Search

In 2012 heeft de Raad voor de rechtspraak door de Nederlandse School voor Openbaar Bestuur (NSOB) onderzoek laten uitvoeren naar de wijze waarop belangrijke beslissers en opinieleiders in Nederland oordelen over de rechtspraak. Hiermee werd in een belangrijke leemte voorzien. Eerder was via klantwaarderingsonderzoeken en studies zoals die van het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau inzicht verkregen in de wijze waarop justitiabelen en de bevolking oordelen over de rechtspraak, maar naar de perceptie van andere belangrijke stakeholders was nog geen systematisch onderzoek gedaan. In deze bijdrage voor Recht der Werkelijkheid staan we in het eerste deel stil bij de belangrijkste bevindingen van het onderzoek. In het tweede deel leggen we deze resultaten naast recente ontwikkelingen in de rechtspraak, met name het verschijnen van het Manifest en de discussie die daarop volgde. Uit deze ontwikkelingen blijkt dat de interne legitimiteit de Rechtspraak wellicht nog voor grotere uitdagingen stelt dan de externe legitimiteit die centraal stond in het onderzoek naar reputatiemanagement. In het derde deel van dit artikel proberen we deze constatering te duiden en presenteren we enkele oplossingsrichtingen. more...

In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader’s survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on institutional settings of leadership selection or on situational (political, economic and international) conditions at the time of succession, we propose a perceptual theory of leadership survival, focusing on the expectations of party constituents (or indirectly, the voting public) who have the power to remove a leader. Specifically, we argue that they ‘benchmark’ their expectation of a current party leader’s performance by comparing it against their memory of that leader’s immediate predecessor. Empirically, we show that party leaders who succeeded a (very) long-serving party leader and/or a leader who had also been the head of government experience lower longevity than others, making these types of predecessor ‘hard acts to follow’. more...

Within a short timeframe, social media have become to be widely used in government organizations. Social media gurus assume that the transformational capacities of social media result in similar communication strategies in different organizations. According to them, government is transforming into a user-generated state. This paper investigates this claim empirically by testing the claim of convergence in social media practices in three North-American police departments (Boston, Washington DC and Toronto). The research shows that the social media strategies are widely different: the Boston Police Department has developed a ‘push strategy’ while the Metropolitan Police Department in DC has developed a ‘push and pull strategy and the Toronto Police Service a ‘networking strategy’. The paper concludes that a combination of contextual and path-dependency factors accounts for differences in the emerging social media strategies of government organizations. Social media have a logic of their own but this logic only manifests itself if it lands on fertile soil in a government bureaucracy. more...

The term open government is often used to describe initiatives of putting government information on the Internet. This conceptualization is too restricted since open government is not only about openness in informational terms ( vision) but also about openness in interactive terms ( voice). On the basis of an analysis of 103 articles, this article provides insight into the concepts of openness, transparency and participation, their interactions, and the manner in which they have been discussed in the literature. This analysis shows the differences and similarities between economic, political science and legal perspectives on open government and argues that a multidisciplinary approach needs to be taken. The authors conclude that open government is much too important to leave it to the ‘techies’: scientists and practitioners with backgrounds in law, economics, political science and public administration should also get involved to build sound connections between vision and voice that facilitate active citizenship. Points for practitioners This article provides guidelines for the realization of open government: (1) design open government for synergistic or complementary relationships between transparency and participation, (2) design open government for a diverse population, (3) design open government for direct and indirect effects, (4) design open government acknowledging a variety in desirables and (5) design for continuous learning about effects and side-effects. The authors emphasize that a diversified approach to the design of open government will be more fruitful in the long run than merely understanding it in terms of making information publicly available. more...

Because technologies and morals co-evolve, modern societies have to become adept at techno-moral learning, or the art of ‘reflective’ co-evolution. Developing this skill requires a better understanding of the various ways technology and morality challenge each other. With this aim in mind, we analyse the history of the Dutch debates on organ donation, showing how moral considerations enabled the development and application of transplantation technology. We argue that moral principles like bodily integrity and self-determination have proved to be very robust—so much so that they contribute to the scarcity of donor organs and so frustrate the full application of the transplantation technology. This ‘moral stand-still’ has led to technological experiments aimed at resolving this scarcity and to the reinterpretation of aspects of morality that seem more flexible than the principles of bodily integrity and self-determination. more...

