Old and new politics: The Dutch peace movement and the traditional political organizations

Abstract. On the basis of data on the Dutch peace movement, we study the relationship between traditional organizations of political intermediation such as parties, unions and churches with a new social movement on the local level. After having argued for the relevance of the institutional context, the general structure of new social movements and the particular structure of the movement under consideration with regard to this relationship, we first present evidence confirming our claims that we are dealing with new social movement. Then we show that the relationships in question are quite elaborate confirming the hypothesis that political activity within traditional organizations and new social movements is to some extent cumulative. More generally, the results imply that the development of the peace movement and other new social movements in the Netherlands is not indicating a diminishing legitimacy of the Dutch political parties.     

Kosovo Defines the West

Kosovo is a proxy war with the Holocaust. As such, this war and its outcome will do much to define the West in the next century That it is a war in Europe, for Europe, sets it apart from all the other tragedies from Rwanda to Kashmir. Our collage of comment on this subject ranges from the secretary general of NATO to the leader of the Kosovars in Albania.     

Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment

Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.     

Can the use of minipublics backfire? Examining how policy adoption shapes the effect of minipublics on political support among the general public

Academics and practitioners are increasingly interested in deliberative minipublics and whether these can address widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary politics. While optimism seems to prevail, there is also talk that the use of minipublics may backfire. When the government disregards a minipublic's recommendations, this could lead to more dissatisfaction than not asking for its advice in the first place. Using an online survey experiment in Belgium (n = 3,102), we find that, compared to a representative decision-making process, a minipublic tends to bring about higher political support when its recommendations are fully adopted by the government, whereas it generates lower political support when its recommendations are not adopted. This study presents novel insights into whether and when the use of minipublics may alleviate or aggravate political dissatisfaction among the public at large.     

Reinventing Reforms: How to Improve Program Management Using Performance Measures. Really

This paper looks at the design and use of incentivized performance measures to motivate managerial efficiency and promote greater program effectiveness. It starts off by looking at recent reforms like the Government Performance and Results Act to understand why they were largely unsuccessful in altering the decision‐making process of government agencies. One problem was that performance measures have been both numerous and complicated, thereby making their role in management and oversight difficult. Equally important, no external incentives were attached to program accomplishments. The paper then examines what elements would be needed to build a management system that encourages both more efficient and more effective agency behavior. The goal of performance budgeting is to develop performance measures that display the progress of a program toward its stated objectives. Assessments based on these measures may then call for rewards or punishments. As such, it also may encourage program managers toward improved performance. The paper examines the pitfalls and complexities dealt with by Congress and Office of Management and Budget in the process. For example, a performance system must distinguish between funding program needs, as warranted by sectoral indicators, and management concerns. It must also unambiguously tie incentives to performance measures to motivate agencies, while building in commitment devices for the principals. Incentivized performance measures may not be appropriate in all conditions, but may be helpful for motivating managers and improving program performance in particular circumstances.     

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This article presents a review of the recent literature on change management in public organizations and sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to earlier critiques regarding the lack of (public) contextual factors. The review includes 133 articles published on this topic in the period from 2000 to 2010. The articles are analysed based on the themes of the context, content, process, outcome, and leadership of change. We identified whether the articles referred to different orders of change, as well as their methods and theory employed. Our findings concentrate on the lack of detail on change processes and outcomes and the gap between the common theories used to study change. We propose an agenda for the study of change management in public organizations that focuses on its complex nature by building theoretical bridges and performing more in‐depth empirical and comparative studies on change processes.     

The Compound Machinery of Government: The Case of Seconded Officials in the European Commission

This article explores the compound machinery of government. Attention is directed toward decision making within the core executive of the European Union—the European Commission. The article studies seconded national civil servants (SNEs) hired on short‐term contracts. The analysis benefits from an original and rich body of surveys and interview data derived from current and former SNEs. The decision‐making dynamics of SNEs are shown to contain a compound mix of departmental, epistemic, and supranational dynamics. This study clearly demonstrates that the socializing power of the Commission is conditional and only partly sustained when SNEs exit the Commission. Any long‐lasting effect of socialization within European Union's executive machinery of government is largely absent. The compound decision‐making dynamics of SNEs are explained by (1) the organizational affiliations of SNEs, (2) the formal organization of the Commission apparatus, and (3) only partly by processes of resocialization of SNEs within the Commission.     

Going,going, . . . gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe

This article offers an overview of levels of party membership in European democracies at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century and looks also at changes in these levels over time, comparing party membership today with figures from both 1980 and the late 1990s. While relying primarily on the direct and individual membership figures as reported by the parties themselves, the fit of the data with survey data is explored and it is concluded that the two perform well in terms of convergent validity. The differences between large and small democracies are examined, as well as old and new democracies, and it is found that levels of party membership are related to both the size and age of the democratic polity in question. Finally, the implications of the patterns observed in the membership data are discussed, and it is suggested that membership has now reached such a low ebb that it may no longer constitute a relevant indicator of party organisational capacity.     

CONSOLIDATING SOUTH AFRICAN DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICAL ARITHMETIC OF BUDGETARY REDISTRIBUTION

An absence of legitimacy of an economic dispensation cannotbe overcome by democratization alone. In unequal societies,new regimes also seek to increase economic legitimacy and thereforetheir own political legitimacy through redistribution. Socialspending is the most promising redistributive device availableto South Africa's new democracy to reduce racial inequalities,but there are constraints on increasing social spending or evenredistributing existing spending. To maximize political impact,spending will thus probably be concentrated on the most visibleprogrammes and concentrated in die cities. The impact on blackmaterial living standards of complete redistribution of socialspending is shown to be fairly large, but still may not satisfythe newly enfranchised. Coloureds, Indians and poorer whiteswould lose most from budgetary redistribution. As demands exceedresources, resource allocation then becomes a question of politicalarithmetic. This may assist in consolidating democracy amongsturban black ‘insiders’, but would effectively leavethe unorganized rural poor fiscally disenfranchised.     

SYMPOSIUM ON CHANGING MODES OF GOVERNANCE IN PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS: ACTION AND RHETORIC

This symposium grew out of the sub‐theme, ‘New Modes of Governance in Public Sector Organizations’, of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Conference held in Ljubljana in July 2004. Our aim was to provide a forum to discuss the policy and practice and the space between in public sector management and governance within Europe.