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When in-vitro fertilization (IVF) was introduced in the 1970s, doctors were criticized for not properly informing prospective users about its possible risks and limited success rates as well as for medicalizing fertility problems. Nowadays, many fertility clinics are seeking to improve their accountability to stakeholders through patient-centred practices. Based on an ethnographic study of a Dutch fertility clinic, outspoken in its aims to provide patient-centred medicine and to empower clients, this paper addresses how patient-centred medicine affects couples’ decision-making to use IVF and related reproductive technologies. The author contends that while patient-centred practices facilitate informed decision-making and support couples emotionally, they may also have unintended disciplining and normalizing effects. The information and support provided, the trust couples have in clinic staff, the ongoing visualization of conception mediated by medical technology – all can be seen as practices that strengthen lay people's ‘medical gaze’ in how they come to view their bodies, fertility problems and possible solutions. These unintended effects are labelled ‘the ambiguity of patient-centeredness’ as they (may) interfere with processes of autonomous decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the ownership structure of professional health care franchises contributes to the achievement of positive results with franchising for the franchisor, the franchisee, professional service provider, and clients. We conducted a comparative embedded case study with three health care franchises in the Netherlands using data from 101 interviews, observations, and document analyses. We show that different ownership structures at the system-level (i.e., plural form, pure franchise, cooperative franchise) and the unit-level (i.e., stand-alone versus fractional, active versus passive, single versus multi-unit) have different effects as perceived by franchisors, franchisees, and professionals. Moreover, we reveal how this variation in experienced effects can be explained by differences in dynamics in regard to management, decision making, control, steering, support, interests, learning, and adaptation. Based on these analyses, we develop new typologies of ownership structures and show how combinations of system-level and unit-level structures can have mutually weakening or strengthening effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-making on transport infrastructure projects in the Netherlands has been facing a remarkable wind of change in recent years. In the 1990s, academics and practitioners in policy analysis, public policy and planning all claimed that the traditional policy analysis methods were obsolete, yet they have experienced a sudden resurgence since 2000 in the form of OEEI (Overview of Economic Effects of Infrastructure), a refined application of cost-benefit analysis (CBA). This paper delves into why this new version of CBA has become so politically successful despite predictions made to the contrary. In addition, it focuses on whether this resurgence may lead to 'econocracy' (conceptual hegemony by economists and their ideologies and methods over other approaches), and, if so, how this can be prevented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the explanatory capacity of national models of migrant integration, through a comparative analysis of the regulation of Islamic headscarves on the one hand and civic integration abroad policies on the other hand, in both France and the Netherlands. It argues that national models—defined as historically rooted conceptions of nationhood, polity, and belonging—matter because they enable and constrain the framing of policy problems. However, the impact of national models on the policy outcome is determined by the political and institutional context in which decision-making takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]