Accountability and Coalitions: Evidence from a Negotiation Experiment

This article tests the effect of accountability on negotiation outcomes in a face‐to‐face classroom experiment. Student participants were asked to form coalitions in groups of three. In the treatment condition, negotiators were held accountable by a personal forum during the formation of the coalition. In the control condition, negotiators were not held accountable. Results show that accountability leads to lower group performance in coalition negotiations. Accountability also reduced the willingness of negotiators to include all negotiators in a “grand coalition.” Rather, accountable negotiators reached agreement with a subset of negotiators. Accountability increased the odds of reaching no agreement. These findings challenge the idea of increased performance as a result of public accountability in the context of coalition negotiations.     

Do Rules Breed Rules? Vertical Rule-Making Cascades at the Supranational,National, and Organizational Level

Understanding where (ineffective) organizational rules come from is of vital importance for both public administration scholars and practitioners. Yet little is known about the underlying mechanisms that explain why external rules may cause organizational rule breeding and, as a by-product, red tape. Using a combination of archival and interview data, the authors empirically study rule-breeding processes in the case of Gasunie, which is a heavily regulated Dutch gas transport organization. The archival findings indicate that rule stocks have increased substantially over time at every policy level. Furthermore, the interview data support the notion that policymakers at different levels are jointly responsible for excessive rule breeding and, ultimately, organizational red tape.     

Double balloon enteroscopy in children:Diagnosis,treatment,and safety

AIM:To assess the feasibility and utility of double balloon enteroscopy(DBE)in the management of small bowel diseases in children. METHODS:Fourteen patients(10 males)with a median age of 12.9 years(range 8.1-16.7)underwent DBE; 5 for Peutz-Jeghers syndrome(PJ syndrome),2 for chronic abdominal pain,4 for obscure gastrointestinal (GI)bleeding,2 with angiomatous malformations(1 blue rubber bleb nevus syndrome)having persistent GI bleeding,and 1 with Cowden‘s syndrome with multiple polyps and previous intussusc...     

Navigating the dichotomy: The top public servant's craft

How in their day‐to‐day practices do top public servants straddle the politics–administration dichotomy (PAD), which tells them to serve and yet influence their ministers at the same time? To examine this, we discuss how three informal ‘rules of the game’ govern day‐to‐day political–administrative interactions in the Dutch core executive: mutual respect, discretionary space, and reciprocal loyalty. Drawing from 31 hours of elite‐interviews with one particular (authoritative) top public servant, who served multiple prime ministers, and supplementary interviews with his (former) ministers and co‐workers, we illustrate the top public servants’ craft of responsively and yet astutely straddling the ambiguous boundaries between ‘politics’ and ‘administration’. We argue that if PAD‐driven scholarship on elite administrative work is to remain relevant, it has to come to terms with the boundary‐blurring impacts of temporal interactions, the emergence of ‘hybrid’ ministerial advisers, and the ‘thickening’ of accountability regimes that affects both politicians and public servants.     

Relational job characteristics and job satisfaction of public sector employees: When prosocial motivation and red tape collide

Recent studies suggested that the relationship between prosocial motivation and job satisfaction is mediated by relational job characteristics (e.g., job impact and job content). Based on a study of Dutch child welfare professionals, we theorize and empirically assess how red tape negatively impacts the relational job characteristics and job satisfaction of public professionals. Our study shows that the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction is partially mediated by relational job characteristics. Red tape thus decreases the job impact and job contact of professionals, thereby decreasing their job satisfaction. In addition, our study provides additional insight into how prosocial motivation and red tape are jointly related to job impact and job satisfaction. This provides support for the point of view that highly motivated public professionals are more sensitive to burdensome rules and procedures. In this respect, red tape acts as a hindrance stressor that thwarts the realization of prosocial aspirations.     

Transitional Journeys Into and Out of Extremism. A Biographical Approach

This article describes an empirical study into processes of homegrown radicalization and de-radicalization of young people. Researchers in Denmark and the Netherlands set out to answer the question regarding what pathways in and out of extremism (mainly far-right or Islamist) look like “from the inside.” The analysis is informed by grounded theory, based on interviews (N = 34) with “formers” and their family members on their life courses. The study shows that radicalization often concurs with distinct social–emotional developmental challenges that young people face in the transition between youth and adulthood. A practical implication of the marked transitional sequences in these processes is that each type of radical journey may call for a different type of (re)action.     

Waves of the Black Banner: An Exploratory Study on the Dutch Jihadist Foreign Fighter Contingent in Syria and Iraq

Since the violent escalation of the Syrian conflict, 280 Dutch nationals have been flocking to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist terrorist organizations. Attempts to create a more comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of these jihadist foreign fighters often rely on small-N, qualitative analysis. This exploratory study systematically assesses the backgrounds of 217 Dutch jihadist foreign fighters. Additionally, it further differentiates the different “waves” of fighters since late 2012, by looking at their characteristics and comparing their composition.     

Marx and Engels’s theory of history: making sense of the race factor

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s theory of history contained racist components. In Marx and Engels’s understanding, racial disparities emerged under the influence of shared natural and social conditions hardening into heredity and of the mixing of blood. They racialized skin-colour groups, ethnicities, nations and social classes, while endowing them with innate superior and inferior character traits. They regarded race as part of humanity’s natural conditions, upon which the production system rested. ‘Races’ endowed with superior qualities would boost economic development and productivity, while the less endowed ones would hold humanity back. Marxist race thinking reflected common Lamarckian and Romantic-Nationalist assumptions of the era.