Talking the Talk of Public Service Motivation: How Public Organization Logics Matter for Employees' Expressions of PSM

This article aims to move beyond the public-private dichotomy in studying public service motivation (PSM) by showing how organizational logics matter for the type of PSM (instrumental, normative, or affective) that employees express. Using data from 50 interviews in police stations, prisons, hospitals, municipalities, and schools, we show that differences in service logic (the user's feeling of the desirability of a service) and user logic (people-changing or people-processing services) matter for employees’ expressions of PSM in that this results in different emphases within public service motivation. We conclude that institutions such as organizational logics matter for PSM expressions and that research on PSM should account for differences between public service-providing organizations.     

Religion and Party Choice in Europe

This paper investigates religiosity in relation to party choice in European Parliament elections. Conventional wisdom tells us that as Europe has secularised, the effect of religion on party choice should also have diminished. Yet, this cross-national and cross-temporal study of religious voting in European elections from 1989 to 2004 paints a more nuanced picture. It shows that a) the effect of religion has been declining, but has increased in recent years, b) religion matters in particular for voting for Christian Democratic parties and Conservative parties, c) while generational replacement reduces the overall effect of religion on electoral decisions, the effect of religion has recently increased within each generation, and d) the impact of religion depends on the religious context in which citizens live so that religion plays a bigger role in fractionalised societies. These findings are discussed in the light of a revived importance of religion for European politics.     

More Places than Crimes: Implications for Evaluating the Law of Crime Concentration at Place

Objectives

The crime and place literature lacks a standard methodology for measuring and reporting crime concentration. We suggest that crime concentration be reported with the Lorenz curve and summarized with the Gini coefficient, and we propose generalized versions of the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient to correct for bias when crime data are sparse (i.e., fewer crimes than places).

Methods

The proposed generalizations are based on the principle that the observed crime concentration should not be compared with perfect equality, but with maximal equality given the data. The generalizations asymptotically approach the original Lorenz curve and the original Gini coefficient as the number of crimes approaches the number of spatial units.

Results

Using geocoded crime data on two types of crime in the city of The Hague, we show the differences between the original Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient and the generalized versions. We demonstrate that the generalizations provide a better representation of crime concentration in situations of sparse crime data, and that they improve comparisons of crime concentration if they are sparse.

Conclusions

Researchers are advised to use the generalized versions of the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient when reporting and summarizing crime concentration at places. When places outnumber crimes, the generalized versions better represent the underlying processes of crime concentration than the original versions. The generalized Lorenz curve, the Gini coefficient and its variance are easy to compute.

     

Belgian regional parliaments and the European Union: an analysis of parliamentary scrutiny in agricultural and environmental policies

ABSTRACT

Drawing on qualitative case studies of two specific European decision-making processes in the agricultural and environmental sectors, this paper discusses how and why Belgian regional parliaments activated (or not) their control mechanisms to scrutinise their respective regional ministers. The findings show that parliamentary scrutiny of the agricultural and environmental policy fields has undergone a process of institutional and behavioural Europeanisation. Belgian regional parliaments rely mostly on classical parliamentary tools aimed at gathering information and, to a lesser extent, on constraining instruments aimed at influencing their government. Rather than trying to influence the EU negotiations, the MPs try to assess the potential impact of the reforms on their regional policy sectors. The findings also demonstrate that domestic media coverage and political salience of the EU negotiation associated with important implementing powers of regional parliaments have a positive effect on the level of scrutiny conducted by Belgian regional assemblies.     

Origin,growth and criminal capabilities of cybercriminal networks. An international empirical analysis

Two recent studies which are part of the Dutch Research Program on the Safety and Security of Online Banking, present empirical material regarding the origin, growth and criminal capabilities of cybercriminal networks carrying out attacks on customers of financial institutions. This article extrapolates upon the analysis of Dutch cases and complements the existing picture by providing insight into 22 cybercriminal networks active in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis regarding origin and growth shows that social ties play an important role in the majority of networks. These networks usually originate and grow either by means of social contacts alone or by the combined use of social contacts and forums (to recruit specialists). Equally, however, forums play a vital role within the majority of the networks by offering a place where co-offenders can meet, recruit and trade criminal ‘services’. Moreover, those networks where origin and growth is primarily based on forums appear capable of creating more flexible forms of cooperation between key members and enablers, thereby facilitating a limited number of core members to become international players. Analysis of the capabilities of criminal networks shows that all networks are primarily targeted towards customers of financial institutions, but most networks are not restricted to one type of crime. Core members are often involved in other forms of offline and online crime. The majority of networks fall into the high-tech category of networks, mostly international, high-tech networks. These are networks with core members, enablers, and victims originating from different countries.     

