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The use of politically appointed ministerial advisors has increased noticeably in many Western countries, but we know little about how this development has affected the civil servants recruited on merit. The article asks whether political appointees accentuate or blur the line between politics and administration. Do political appointees take over political-tactical advice and leave policy advice to the permanent civil service, or do they cause permanent civil servants to be even more influenced by political considerations? And do political appointees make it easier or more difficult for the permanent civil service to be politically responsive? A Most Similar Systems Design comparison of Denmark and Sweden allows an assessment of the effects of political appointees. It is found that a large number of political appointees decreases functional politicisation of the permanent civil service; that functional politicisation tends to crowd out tasks related to more classic policy advice; and that functional politicisation increases political responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governments may bargain with parties in parliament to silence them. This insight follows from the agenda-setting literature, which emphasises the power of the opposition to criticise the government. The literature on legislatures points to the fear of loss of future voter support as a motivation for majority building. However, it does not name factors that can cause such uncertainty. One such factor is opposition criticism. This article argues that majority building does not only involve an exchange of policy support; governments use legislative coalitions to dampen unwanted opposition blame. By offering the opposition noteworthy policy influence in legislative coalitions, governments avoid opposition criticism in return, in addition to having initiatives passed. In order to test this argument, a large dataset is compiled on opposition criticism in parliament and the media before and after the 325 bargained legislative agreements settled in Denmark from 1973 to 2003. It is found that such agreements are more likely amidst opposition criticism and that they dampen opposition criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The establishment of autonomous agencies has been a strong trend in the public sector across countries for about 25 years. In line with the official rhetoric accompanying such reforms, almost all reform evaluations have focused on various kinds of performance improvements. This article investigates a set of behavioural consequences of such reforms, which have been claimed by the blame avoidance literature, but have never been subjected to systematic empirical analysis. In particular, the article examines how a reform of agencification influences the propensity of agency managers to blame the political principals when the agency is subject to public criticism. Furthermore, it examines how the reform influences the blaming rhetoric of ministers and MPs. To evaluate such reform effects systematically, the article introduces a new empirical approach and illustrates the utility of the approach in a case study of the transformation of the national Danish railway company from 1995 to 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses elections in Denmark in 2015. Topics discussed include political parties in the country including Socialist People's Party, Liberal Alliance and Social Democrats, prime minister of Denmark Lars Løkke Rasmussen and government coalition. Other topics such as political campaigns in the country are also mentioned.

What determines popular attitudes toward immigration? Recent work emphasises the importance of education rather than economic or labour market factors. Missing from this work, however, is a consideration of elite positions. This study extends education-based accounts in two key ways: by acknowledging the multidimensional nature of the immigration issue and by incorporating cues from party elites. Cues from trusted elites inform popular attitudes on immigration. But rather than serving as a heuristic for the less sophisticated, elite cues on immigration are disproportionately employed by those more educated individuals who rely on elite positions to form opinions on multidimensional issues, like immigration, on which they are cross-pressured. Theoretical expectations are supported by evidence from cross-national analyses of party positions and public opinion and from a longitudinal examination of mass and party positions in Denmark. The results call attention to the importance of dimensionality in the formation of issue opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, many governments have shown a keen interest in "nudges" -- approaches to law and policy that maintain freedom of choice, but that steer people in certain directions. Yet to date, there has been little evidence on whether citizens of various societies support nudges and nudging. We report the results of nationally representative surveys in six European nations: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the United Kingdom. We find strong majority support for nudges of the sort that have been adopted, or under serious consideration, in democratic nations. Despite the general European consensus, we find markedly lower levels of support for nudges in two nations: Hungary and Denmark. We are not, in general, able to connect support for nudges with distinct party affiliations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on policy agendas is based on the assumption that space on the agenda is fixed and, hence, focuses on how problems compete for this limited agenda space. This article holds that policy agendas may be limited but not fixed, meaning that problems may not always be traded off but confronted through a larger policy agenda. Based on an extensive collection of local council agendas from 98 Danish municipalities over time, this article investigates variations in agenda size across local governments and examines the extent to which this reflects the local problem environment. The analysis reveals that a large council agenda arises in response to an unfriendly problem environment, particularly if there are many committees to channel problems onto the agenda