Rule-making, rule-breaking? Law breaking by government in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

This article concerns a relatively novel issue: rule breaking and unlawful conduct by government bodies; to which degree does it occur, what is the nature of this misconduct, what are the underlying motives, and what are the consequences and possible solutions? Rule and law breaking is harmful for the credibility and integrity of a state and its law enforcement system. However, very little empirical research has been carried out into this issue, in comparison to research into state crime. There is little clarity about how public actors deal with criminal and administrative laws and rules in areas like environmental protection, safety regulations and working conditions. Do government bodies set a good example? Is their behaviour better or worse than the public and businesses? An analytical framework for research will be presented and also the results of an extensive research project in the Netherlands; the main themes of which have been benchmarked against data from the United Kingdom. The article will conclude with a summary of the main findings and a number of suggestions for further research and policy development.     

The emergence of the Islamic trust

The Islamic trust, governed by both the laws of the jurisdictionunder which it is written and by Shari'ah law, has become apopular financial and devolution planning vehicle for assetsheld by Muslims. This article examines how these trusts havedeveloped.     

Mother teresa meets Genghis Khan: The dialectics of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating career choices

We replicated and extended earlier work showing the connection between social dominance orientation and the perceived attractiveness of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating careers using data from two large and independent samples of UCLA students. Consistent with expectations, the data from both studies showed that the greater the students' level of social dominance orientation, the more attractive hierarchy-enhancing careers such as criminal prosecutor, police officer, and FBI agent were perceived to be. Similarly, the greater the students' social dominance orientation, the less attractive they found hierarchy-attenuating careers such as public defender, civil rights lawyer, and human rights advocate. These conclusions held even after controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status and political conservatism. Canonical correlation analysis disclosed that the attractiveness of these career paths within the general domain of law made only one, bipolar and unidimensional projection within social dominance space. The nature of this bipolar dimension reproduced the hypothesized distinction between hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating social roles. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

Denied their ‘natural nourishment’: religion,causes of death and infant mortality in the Netherlands, 1875–1899

At the end of the nineteenth century, infant mortality rates started to fall rapidly in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, not all regions benefited from this development. High infant death in the Roman Catholic provinces of North-Brabant and Limburg has often been ascribed to a growing reluctance of Catholic mothers to breastfeed their infants after 1870. This was supposedly caused by the combination of a strict, prudish Roman Catholic norm prohibiting women from baring their breasts and a refusal to accept new medical insights into healthy childcare. The food given to weaned children was generally of such poor quality that many infants succumbed to gastrointestinal diseases. Consequently, infant mortality rates caused by water- and food-borne infectious diseases would have been higher amongst weaned babies. By using recently digitised municipal cause-of-death registration statistics, it is possible to see if there are, indeed, indications of a shift in breastfeeding patterns after 1870. First, the authors look at infant deaths from all causes to see whether Roman Catholic municipalities underwent a rise in the mortality of children under the age of one. Second, the authors do the same for cause-specific infant mortality from typhus, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, acute diseases of the digestive system and cholera. Based on the outcomes, there was no homogenous rise in infant mortality in all Roman Catholic municipalities. Furthermore, there is no indication that infant mortality due to digestive diseases increased uniformly in all Roman Catholic communities between 1875 and 1899. Either some communities were able to counteract the negative effects of a shift towards weaning or changes in breastfeeding patterns were not a specific Roman Catholic phenomenon at all.     

Post‐Trial Victims' Rights in the EU: Do Law Enforcement Motives Still Reign Supreme?

The EU legislator has been accused of overemphasizing the repressive aspect of law enforcement, while paying less attention to civil liberties, such as fundamental victims' rights. This paper examines the current position of EU crime victims, with a special focus on the execution phase of a criminal procedure. A victimological assessment of (1) the Framework Decisions on custodial sentences and probation measures and (2) the recent EU Victim Directive shows that none of these instruments contains any mechanisms for safeguarding the rights of victims in the post‐trial stage. Regardless of the various praiseworthy efforts to further the emancipation of victims, when it comes to the execution phase, victims' rights are still largely neglected, thereby opening the door again to criticism. Granting victims a right to information and a (non‐influential) right to be heard would already improve matters greatly. A constitutional assessment indicates that Europe is competent to make these changes.     

