Degrees of influence: Educational inequality in policy representation

Education plays an important role in the political, social and economic divisions that have recently characterised Western Europe. Despite the many analyses of education and its political consequences, however, previous research has not investigated whether government policy caters more to the preferences of the higher educated than to the preferences of the lower educated. We address this question using an original dataset of public opinion and government policy in the Netherlands. This data reveals that policy representation is starkly unequal. The association between support for policy change and actual change is much stronger for highly educated citizens than for low and middle educated citizens, and only the highly educated appear to have any independent influence on policy. This inequality extends to the economic and cultural dimensions of political competition. Our findings have major implications for the educational divide in Western Europe, as they reflect both a consequence and cause of this divide.     

In-group solidarity or out-group hostility in response to terrorism in France? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Conventional wisdom holds that terrorism has a wide-ranging impact on a polity. At the same time, a complementary, yet less extensive body of research discusses the impact of terrorism on the crux of representative democracy, namely its citizens. In contribution to that literature, and to further explore how external shocks affect public opinions, we propose a two-dimensional analytical framework to examine the effects of the November 2015 terrorist events in Paris and Saint Denis. Drawing from extant scholarship, we argue that we can expect both in-group solidarity and out-group hostility to increase in direct response to these events. This study relies on a regression discontinuity design to analyse a representative survey (DREES) that was in the field at the time of the events. Findings are two-fold. First, and perhaps surprisingly, we find no conclusive evidence of increasing out-group hostilities as a direct consequence of the terrorist events. Second, we find a definite strengthening of in-group solidarity indicators following the events. This not only confirms that citizens adjust their opinions in response to environmental stimuli, but also highlights the democratic resilience of citizens, particularly when faced with a collective threat. Altogether, these findings add to our understanding of why and how individual behaviour changes in light of exogenous shocks.     

Social Justice and Individual Ethics*

Abstract. If one is committed to a “Rawlsian” conception of justice, is one not also necessarily committed to a “Christian” personal ethics? MOE explicitly, if one believes that social justice requires the maximinning of material conditions, should one not use one's time and resources as well as one can in order to assist the poorest? The paper offers a very partial answer to these questions by arguing for the following two claims: (1) Contrary to what is implied by some egalitarian critics of Rawls, the idea of a well-ordered society does not require maximin-guided choices at the individual level, and hence leaves room for legitimate incentive payments. (2) Despite Rawls's own neglect of this fact, a limited form of patriotism does constitute an individual “natural duty” following from a commitment to maximin social justice.     

THE CONTENT AND CONTEXT OF ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICS

The aim of this paper is to provide an empirical contextual picture of what is truly valued most in different public and private sector organizations. Through a series of qualitative in‐depth interviews (n = 38), that were a follow‐up to an earlier survey study among public and private sector managers (n = 382), a number of crucial organizational values were presented to and discussed with a selection of top managers from a variety of Dutch public and private sector organizations. The decision‐making context from the interviews provides insight into why, when, how and to what extent specific values are important. A number of unexpected differences and similarities between organizations with a different sectoral status emerge from the data, which shed new light on existing predispositions on value preferences in government and business conduct.     

THE ORDER OF QUESTIONS IN A SURVEY ON CITIZEN SATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC SERVICES: LESSONS FROM A SPLIT‐BALLOT EXPERIMENT

Surveys of citizen satisfaction with local public services have become widespread, with the results increasingly used to reorganize services, to allocate budgets, and to hold managers accountable. But evidence from a split‐ballot experiment that we conducted suggests that the order of questions in a citizen survey has important effects on reported satisfaction with specific public services as well as overall citizen satisfaction. Moreover, the correlations of specific service ratings with overall satisfaction, and thus the identification of key drivers of overall satisfaction, also turn out to be highly sensitive to question order. These findings are in line with research on priming and question order effects in the survey methodology literature, but these effects have not been carefully examined before in the context of citizen surveys and public administration research. Policy and management implications of these finding are discussed.     

On the theory and practice of party formation and adaptation in new democracies

Abstract.  In addressing issues of party development in contemporary democracies, many of the recent discussions confuse notions of party formation with those of party adaptation. The contention of this article is that the conceptual confusion of these two distinct processes undermines our understanding of party development, which is of particular importance in the context of the more recently established democracies. Moreover, in order to contribute to theory building on political parties more generally, it is necessary to differentiate between the two. This article offers some theoretical contours for the study of party formation and development, and empirically evaluates the patterns of organizational development in some of the newer democracies in Southern and East-Central Europe. The analysis shows that the external context of party formation has encouraged these parties to adopt an organizational style largely resembling their contemporary counterparts in the older democracies. However, despite the resemblance between party organizations in the older liberal democracies and the newly established ones, the paths of party development are best understood as processes sui generis . The historical uniqueness of parties emerging as strong movements of society, as opposed to agents of the state, is a path that is unlikely to be repeated in contemporary polities which democratize in a different institutional context.