The Euro-crisis is the most severe crisis the European Union has ever faced. Despite its scale and urgency, political and financial leaders have struggled to find its solution. Several observers have traced this inability back to the divide between states adhering to Ordoliberal and those advocating Keynesian policies, Germany and France in particular. Preceding the question of whether and how leaders’ policy ideas influenced decision-making, however, is the question to what extent such paradigmatic divide actually existed. To provide an in-depth and dynamic view of the French and German divide, this study uses the technique of Comparative Cognitive Mapping to explore the extent to which the views of Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy and the German and French central bank presidents, Weber and Noyer, may be characterised as Ordoliberal or Keynesian. Moreover, the article analyses how the crisis affected these ideas. The study finds that in paradigmatic terms, leaders’ policy views are rather ambiguous and flexible. Moreover, it shows that the Euro-crisis actually fostered a convergence in views towards a more modest Ordoliberal view rather than a greater divide. Remarkably, this convergence moves the group consensus towards a more compromising position, away from the traditional position of the dominant partner, Germany. more...

Lofstedt and Way (2014) present a valuable empirical analysis of the relation between transparency and trust in pharmaceutical regulators. They correctly note that a positive relation between trans... more...

Targeted transparency has become a popular regulatory instrument, but its effects are fuzzy because disclosure does not always lead to better compliance. To understand this fuzziness, it is necessary to study the meanings managers attribute to disclosure systems. An empirical analysis of disclosure systems for food safety in Denmark and for environmental safety in the Netherlands confirms that the range of managerial reactions is broader than expected on the basis of rational-choice theory, but can be explained by focusing on local meanings. The article illustrates the shortcomings of a homogeneous approach to targeted transparency policy. Regulators should adopt a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach and develop differentiated policies based on a more nuanced understanding of the meanings managers attribute to targeted transparency. more...

Building on the literature on collaborative leadership, this paper explores the roles of individual persons in processes of public innovation. On the basis of a literature review, a heuristic model is developed that consists of roles at different levels (entrepreneurial leadership versus innovation realization) and in different phases (idea generation, selection, testing, scaling-up, and diffusion). The value of this model is explored through an in-depth, longitudinal analysis of a police innovation in the Netherlands. The empirical study underlines the value of the model and shows that, although individual hero-innovators may not exist, distributed heroism does. more...

Transparency is considered a key value for trustworthy governments. However, the effect of transparency on citizens’ trust across different national cultures is overlooked in current research. This article compares the effect of transparency on trust in government between the Netherlands and South Korea. The effect is investigated by two similar series of three experiments. We hypothesize that the effect of transparency differs, because both countries have different cultural values regarding power distance and short and long-term orientation. Results reveal similar patterns in both countries: transparency has a subdued and sometimes negative effect on trust in government. However, the negative effect in South Korea is much stronger. This implies a subdued and negative effect of transparency on trust in the short term in both countries. Nevertheless, the difference in the magnitude of transparency’s effect suggests that national cultural values play a significant role in how people perceive and appreciate government transparency. more...

De overheid moet terugtreden, zo bepleiten verschillende adviesraden: minder overheid, of ten minste een bescheidener rol van de overheid, in beleid en in financiën. Dit wordt nodig geacht omdat de overheid en de markt gefaald zouden hebben in het uitvoeren van publieke taken en de overheid initiatiefrijke burgers in de weg lijkt te zitten. Maar hoe reëel is het eigenlijk dat de overheid terugtreedt en is dit proces al gaande of gaat het vooral om wensdenken voor de toekomst? Hoe ziet een voorwaardenscheppende overheid er eigenlijk uit? De bespreking van de adviesrapporten in dit artikel maakt duidelijk dat de redeneringen van de adviesraden grondig en op het eerste gezicht plausibel zijn. Tegelijk schieten zij nog tekort in de praktische vertaling voor beleidsmakers, zijn zij wat te optimistisch over de rol van de samenleving en worden de echte keuzes met betrekking tot de vraag welke taken de overheid aan de samenleving gaat overdragen, uit de weg gegaan. more...