Social Media and Value Conflicts: An Explorative Study of the Dutch Police

The use of social media produces new value conflicts in public governance. The police force is a public organization directly confronted with these changes. However, there is no systematic understanding of these conflicts in daily police practice or of the coping strategies used. This article presents an explorative understanding of the value conflicts and coping strategies within the police force by combining the literature on social media use in the public sector and the literature on value conflicts and by conducting a case study within the Dutch police. The empirical findings show, first, a growing emphasis on conflicts related to the values that are strongly embedded in social media use—specifically, conflicts between efficiency and participation and between transparency and lawfulness. Second, although dynamic coping strategies were expected, the research reveals that the police often use a conservative coping strategy to deal with these rapid changes.     

Social Stigma and Support for the Populist Radical Right: An Experimental Study

The ‘taboo’ or ‘stigma’ associated with many populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has been argued to be an important constraint on their electoral success. In comparison to mainstream parties, there seems to be a higher barrier keeping voters from supporting PRRPs. However, this mechanism has not been tested directly. We conducted a randomized survey‐embedded experiment manipulating the social stigma of a fictitious radical right party in Sweden. We compare three conditions. Two of these contain subtle signals about how other respondents feel about this party. In one condition the fictitious party is supported by many voters (the neutralizing condition) and in the other it is evaluated negatively by the overwhelming majority (the stigma condition). Both experimental groups do not differ significant from the control group in support for this fictitious party. However, the difference between the two experimental groups is borderline significant. This suggests that there is a causal effect of social stigma on support for a RRP, even though the evidence is rather tentative.     

Food insecurity negatively impacts academic performance

Recent research has documented high rates of food insecurity among university students, particularly students in their first year. Food insecurity among university students has been linked to poorer self‐reported health and academic outcomes. However, few studies have linked reports of food insecurity to objective student outcomes. In this study, we examine how food insecurity is associated with first‐year university students' (n = 591) academic performance, adjusting for objective measures of high school academic performance and self‐reported indicators of socioeconomic background. Zero‐ and one‐inflated beta regression was used to examine if food insecurity predicted grade point average (GPA) in the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters. Logistic regression was used to determine if food insecurity at the end of the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters was a predictor of retention to fall 2016. Food‐insecure students had a significantly lower GPA than food‐secure students. In fall 2015, 59% of food‐insecure students obtained at least a “B” grade (GPA = 3.00); our models suggest this percentage would increase to 72% if these same students were food secure. Food‐insecure students were less likely to be enrolled in fall 2016 than food‐secure students (OR = 0.72, 95% CI [0.41, 1.27]), though this difference was not statistically significant. These results indicate that food insecurity negatively impacts first‐year university students' academic performance, even after adjusting for high school academic performance and socioeconomic background. Students GPA, and potentially university retention rates, may increase if food insecurity on campus is minimized.     

Transparency in multilateral climate politics: Furthering (or distracting from) accountability?

This article analyzes the interplay between transparency and accountability in multilateral climate politics. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for a “pledge‐and‐review” approach to collective climate action with an “enhanced transparency framework” as a key pillar of the Agreement. By making visible who is doing what, transparency is widely assumed to be vital to holding countries to account and building trust. We explore whether transparency is generating such effects in this context, by developing and applying an analytical framework to examine the link between transparency and accountability. We find that the scope and practices of climate transparency reflect (rather than necessarily reduce) broader conflicts over who should be held to account to whom and about what, with regard to responsibility and burden sharing for ambitious climate action. We conclude that the relationship between transparency and accountability is less straightforward than assumed, and that the transformative promise of transparency needs to be reconsidered in this light.     

Disconnected relationship values and marriage policies in England

The article examines relationship values which influence the government’s marriage-related policies. It constructs a framework of core values as the ‘conception of the desirable’ to highlight a central problem for the government: there are many conflicting values that can be identified as potentially relevant. Traditional morality and equality highlight marriage as the ultimate goal for heterosexual and same-sex couples by emphasising responsibility, commitment and stability to encourage and strengthen couple relationships. The articulation of these values associated with celebrating marriage is evident in policies such as transferable tax allowances for married couples and couple relationship education. However, marriage is a public and a private institution which encompasses disconnected values. The article analyses the different values that policy-makers confront by examining evidence from interviews with stakeholders which suggests that marriage-related policies do not necessarily resonate with various actors’ understanding of relationship values. They compete with values such as individual autonomy, the desire for financial security and diverse relationships.