and, to a lesser extent, if center-left parties hold office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the ghetto in Danish political discourse. While ghetto studies have previously been conducted within the field of urban sociology, the article departs from this tradition in offering a discourse analytical perspective on the former Danish government's strategy against ghettoization ( The Ghetto Plan). Integrating perspectives from the literature on nationalism with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analytical framework, the analysis argues that the ghetto marks an antagonistic anti-identity to Danish society. This discursive construction of the ghetto against society has the effect of confirming Danish identity, while at the same time precluding possibilities of the ghetto's integration in society. Highlighting these implications, the study feeds into societal debates on integration, and suggests a framework for studying nationalist othering in a discourse analytical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When does new economic information cause voters to reevaluate the government's competence and ultimately vote economically? Since politically relevant information is often conveyed by actors with incentives to influence voter perceptions, the credibility of information sources can vary significantly. This article randomly varies whether voters receive an aggregate unemployment forecast from the central bank, government or main opposition party using a survey experiment in Denmark linked to detailed panel data. We find that politically sophisticated voters discern differences in institutional credibility and the political cost of the signal and update their unemployment expectations accordingly. Despite failing to differentiate political costs, unsophisticated voters still substantially update their expectations. However, while sophisticated voters intend to engage in substantial prospective economic voting, unsophisticated voters do not relate their new unemployment expectations to their vote intention. These findings suggest that economic information supports economic voting most when it is credible and reaches sophisticated voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's engagement in political discussions with parents and friends represents a significant component of the political socialization process and can be seen as an activity where they learn some very basic democratic skills. Based on data from qualitative interviews and a questionnaire survey, this article explores how young people experience political discussions in their everyday life. Our data indicate that young people who feel that their father, mother or friends, respectively, hold more distant political views are less likely to engage in political discussions with each of them. These findings support previous studies in political communication suggesting that people tend to avoid social situations where political disagreements are likely to appear. Furthermore, the results show that there are significant gender differences when analysing the role of the parents as political discussion partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins by providing a brief overview of Danish colonial and imperial history in the tropics, the Arctic and the sub-Arctic. It then discusses how Danish colonialism relates to a broader regional (Scandinavian/Nordic) and pan-European colonial history. From there it moves on to consider Denmark's postcolonial condition, that is, it identifies issues in contemporary Denmark deriving from Danish (and European) colonialism's aftermath. This unfinished business includes contemporary historiography of the migrant other in Danish society, refugee discourse in the public domain, the early stages of a reconciliation process with former colonies – reconciliation has been placed on the public agenda in both Greenland and the US Virgin Islands (formerly the Danish West Indies) - and the still unfolding process of Greenlandic and Faroese independence. The article maps out how the emerging dis-connections between Denmark and its former colonies are paradoxically juxtaposed with processes of new reinforcement: The U.S. Virgin Islands has emerged as an important tourist destination for Danes (more than 10,000 visitors each year). Ghana is one of the major recipients of Danish development aid. Major restoration programs are and have been conducted in all former Danish tropical colonies. In Greenland, Denmark is using its sovereignty to boost its international status as part of the Arctic council, as a scientific power centre on Polar/Arctic research – not least in relation to climate change. The article concludes by looking at critical approaches to Danish colonial history and its legacy in contemporary Danophone literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Influence upon the societal agenda is an important power resource in modern democracies. Consequently, inequalities in such influence across different segments of the public have important democratic implications. Using time-series methods on a unique Danish dataset, this article investigates the existence of inequalities in agenda power across groups with different levels of political sophistication and finds that the most sophisticated members of the public possess more such power vis-à-vis the media and politicians than the less sophisticated. The existence of inequalities in agenda power across different segments of the public, even in the homogenous Danish society, implies that countries characterised by higher levels of inequality should experience even larger disparities, thereby jeopardising the democratic principle that all citizens have equal access to placing issues on the agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author offers a model for establishing national design research and upgrading art-based design education programs. Particular focus is given to how this relates to programs that are offered at the university level. Additional topics examined include a 2000 study from the Danish Evaluation Institute that looked at Danish design education programs, the Danish Centre of Design Research (DCDR) and insights on the concepts of design and research. Details relating Denmark's Ministry of Culture are also offered.