Computer-mediated transparency is seen as a powerful tool to attain policy goals and to transform government. This is based on the idea that transparency is something good in itself, which can be attained by using ICTs eventually improving government and citizen relations. This article claims that although transparency of government is necessary, scholars and practitioners tend to overestimate its positive effects and underestimate its negative effects. There is no reason to believe that transparency is always a good thing. Further, ICTs are not necessarily an effective means to increase transparency; there is an increased risk of information overload, cyber propaganda and inadvertent information release. Transparency might even drive citizens away from government as it gives way to a 'gotcha' media culture and political cynicism. Moreover, transparency has potential wide scale unforeseen and unintended consequences which eventually may affect society and economy. This is not a plea against transparency, but this article gives several pointers that the risks involved with disclosing information are much more complicated than the literature has yet fully acknowledged. This article concludes that the future of transparency may be twofold: more transparency of quantifiable performance indicators, but increased control of information flows that are at the heart of governments. more...

Contains fulltext : 120205.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) When accepting the Maastricht treaty, the members of the Euro-zone agreed on the establishment of a very independent European Central Bank (ECB). Over the years, however, French political leaders systematically brought forward proposals undermining the ECB’s independence, much to the dismay of their German counterparts. This pattern of political disagreement on central bank independence has again surfaced during the current sovereign debt crisis, and has contributed to the discord amongst the Euro-zone members on the causes and proper solutions to the problems. This article conducts tests of various factors generally expected to influence the preference for central bank independence. It shows that economic explanations are unable to account for the persistent differences amongst European member-states on this issue. In contrast, national differences in political and economic culture and especially a nation’s score on the dimension Power Distance—its acceptance of centralisation of power in political leaders or institutions—does show a correlation with the different levels of internalisation of the norm of central bank independence. These findings show that institutionalisation of economic norms does not imply their internalisation by the political and the economic elite. In the broader context of current European politics, this may mean that even if European leaders will be able to come up with a common institutional answer to the current crisis, more profound convergence of their underlying economic and political cultures is needed for the successful and sustainable implementation of these solutions. 18 p. more...

Embedding democratic innovations that increase and deepen citizen participation in decision making has become a common policy of local governments in many countries. This article focuses on the role of the design of these innovations and seeks to establish the effects of their design on democracy. The article evaluates 20 cases of participatory governance and 19 deliberative forums. The findings show that different designs produce different democratic effects, but also that the suitability of a particular design depends on the type of policy issue. Tensions between representative and direct democracy are more likely to exist for participatory governance than for deliberative forums. more...

The importance placed on risk avoidance in our society has resulted in a broad range of regulations intended to guarantee safety of products such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Many of these regulations rely on animal tests. As a result, about 25% of the animal experiments in Europe are done for regulatory purposes. There are many initiatives that aim to replace, reduce, or refine laboratory animal use, but the regulatory acceptance and use of 3R models lags behind. The central question of this study is: "Which variables influence the regulatory acceptance and use of 3R models and in what way?" Regulatory acceptance is seen as one of the biggest hurdles 3R models face, but the rationale behind this is still underexplored. This study is an approach to filling that gap by combining opinions from experts in the field with literature on technology acceptance and risk regulation, resulting in a model of the variables that determine the process of the regulatory acceptance and use of 3R models. more...

This paper distinguishes between two main concepts of accountability: accountability as a virtue and accountability as a mechanism. In the former case, accountability is used primarily as a normative concept, as a set of standards for the evaluation of the behaviour of public actors. Accountability or, more precisely, being accountable, is seen as a positive quality in organisations or officials. Hence, accountability studies often focus on normative issues, on the assessment of the actual and active behaviour of public agents. In the latter case, accountability is used in a narrower, descriptive sense. It is seen as an institutional relation or arrangement in which an actor can be held to account by a forum. Here, the locus of accountability studies is not the behaviour of public agents, but the way in which these institutional arrangements operate. The present paper argues that distinguishing more clearly between these two concepts of accountability can solve at least some of the current conceptual confusion and may provide some foundation for comparative and cumulative analysis. more...

The academic literature on celebrity politics is rarely systematic; more often it is superficial and anecdotal. In addition, most of the literature focuses either upon classifying different types/categories of celebrity politicians and their roles in politics, or upon the question of whether the growth of celebrity politics undermines or enhances democracy. In this article we consider both of these issues more systematically and, in doing so, work towards a more coherent understanding of the mechanisms that influence modern governance and the operation of contemporary democracy. more...