Westminster in small states: comparing the Caribbean and pacific experience

Small states, and those in the Caribbean and Pacific regions in particular, are among the most stubbornly and disproportionally democratic countries in the world. And yet, they are rarely studied comparatively, despite sharing seemingly obvious similarities – aside from being small island states with developing economies they also tend to share a British colonial heritage and Westminster-inspired political institutions. This omission is all the more puzzling if we consider that the group does not conform to the standard battery of explanations developed by democratization theorists. To pave the way for further research across these two regions, this article provides a synoptic comparison of the process of democratization in Caribbean and Pacific small states. We highlight important similarities and differences that stem from the interaction between formal institutions and informal practices. We conclude by reiterating the benefits for scholars of democratization by looking at these significant yet hitherto rarely compared cases.     

Continuity and Change in Legal Positivism

Institutional theory of law (ITL) reflects both continuity and change of Kelsen's legal positivism. The main alteration results from the way ITL extends Hart's linguistic turn towards ordinary language philosophy (OLP). Hart holds – like Kelsen – that law cannot be reduced to brute fact nor morality, but because of its attempt to reconstruct social practices his theory is more inclusive. By introducing the notion of law as an extra-linguistic institution ITL takes a next step in legal positivism and accounts for the relationship between action and validity within the legal system. There are, however, some problems yet unresolved by ITL. One of them is its theory of meaning. An other is the way it accounts for change and development. Answers may be based on the pragmatic philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, who emphasises the intrinsic relation between the meaning of speech acts and the process of habit formation.     

Two Rounds of Postwar Restitution and Dignity Restoration in the Netherlands and France

The looting and systematic deprivation of the property rights of the Jewish population in the Netherlands and France during the years of occupation brought about a deprivation of dignity, since these measures were intended to hit these people in their capacities as legal subjects, destroying their abilities to take part in economic and social life. In the immediate postwar period, the restitution of property rights in both countries was closely connected and limited to an abstract conception of dignity restoration, understood as the renewed recognition of the dispossessed owners as free and equal citizen before the law. In the late 1990s, a new phase in the restoration of property rights took place on a much more collective and political level. In this second round of restitution, dignity restoration was directly connected with an explicit recognition of the particular, concrete suffering of the groups of victims involved.     

How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders

It is often argued that right-wing populist party leaders are dependent on the media for their public image, which in turn is key for their electoral success. This study tests this assumption by comparing the effects of the media coverage of 2 Dutch right-wing populist leaders with the effects of the coverage of leaders of established parties, in a real-life setting, by tracking campaign developments in the Dutch 2006 national election campaign. We combine panel survey data (n?=?401) with repeated measurements of the party leaders' public images with a systematic content analysis of 17 media outlets (with a total of 1,001 stories), on the basis of the media consumption of individual respondents. Our results show significant effects of the content of media coverage on the public image of political leaders. However, only in 1 case (out of 10) is there a significant difference between right-wing populist party leaders and leaders of other parties in the strength of media effects. It thus seems that leaders of right-wing populist parties are just as dependent upon the media as leaders of other parties. The findings are discussed in the light of extant research on right-wing populist parties and media populism.     

Public Service Motivation Research: Achievements,Challenges, and Future Directions

This article takes stock of public service motivation research to identify achievements, challenges, and an agenda for research to build on progress made since 1990. After enumerating achievements and challenges, the authors take stock of progress on extant proposals to strengthen research. In addition, several new proposals are offered, among them conducting more research on the disaggregated construct, developing grounded theory of public service motivation to understand contextual variations across cultures and political institutions, and improving current measures to better capture loyalty to governance regime as an institutional dimension of the public service motivation construct.