Unveiling the Dutch ‘burqa ban’: The influences that explain the decision-making process and the adoption of the partial burqa ban

By means of causal process tracing, this study investigates how the adoption of the partial burqa ban by the Dutch House of Representatives can be explained from a rational, institutional, political and cultural perspective. This is relevant because previous studies so far, have analysed each of these perspectives in isolation, thereby leaving the interplay between the perspectives, as well as the contextual factors that may have influenced the decision-making process, unexplored. Moreover, the data in these studies dates back to about 2008, therefore leaving a gap in terms of explaining the process from 2008 onwards. With great societal disagreement about the desirability of a burqa ban, it is therefore interesting to see what theories best explain the decision-making process as well as the adoption of the Dutch partial burqa ban in 2016, as this provides people with a better understanding of the grounds on which the partial ban was adopted. Which might help them in forming their own opinion about the adoption of the burqa ban. By analysing policy documents of the House of Representatives on the matter from 2005, in which the first proposal to establish a ban was made, until the adoption of the ban in 2016, evidence for and against the theories was collected. This evidence was subsequently weighed in order to evaluate to which extent the theoretical perspectives can explain the developments in the process. On this basis, it was overall found that the political and cultural perspectives were most often able to, or needed to, explain the developments in the process. While, institutionalism explained the context in which the discussion took place. And although rationalism was needed to explain why in 2006 a ban prohibiting all types of face covering clothes became pursued instead of a ban on burqas and niqabs only, the approach was rejected from explaining later developments, including the adoption of the partial ban. Overall, the study showed that multiple theories, as well as contextual factors, were at times needed to explain the developments in the Dutch decision-making process. Which indicates that by means of causal process tracing, a full picture can be established of the several influences that explain a certain outcome.