This article introduces a novel dataset on the agenda of the European Council, the most powerful political body and core informal agenda setter of the EU. Using the approach taken by the Comparative Agendas Project, we trace political issue attention over a 38-year period (1975–2012). The insights in the agenda-setting processes within the European Council shed more light on the overall agenda of the EU and its temporal dynamics. This article explains the construction of the dataset, describes its features, and gives some examples of possible applications. more...

De staat van de staat is een dankbaar onderwerp van academische reflectie. In de afgelopen decennia, waarin de staat van betrekkelijk onproblematisch probleemoplosser tot tamelijk problematisch probleem-an-sich evolueerde, zijn er tal van beschouwingen verschenen waarin de staat van de staat in vaak mooie woorden wordt geduid. Er is, om maar een betrekkelijk willekeurige selectie te maken, geschreven over de uitgeholde staat van Rod Rhodes (1994), de managementstaat van Jouke de Vries (2002) en de fatale staat van Paul Frissen (2013). De kracht van dergelijke beschouwingen ligt in hun vermogen om woorden te geven en betekenis te verlenen aan wezenlijke trends, gebeurtenissen en ideeën. Tegelijk brengen ze ook veel dingen onder één noemer, wat dergelijke claims ook vatbaar maakt voor ‘falsificatie’, zo is de afgelopen jaren gebleken in kritische evaluaties (Mastenbroek, 2003; Hill & Lynn, 2005; Blom & Schillemans, 2010). Dit themanummer over het ‘organiseren van de terugtocht’ staat in uitgangspunt in dezelfde groot-thetische traditie. Maar de cruciale voorvraag is natuurlijk of, en zo ja in welke mate en op welke terreinen, er daadwerkelijk sprake is van een empirische terugtocht van de overheid. Teneinde een antwoord, of, zoals zal blijken, antwoorden te geven op deze vraag, analyseert dit artikel het optreden van de overheid in de afgelopen tien jaar. De analyse zal duidelijk maken dat er verschillende verhalen te vertellen zijn over ‘de’ rijksoverheid in Nederland. Er is sprake, om in de metaforiek van dit themanummer te blijven, van een veelfrontenoorlog, waarbij de overheid op verschillende fronten in verschillende stadia van oprukken dan wel terugtrekken opereert. more...

The state has been expanding throughout the twentieth century but now seems to be in retreat. This special issue addresses the question how central governments can organize their retreats. It is a theme with a double-sided focus. On the one hand, we will offer an empirical and theoretical state of the art of the ‘state of the state’. On the other hand, this special issue will thematise how a retreat of the state can be organized in a proper way. The special issue consists of eight different articles; some more theoretical and normative and others clearly empirical. Together the articles provide a colourful overview of the state of the Dutch state in the early 21st Century. more...

Growing levels of skepticism towards institutions of representative democracy have led to a growing interest for alternative ways of decision-making, both among scholars and politicians. Using data collected within an ongoing Dutch internet panel survey (LISS) in 2011, we track citizens’ support for direct, stealth and representative democracy according to their educational level. Our findings indicate that lower educated citizens are more likely to support both direct and stealth democracy compared to higher educated. When contrasting the different decision-making processes with one another, our results reveal higher levels of support for direct democracy compared to both representative and stealth democracy among lower educated compared to higher educated. Even though most of the educational gaps remain substantial once political attitudes are controlled for, some gaps can be (partly) explained by lower educated citizens’ lower levels of political efficacy, trust and satisfaction. In general then, our study finds support for political dissatisfaction theories which suggest low education and political dissatisfaction to result in a demand for an alternative decision-making process; an alternative that would contain less citizens’ involvement (stealth democracy) but primarily one that means more engagement (direct democracy) compared to representative democracy. more...

