“The Dog That Didn’t Bark”: Explaining Parties’ Issue Avoidance of the Gig Economy in Election Manifestos in the Netherlands

This paper investigates why political parties in the Netherlands largely sideline the gig economy in their election manifestos. Drawing on theories of position taking, blurring, and avoidance, I conceptualise issue avoidance as a distinct strategic choice influenced by intra-party dynamics, party- and government-system factors, and external pressures. Focusing on the 2021 and 2023 Dutch parliamentary elections—when the Netherlands ranked third in the Digital Platform Economy Index—I analyse manifestos from eighteen parties using a dictionary analysis, followed by manual validation to distinguish clear positions, blurring, and total avoidance. To unpack underlying mechanisms, I conduct semi-structured interviews with party and gig-economy scholars, as well as party and union representatives, applying a thematic content analysis. The findings reveal that left-wing parties (e.g., PvdA, SP, GL) more often articulate clear stances on platform work, framing it around social secu-rity and worker protections, whereas right-wing and liberal parties (e.g., VVD, PVV, D66) predominantly avoid the issue, citing its complexity, low public salience, and limited electoral payoff. Fragmentation in the Dutch party system and resource constraints further exacerbate avoidance, as smaller and challenger parties prioritise their core issues. These results underscore the need to treat issue avoidance as a deliberate strategy, with implications for democratic representation and agenda-setting in advanced digital economies.