This article examines the impact of politics on governmental rule production. Traditionally, explanations of rule dynamics have focused on nonpolitical factors such as the self-evolvement of rules, environmental factors, and decision maker attributes. This article develops a set of hypotheses about when, why, and how political factors shape changes in the stock of rules. Furthermore, we test these hypotheses on a unique, new data set based on all Danish primary legislation and administrative rules from 1989 to 2011 categorized into 20 different policy domains. The analysis shows that the traditional Weberian 'rules breed rules' explanations must be supplemented with political explanations that take party ideology and changes in the political agenda into account. Moreover, the effect of political factors is indistinguishable across changes in primary laws and changes in administrative rules, a result that challenges the depiction of the latter rule-making process as more or less disconnected from the political domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation to benefit individual recipients of public services (user orientation) can conflict with classic public service motivation linked to the interest of a collective entity. When actions intended to increase the well-being of an individual user can harm societal interests, the two types of motivation have different behavioural implications, but we know far too little about these potential trade-offs. This study analyses the relationships between public service motivation, user orientation, and antibiotic prescriptions for 407 general medical practitioners in Denmark. Use of antibiotics has a positive effect on the individual patient and (especially broad-spectrum antibiotics) a negative effect on society due to resistant bacteria. Combining survey and administrative data, we find that public service motivation and user orientation indeed are differently associated with prescription behaviour. This implies that it can be important for behaviour whether a public service provider is primarily inclined to help the individual user or society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark appears far more successful in managing its ‘special’ relationship with the USA than the UK since 9/11. By doing exactly the same as the UK, but on a much smaller scale and at much lower cost in terms of blood, treasure and domestic controversy, Denmark has succeeded in generating more American public gratitude than the UK. While London has been accused of losing Basra and Musa Qaleh, Copenhagen has been showered with praise and top-posts in NATO. This article explains why demonstrating how the differences in size and reputation gave rise to different expectations of the special relationship both in Washington and at home. Britain disappointed Washington by failing to make a difference in stabilising Afghanistan and Iraq, whereas Denmark by merely engaging in combat and taking casualties far exceeded Washington's expectations. Likewise, the failure to significantly influence decision-making in Washington was a source of great frustration in London but a non-issue in Copenhagen, which never expected it in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Christiania is an autonomous Free Town, born as a squat in 1971, located in the centre of Copenhagen. After 40 years of struggles and negotiations with the Danish institutions in order to survive and to maintain its autonomy, Christiania reached an agreement with the state in 2011. If on the one hand the agreement apparently guarantees the survival of Christiania, on the other hand it regulates various domains that used to be self-regulated by the community, and therefore limits Christiania’s autonomy. The aim of the article is to discuss the potential effects of the agreement – and more specifically of the new government technology placed in operation through the agreement – on some of these domains. Assuming that autonomy is always fractured, partial and ongoing, the thesis proposed in the article is that, in this new context, Christiania has come to represent a peculiar case of hybridisation of forces of autonomy and of forces of neoliberalisation, and that the tensions between these two forces could potentially lead to different outcomes that challenge traditional understanding of both autonomy and neoliberalism in urban contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the most rebellious movement in Danish post-war history – the leftist squatter movement in Copenhagen, 1981–2011 – thus recommending itself as a relevant case for the understanding of radicalization. The article's study of these squatters builds on thecontentious politicsapproach andprotest event analysisof 790 squatter actions. Based on this, the article discusses the causal status of “extreme ideas” and other inner factors compared to contextual factors related to the national and international political environment. It concludes that “ideas” have very limited explanatory value, whereas a specific political context of threats, opportunity, and interaction explains the radicalization and de-radicalization of the Copenhagen squatter movement with striking clarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan and the US president, Barack Obama, concluded a decade of global ‘war against terror’. In light of this, it seems only sensible to explore what implications the post-9/11 international developments have had on a local basis in specific national contexts. With this in mind, this article focuses on Denmark and discusses how the critical event of 9/11 motivated a security/integration response, including various pre-emptive measures that have cast the Muslim population asthe usual suspects. It will discuss how these changes have affected the everyday lives of ordinary Danish Muslims over the last ten years and changed the relationship between majorities and minorities. Finally, it will also examine how and why recent national and international events have created the potential for another shift in majority–minority relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change (CC) is a new and, up to 2013, voluntary planning area in Denmark, and it is perceived as an interdisciplinary field affecting several professions. CC is integrated into bureaucratised municipal organisations characterised by a fragmented organisational structure and strong institutional traditions and perceptions. With this paper I examine different approaches to CC governance and the institutional dynamics that occur in the integration process within eight Danish municipalities in the initial phase of integrating CC. The results show three different governance approaches related to CC planning: experimental, negotiation, and standardisation. This paper contributes insights into the intrainstitutional dynamics at the local level when climate plans are to be implemented in practice, and it adds perspectives on the role of local established networks rather than international networks for less affluent municipalities to act on CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines actors' views on legitimacy in governance networks in four Nordic countries. The analysis is based on a survey of similar regional development networks in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The countries form a continuum, in which the connection between legitimacy and representative democracy is strongest in Denmark and weakest in Finland. Norway and Sweden fall in between the two. Not only the strength, but also the form of the connection, and the weight given to it vary among the countries. Article contributes to the debate on democracy in network governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]