Pierre Bourdieu has given a brief but fierce critique of the concept of “profession” that calls for a more reflexive analysis of the professions and in fact suggests not using the concept at all. In this contribution, we explicate the gist of that critique and argue it is possible to analyze it in a Bourdieusian fashion. We regard professionalism as a form of symbolic capital, the substance of which is constantly at stake in power-driven contexts, both internally and externally. Professional fields are embedded in objective relations with other fields in what Bourdieu describes as a general field of power. Within each professional field, the legitimate substance of what it means to act in a “professional way” is constantly at stake. In turn, across various professional fields, within what Bourdieu describes as a larger field of power, the very idea or “formal content” of “professionalism” is subject to struggle and (re)negotiation. This power-centered view emphasizes professionalism is a scarce symbolic resource, an object of a process of consecration and a source of legitimate forms of acting and interpreting. It thereby de-essentializes talk of professions and professionalization. more...

One important function of European regulatory networks (ERNs) is to provide national regulatory authorities (NRAs) with an institutional platform for coordinating the implementation and harmonization of Community law within the member states by issuing non-binding norms such as guidelines and standards. However, to what extent are NRAs successful in implementing these non-binding rules within their member states and what is the role of European networks of regulation? This article argues, and illustrates with a case study of the implementation of privacy norms in electronic health systems in the Netherlands, that next to the expertise generated by the relevant ERN, it was the institutional compliance of the Dutch government to the Privacy Directive that has substantially contributed to the bureaucratic autonomy of the Dutch Data Protection Authority. more...

Crisis management research has largely ignored one of the most pressing challenges political leaders are confronted with in the wake of a large-scale extreme event: how to cope with what is commonly called the blame game. In this article, we provide a heuristic to help understand political leader responses to blame in the aftermath of crises, emphasizing the crucial role of their leadership style on the political management of Inquiries. After integrating theoretical and empirical findings on crisis management and political leadership styles, we illustrate our heuristic by applying it to the Bush administration's response to Hurrican Katrina in 2005. We conclude by offering suggestions for further research on the underdeveloped subject of the blame management challenges faced by political leaders in the wake of acute crisis episodes. more...

Independent regulatory authorities (IRAs) today have considerable competences. They can regulate and supervise the behaviour of market and societal parties, and set prices for goods and services. They can enforce regulations through fines and ‘naming and shaming’. Thirdly, they have quasi-judicial functions. Yet IRAs are independent in their decisions from both the elected political sphere and sectoral interests. This makes the question whom, or what, these authorities represent a salient one. Yet this question is not often discussed in the literature. In the literature on IRAs, three approaches towards the independent bodies can be distinguished, that either stress their ‘inherent’ legitimacy based on the quality of their decisions, emphasize their ‘derived’ democratic legitimacy from elected institutions, or argue their legitimacy derives from their relations with a variety of actors. Commonly, however, IRAs are considered ‘unrepresentative’ because of their unelected status. In this thesis, it is argued that IRAs should nevertheless be considered non-electoral representative claimants. Viewing IRAs as such yields positive and normative benefits, that may be employed in the further study of these agencies, including in the three outlined approaches. To make this argument, four IRAs in the Netherlands – the telecommunications regulator OPTA, energy regulator NMa Energy Chamber, financial supervisor AFM, and healthcare regulator NZa – are studied from the perspective of the theorization of representative claims by Michael Saward (2010). Representation in this framework is considered a rhetorical and discursive process, consisting of claims to act or speak for others and the simultaneous construction of constituencies in these claims. Representative claims may have electoral and non-electoral resources: they can be made by politicians, interest groups, government organizations, ombudsmen and individuals alike. Likewise, representative claims can be received and accepted or rejected by the targeted constituency on the basis of a variety of criteria. Judgments regarding the democratic legitimacy of representative claims should be relayed to this constituency. Employing the representative claim approach, it is argued that the four IRAs in the Netherlands have been claimed by the Dutch law-making body to independently represent economic and non-economic ‘public’ interests in marketized and liberalized domains. Likewise, the four IRAs themselves in their public self-presentation increasingly claim to represent consumer interests in their activities. On the board level, governors are claimed to be independent experts standing for public and consumer interests, although an exploration of the professional backgrounds of board members reveals they often have backgrounds in the bureaucracy or the regulated sector, and never in the consumer movement. Lastly, on the work-floor level, employees of IRAs interact with representatives of sectoral interests in consultation procedures, in which various representative claim-making strategies are employed. Far from unrepresentative, IRAs should therefore be considered representative claimants – and facilitators of representative claims – in their own right. Independent market regulation involves the construction and reception of representative claims just as much as the traditional electoral sphere. Further study of IRAs and their interaction with sectoral interests should take the representative claim-making character of these independent bodies into account. Lastly, in order to strengthen their democratic legitimacy, IRAs should make their decisions transparent to the consumer public, while consumer organizations should be empowered to represent their constituency inside IRA consultation procedures. more...

