political actors to shape their own identity. This dissertation addresses that knowledge gap by asking: How and why do political actors leverage public policy (whether actual policy actions or simply discourse about policy) to build up a strategically advantageous image, and what are the effects of image-building on public policy itself? To answer that three-pronged question, it examines (1) the discursive strategies, (2) advantages, and (3) effects of image-building through public policy. It focuses on populist political parties as an archetypical example of public policy actors who use public policy not as a means of addressing problems but as an arena for image-building. The dissertation is comprised of seven case studies. The first two focus primarily on how public policy can be leveraged for image-building, zooming in on the European Union's image-building efforts and those of a populist political party, respectively. The fundamental strategies revealed in these papers lay the groundwork for the next two case studies, focusing on the why: what are the concrete advantages of leveraging public policy for image-building? The final three case studies focus on the effects of image-building on public policy itself: how is the public policy process itself impacted by image-building? The case studies show that political actors use public policy discourse to exploit party-political competitive dynamics specific to their political context (e.g. by presenting oneself as a unique party) and to navigate institutional constraints (e.g. a cordon sanitaire). Moreover, the actors under discussion use their self-fashioned image to fabricate alignment between what they offer (the supply side) and what people want (the demand side). In sum, through a series of case studies, this dissertation challenges our understanding of public policy as a passive concept that is simply discussed, negotiated, and then applied. By contrast, it suggests an active, richer interpretation in which public policy can also serve as a strategic tool through which entirely other objectives are achieved.