Who Should Govern Political Parties? Organizational Values in Norwegian and Danish Political Parties

The article explores party member attitudes towards internal party democracy and party leadership in Danish and Norwegian parties. The focus is on the relationship between party members' public policy values (measured by means of 'old politics' and 'new politics' value dimensions) and their organizational values (i.e. ideas about internal democracy), but the members' educational and activism levels as well as indicators capturing factors specific to individual parties are also applied to explain party members' organizational values. We find that positions on the two policy value dimensions are related to party members' organizational values. But the relationships are not particularly strong, and their signs are contrary to expectations. One explanation may be that the 'new politics' literature draws a misleading picture of the organizational values of New Left and New Right party members – at least in the Danish and Norwegian cases. We also find that the social democratic parties in both countries differ considerably from the other parties in the sense that the dissatisfaction with the leadership was much stronger in these parties.     

Evaluation in and of Public-sector Reform: The Case of Denmark in a Nordic Perspective

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the twinned development of public-sector reforms and evaluation in Denmark. While there is a substantial literature on both public-sector reforms and on evaluation, focus has only recently been put on the relations between these phenomena. The case of Denmark has, however, not been included in the international comparison. This article therefore discusses the case of Denmark, comparing it briefly to Finland, Norway and Sweden. The article analyses both 'evaluation in' and 'evaluation of' public-sector reform. 'Evaluation in' refers to the question to what extent evaluation (in line with other elements such as, e.g. privatization and performance management) has been part of the content of reforms. 'Evaluation of' refers to the questions of whether and how reforms themselves have been evaluated. The analysis shows that although the rhetoric of reforms have been similar in the Nordic countries, reform actions and especially the twinned development of reforms and evaluation have differed between the countries.     

Migration,citizenship and race in Europe: Between incorporation and exclusion

Abstract. The article examines four recent studies, which represent the scholarly divisions in and the strengths and the weakness of current research on migration, citizenship and race in Europe and, to a lesser degree, the USA. Organising the review around three themes — the causes of post–war migration, integration and race, and the relationship between citizenship and state sovereignty, it reviews the studies in the context of broader debates about postnational citizenship, the decline of state sovereignty and the role of theory in the study of citizenship. It argues that the studies of postnationalism (Jacobson) and race and racism (Solomos & Back) suffer from faults common to macro–sociological approaches and unfocused attempts to blend normative theory and causal explanation, while the studies of integration (Favell) and citizenship, immigration and the state (Joppke) are exemplars of approaches that successfully pair an interest in theory with detailed causal analysis. The article concludes by suggesting that the debate between 'nationalists' and 'postnationalists' can now be transcended. Postnationalism, it concludes, contains two theses, not one: an empirical and a causal. The empirical thesis — that universal personhood has decoupled rights and identity – is incontrovertible; the causal — that this development resulted from the 'internationalisation' and 'universalisation' of human rights legislation and discourse — is, in the light of Joppke's and other's research, false. The sources of third–country nationals' social and economic status, the foundations of the distinction between rights and identity, are domestic.     

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

This paper applies a game-theoretic model of participation under uncertainty to investigate the negative relationship between constituency size and voter turnout rates: theconstituency size effect. We find that this theoretical model accounts for almost all of the variation in turnout due to size in cross sectional data from school budget referenda.     

Deliberative Democracy and the Deliberative Poll on the Euro

Focus on the concept of deliberative democracy has increased rapidly within recent decades. However, the concept is weakly defined, if at all. 'Deliberation' is defined as an unconstrained exchange of arguments that involves practical reasoning and potentially leads to a transformation of preferences. Throughout the 1990s several innovative democratic experiments have flourished focusing on citizens' involvement and deliberation. The Deliberative Poll in focus here is, according to many parameters, the most ambitious one. The article presents the results from the Danish National Deliberative Poll on the single currency. In August 2000, 364 repres-entative Danish citizens assembled to deliberate on Denmark's participation in the single currency. The Deliberative Poll is described as a quasi-experiment set out to explore the empirical potentials of deliberative democracy. The focus is whether the claimed potential of deliberative democracy is present in the experimental setting. The participants' answers reflect a deliberative process dominated by considerable changes in opinion, an increase in knowledge and an improved ability to form a reasoned opinion. Mutual understanding among the participants prevailed. At the same time, self-interest and domination were also part of the deliberative process. Thus, this article encourages the development of deliberative democratic theory in order to incorporate these features of politics.     

Work Engagement in the Public Service Context: The Dual Perceptions of Job Characteristics

Interest in work engagement research has increased significantly due to its positive influence on both employee and organizational performance. Studies show how engagement is explained through job characteristics in the Job Demands-Resource model, yet a more nuanced approach has been proposed. In this qualitative study, home caregivers’ perceptions of job characteristics are investigated. Semi-structured interviews and observations reveal three main themes: Optimization, helping others, and emotional work. These show a dual perception of job characteristics consequently influencing the experienced engagement. Using Public Service Motivation literature, these dual perceptions are discussed.     

What to Do Here? What to Do There? The Effect of Change in Organization Size on Public Management

For a long time, researchers have been interested in the consequences of creating larger public organizations. The outcomes of changes in the size of public organizations have been relatively widely studied; however, much less is known about the internal processes through which these outcomes are actually achieved. This article explores whether changes in organizational size affect public management. As endogeneity is an inherent problem when studying outcomes of organizational size, we apply a quasi-experimental design in order to establish the causal linkage between size and different elements of public management. We use unique survey data collected before and after a large reform that changed the size of most Danish municipalities. The results suggest that public management related to daily operations is generic and not affected by size, whereas public management related to overall tasks such as creating a vision, servicing the mayor, and maintaining external relations is positively affected by size changes.     

Negative Campaigning in a Multiparty System

Research in political campaigning in Scandinavian countries is inadequate, and research in negative campaigning is entirely non‐existent. A ‘negative campaign message’ is defined as an explicit critique of the political opponent. Applying this definition to the 2005 Danish election indicates that negative campaigning comprises a very limited aspect of the political campaigning in the course of this election. The opposition tends to employ negative tactics the most in their attempts to establish their political platform. The media provided extensive coverage to the few negative campaign messages, thus presenting a biased sense of the political campaign to the general public. This biased media coverage encourages parties to ‘go negative’ in their respective campaigns in the battle for media attention.