In recent years, the European continent has witnessed a substantial number of "transboundary crises" - crises that cross geographical borders and affect multiple policy domains. Nation states find it hard to deal with such crises by themselves. International cooperation, thus, becomes increasingly important, but it is not clear what shape or form that cooperation should take. This article explores the growing role of the European Union (EU) in managing transboundary crises. More specifically, it reflects on the different ways in which the expanding contours of the EU's emerging crisis capacity can be organized. Using three "performative dimensions" - sense-making, coordination, and legitimacy - the article discusses the possible advantages and disadvantages of a decentralized, network model and compares it with a more centralized, lead-agency model. It concludes that the current network model is a logical outcome of the punctuated and fragmentary process through which EU crisis management capacities have been created. It also notes that the shortcomings of this model may necessitate elements of a lead-agency model. Such "agencification" of networks for transboundary crisis management may well lead to a hybrid model that is uniquely suited for the peculiar organizational and political creature that the EU is. more...

Burgerparticipatie is hip and happening! Maar wat is volgens de wetenschap het effect ervan op de lokale democratie?

The European Union (EU) has modest but promising capacities to assist member states overwhelmed by disaster through its Civil Protection Mechanism. The EU also routinely sends civil and military missions to hotspots outside EU territory. But these capacities do not suffice in the face of transboundary crises: threats that cross geographical and policy borders within the Union. Examples include epidemics, financial crises, floods, and cyber terrorism. Nation states cannot cope with these threats without international collaboration. In this article, we explore the EU's efforts to develop transboundary crisis management capacities. We describe these budding capacities, explain their policy origins, and explore their future potential. more...

This chapter surveys how the field has addressed the central puzzles of political leadership by discussing several key dichotomies that have been the focal point of scholarly inquiry and debate past and present: leaders and leadership; democrats and dictators; causes and consequences; actors and context; personal qualities and luck; success and failure; and art and science. The authors conclude that the study of leadership is a somewhat bewildering enterprise because there is no unified theory of leadership. There are too many definitions, and too many theories in too many disciplines. They do not agree on the meaning of leadership, on how to study it, or even why we study it. The subject is not just beset by dichotomies; it is also multifaceted, and essentially contested. Finally, the authors provide a brief conspectus of the Handbook. more...

The consequences of media attention for politics have been heavily debated, but little was known about its effects on actors close to, but outside the direct political domain: public organizations. Previous research in the field of media & politics as well as in public accountability studies suggests two possible categories of effects. The first one is that intensive media coverage can, eventually via public accountability processes, lead to extreme caution at the side of the account-giver, thus the public organization, out of fear to be punished again in case of failure. The second category of possible consequences is that heavy media attention – directly or through formal accountability processes – leads to corrective effects on the organization: the organization improves its functioning as a consequence of accountability and media attention. This qualitative research deals with the question of ‘who is right?’: do mediatized incidents concerning public organizations, either directly or through formal processes of accountability, lead to goal displacement or goal attainment? This research draws upon insights from public administration and organizational theory to explore the consequences of mediatized incidents for public sector organizations in the Netherlands. First, media presence public sector organizations has been analyzed in terms of quantity. This research shows that – for 802 articles in a two-week period – public organizations are often mentioned in newspaper articles (40 per cent of all articles), but are less often the main actor in these messages (13 per cent of all articles) and in only 1 per cent journalists have acted as an independent forum. Regarding all mentions, the amount of media coverage is comparable to that for political actors.Subsequently, it has been investigated if critical media reports on public sector organizations lead to formal public accountability (parliamentary questions). It can be concluded that critical reports hardly ever lead to formal political accountability in the form of questions by MP’s. To be sure, a large share of the questions (119 out of 164) is based on media news (tv, internet, newspaper), but they do not deal with public organizations. The second and largest part of the research consists of case studies. Did media attention, eventually via accountability processes, have consequences for their internal and external accountability relations, as well as for their incident-related and external communication policies? My cases are organizations with a public task that faced incidents which received media coverage. I investigated housing corporation Mitros with boiler problems, the (former) Food and Consumer Safety Authority (VWA) and livestock transport, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) with the HPV vaccination campaign and ProRail with wintry weather that caused railway disruptions. The main conclusions of these case studies are that mediatized accountability activates and intensifies external account giving, often with explicit reference to media coverage. With some exceptions, it seems that the activation of formal account giving through mediatized accountability leads to more frequent interaction, but this quickly subsides once political attention shifts to other issues. Adaptation can also be found in communication and incident-related policies. This dissertation shows that goal displacement is relatively rare. Way more often, I find goal attainment and goal adjustment. Public organizations facing an incident therefore seem to adapt to a changing environment, they mediatise, and in doing so move in a more functional direction, but sometimes less functional, too. more...

