‘The devil or the Dutch’: Holland's impact on the financial revolution in England, 1643–1694

SUMMARY

In this article Beat Kümin and Andreas Würgler make a comparative study of how the peoples in early modern England and Hesse used their acknowledged rights to present petitions and grievances to exercise a real influence on the process of legislation, and even over administration in general. They could on occasion, virtually initiate legislation from below. The article illustrates the unusually wide scope and usage of the petition in England, helped by the early recognition of the subjects' right to petition both houses of Parliament as well as the monarch. It is suggested that this could result in a broad popular participation in the work of government. But even in Hesse, where the rulers asserted their sovereign rights as sole legislators and where, from the seventeenth century, they were attempting to develop an effective bureaucratic administration to sustain their aspirations, the method of petitioning the ruler, either through the Estates, Gravamina or directly, enabled ordinary people to have a part in promoting legislation and to participate in, and even effectively restrain, the princely administration.     

Can Business Development Services practitioners learn from theories of innovation and services marketing?

Business Development Services (BDS) programmes have become big business for international donors and NGOs. Focusing on small enterprises in developing countries, the current BDS approach assumes that the development of commercial markets is the key to success. Yet many of these programmes continue to have a limited impact. A review of modern theories of innovation and services marketing management suggests that this may be because current BDS support practice reflects a rather limited understanding of how new markets actually develop. Drawing on the insights that these theories offer, the authors suggest that BDS practice should develop a more evolutionary approach, recognising that service innovations develop through active, on-going interaction between suppliers and customers. The article concludes with practical policy guidelines and a discussion about tools that could help BDS to adopt this more successful approach.     

Real Personal Uncertainty Induced by Means of Task-Related Feedback: Effects on Reactions to Voice and No-Voice Procedures

Building and extending on research on uncertainty management and voice and no-voice procedures, we examine how real personal uncertainty moderates the way in which people react to getting or being denied an opportunity to voice one??s opinions about decisions to be made. Specifically, results of two experiments show that conditions in which participants receive task-related feedback that induces personal uncertainty (versus conditions that produce more personal certainty) lead to stronger effects of voice and especially no-voice procedures on participants?? procedural fairness judgments (Experiments 1 and 2). Findings also reveal that in these conditions stronger effects of voice and particularly no-voice procedures can be found on participants?? anger about the way they have been treated, especially when participants are predisposed to react in intense terms to affect-related events (Experiment 2). Implications for the literature on uncertainty management and the social psychology of voice and no-voice procedures are discussed.     

The Policy Underlying Crimes Against Humanity: Practical Reflections on a Theoretical Debate

This article argues that the debate concerning the theoretical characterization of the policy requirement as either an element of crime or an evidentiary relevant circumstance for crimes against humanity is deficient. Comparative case law analysis illustrates that this characterization does not fundamentally affect the position, meaning and scope of the policy underlying crimes against humanity in judicial practice. This can be explained by the “open texture” of legal rules and the factor-based character of judicial decision-making. This article aims to initiate a practical debate that evaluates the added value of a policy element on the basis of its application in individual cases.     

Agglomeration Advantages and Capability Building in Industrial Clusters: The Missing Link

Accumulation of technological capability is crucial for industrial growth and competitiveness of firms, particularly in the context of liberalisation and increasing international economic integration. The article sheds new light on the forces driving capability-building by complementing the micro-economic perspective on learning with a meso-economic perspective that takes account of interaction effects arising from firms' embeddedness in regional networks. The missing link at the interface between the two levels is explored by means of a taxonomy linking various agglomeration advantages to investments in technological effort. The framework results in new policy-relevant insights about the factors underpinning the acquisition of capabilities in comparison to conventional studies. A case study about farm equipment manufacturing in Pakistan's Punjab province is used as an empirical illustration.     

Learning from a leprosy project in Indonesia: making mindsets explicit for stigma reduction

International attention for disability recognises that it plays an important role in persistent poverty. Leprosy can cause preventable disability. Stigma associated with leprosy often has greater implications for people affected than physical impairments. The Stigma Assessment and Reduction of Impact (SARI) project in Indonesia employs an action research methodology to develop stigma reduction interventions. By exploring the different mindsets of the stakeholders in the reconnaissance phase of the project, the project identified differences in aspirations, attitudes to research, and conflicting intrinsic models of disability. The differences in mindsets are not symptoms of failure but, rather, should be actively sought out.     

Toward Understanding the Psychology of Reactions to Perceived Fairness: The Role of Affect Intensity

In social psychology it has been argued that the importance of justice cannot be overstated. In the present paper, we ask whether this indeed is the case and, more precisely, examine when fairness is an important determinant of human reactions and when it is less significant. To this end we explore what drives people's reactions to perceived fairness and argue that although social justice research has reported effects of fairness perceptions on people's affective feelings, a close examination of the literature shows that these reactions appear less frequently and less strong than one would expect. It is proposed here that this has to do with the neglect in the social psychology of justice of an important determinant of affective reactions: individuals' propensity to react strongly or mildly toward affect-related events. As hypothesized, findings of two empirical studies show that especially people high in affect intensity show strong affective reactions following the experience of outcome fairness (Study1) and procedural fairness (Study2). When affect intensity is low, however, weak or no fairness effects were found, suggesting that then fairness may not be an important issue. In the discussion it is thus argued that incorporating affect intensity into the justice literature may further insights into the psychology of reactions toward fairness.