Disclosure of information is an increasingly popular policy instrument to increase compliance. While the use of disclosed information by consumers has been studied, little is known about the disclosure practices of organizations. The central question in this paper is: how do organizations translate the trade-off between legal and communicative quality into an organizational arrangement for the production of client communication products? Scholars suggest that the translation of this trade-off into organizational practices is influenced by the perception of the regulatory environment. We present an empirical study of 24 pension funds in the Netherlands to investigate this issue. Our findings falsify the expected relations between perceptions of the environment and organizational arrangements for client communication practices. Instead, this study highlights that a hybrid organizational arrangement for communicating with clients is the modus operandi for most organizations as it is an attractive way of integrating both legal and communicative expertise. Further research is needed to find out why organizations do or don’t choose this option. more...

The development of access to documents and open meetings provisions by the Council of Ministers of the European Union shows an interesting pattern: before 1992 no formal transparency provisions existed, between 1992 and 2006 formal transparency provisions dramatically increased, and since 2006 this increase has come to a halt. This paper aims to enhance our understanding of these shifts by conducting a historical institutional analysis of policy change. As explanatory factors, we consider the prefer- ences and power resources of Member States, as well as external catalysts and social structures. We conclude that the current revision deadlock is more stable than the situation before 1992 because now the pro-transparency coalition and transparency- sceptic Council majority have entrenched their positions. Nevertheless, and in spite of Council entrenchment, we expect that Council transparency will continue to develop in the longer term, under the pressure of increasingly influential outside actors, particularly the European Parliament. I more...

1 Introductie Rechters en raadsheren ervaren spanning tussen productiedruk enerzijds en de kwaliteit van de Rechtspraak anderzijds. Professionele standaarden kunnen helpen bij het bepalen wat wel en niet acceptabel is in relatie tot de kwaliteit van werk. In opdracht van de Raad voor de rechtspraak deed USBO (Universiteit Utrecht) vergelijkend onderzoek naar professionele standaarden van medisch specialisten, accountants en politieagenten, met als doel lessen te genereren voor de ontwikkeling van professionele standaarden in de Rechtspraak. 2 Vraagstelling en aanpak De leidende onderzoeksvraag was: ‘Op welke wijze zijn professionele standaarden in andere beroepsgroepen tot stand gekomen en geïntroduceerd, hoe worden deze standaarden geborgd en actueel gehouden en welke lessen kan de Rechtspraak hieruit trekken?’ We startten met literatuuronderzoek. Vervolgens voerden we desk research uit naar professionele standaarden in de drie beroepsgroepen (medisch specialisten, accountants en politieagenten) en interviewden we sleutelfiguren. Voor de vertaling van de resultaten naar de Rechtspraak spraken we in (groeps) interviews met rechters en raadsheren. 3 Theoretische inkadering Professionele standaarden richten zich op het formeel en informeel definiëren, coderen en ijken van de beroepsuitoefening, door beroepsgroepen zelf, als onderdeel van verdergaande professionalisering van een beroepsgroep. In figuur 1 werken we de professionele standaarden verder uit. De kern van professionele standaarden bestaat uit idealen (de ambitiecode). De educatieve code vult deze idealen verder in, zodat standaarden op casusniveau binnen de beroepspraktijk toepasbaar zijn. De regulerende code formuleert vervolgens normen en protocollen die bij niet-naleven gekoppeld kunnen worden aan sancties. Naast deze codes hebben professionals steeds meer te maken met aanvullende standaardisering door beleidskaders (wettelijke kaders en beleidsbepalingen) en organisatorische kaders (tijd, geld en capaciteit). Professioneel werk vraagt om verbinding tussen de binnenste drie ringen en de buitenste ring. Organiseren en management zijn onlosmakelijke onderdelen van professioneel werk. Naast handelen vanuit de eigen professie moeten professionals ook ‘organisatieverantwoordelijk’ handelen. more...

Although the effect of government transparency on trust is heavily debated, our theoretical and empirical understanding of this relationship is still limited. The basic assumption tested in this article is whether transparency leads to higher levels of perceived trustworthiness. This article uses theories from social psychology to advance our understanding of the effects and mechanism of the relationship between transparency and the perceived trustworthiness of a government organization. Based on these theories, we propose two alternative hypotheses: (1) the general predisposition to trust government, and (2) prior knowledge about the specific issue moderates the relationship between transparency and trust. These assumptions are tested by online experimental research, which demonstrates that these factors indeed affect the relationship between transparency and perceived trustworthiness: changes in perceived competence occur mainly in the group of citizens with high trust and little knowledge, whereas changes in perceived benevolence occur predominantly in the group of citizens with low knowledge and low trust. These findings highlight that prior knowledge and general predisposition to trust should be incorporated in our theoretical models of the relationship between transparency and perceived trustworthiness. more...

Experimentation has formed the basis for modern scientific discovery. Francis Bacon (1561– 1626), “the father of empiricism,” was one of the first to propose a method of science based on experimentation that results in new theories that can again be tested by experimentation. At first, experiments seemed to be suitable only for the natural sciences. The method was later adopted by the “softer” sciences such as psychology and economics. Until recently, political scientists thought that classic experiments were not suitable for political science because of the complex and dynamic character of the field. In the first chapter of this edited volume by James N. Druckman, Donald P. Green, James H. Kuklinski, and Arthur Lupia, Lawrence Lowell (1910) is cited: “We are limited by the impossibility of experiment. Politics is an observational, not an experimental science . . .” (p. 3). However, the growing interest in causation and the empirically guided theory development have caused a growth in the number of experiments in political science. Scholars are encouraged by the ways in which experiments facilitate causation and use transparent procedures. Experimental political science has gained momentum, and this handbook comes at the right time to capture this moment and usher experimental political science forward. more...

Pierre-Marc Daigneault's article (2014) is a welcome attempt to clarify the meaning of the concept of ‘policy paradigm’. The separation between paradigms and policies that he proposes is particular... more...

This paper starts with the observation that liberal and discursive perspectives have been dominant in academic analyses of the role of technology in the future of democracy. The perspective of democracy as a participatory practice is largely ignored by academic investigations of electronic democracy. This paper argues that new technologies increasingly enable citizens to organize their own forms of public value production in a Do It Yourself (DIY) State: governance without government. The DIY State should not be seen as utopia. Although the DIY State may reflect the hippy ideal of a supportive community, it could also take the form of a 'jungle' where only the fittest survive. A further understanding of this form of democracy, of the way it is affected by new technologies, and of the remaining role for government, is needed to inform public debate and practices. more...

This chapter characterizes the role of prime ministers as public leaders: of the government, their parties, and the nation. It reviews the current state of knowledge about prime ministers, signals its limitations and sets out the research agenda of the study. It argues that understanding and evaluating how prime ministers perform their leadership function requires delving into the interplay between personal, institutional and contextual factors. It maps out the design of the collaborative and comparative research project the remainder of the book reports on. more...

Triggered by the recent inquiries into the Fukushima nuclear disaster, this article reflects on the challenges of developing and operating risk regulation and crisis management regimes in an era of highly complex and tightly interconnected socio‐technical systems. These challenges are not just technical and professional but fundamentally institutional and cultural. The article identifies three key paradoxes and challenges of contemporary risk and crisis management, signals a range of recurrent problems in governments' efforts to cope with these challenges, problematizes current patterns of societal learning from crises, and sketches an agenda for public administration research in this area. more...