Suchergebnisse

We analyze the relation between (horizontal) fairness in the local property tax and municipal tax policy in the 308 Flemish municipalities in 2012. The local property tax is levied on the property's assessed rental value, and its unfairness is a by-product of the slow reassessment procedure - such that properties of identical value are being taxed (very) differently. Using data for housing sales, we create an indicator for the unfairness of the local property tax. We find clear evidence that this unfairness affects political decision-making: municipalities in which property taxation is more unfair tend to rely systematically less on this tax as a source of municipal revenue. Instead these local governments tend to generate revenue through local income taxation. Adapted from the source document.

Using literature, documents and parliamentary debates in Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland, nine arguments for and against lowering the voting age to sixteen are distinguished and critically assessed. The assessment is based on criteria such as logical consistency and empirical validity. It is argued that most arguments can hardly be defended with these criteria. However, this does not mean that the case for lowering the voting age is weak. This would only be the case if a voting age of eighteen is considered as valuable in its own right. Adapted from the source document.

Wij zijn Roy Gigengack erkentelijk voor zijn uitvoerige reactie op ons boek Doing Qualitative Research: The Craft of Naturalistic Inquiry (2015). Zijn stuk (Gigengack, 2017) is deels een bespreking van het boek, deels een polemiek tegen wat hij zelf verstaat onder naturalistisch onderzoek. Die polemiek gaat hier en daar over onze hoofden heen en Gigengack schuift ons opvattingen in de schoenen die we helemaal niet hebben. We fungeren een beetje als kop van Jut. Vijf punten lijken ons de moeite waard om verder uit te praten.

This article is an intervention into a recent OZP debate on the future of political science as a discipline. Its main goal is to mediate between the respective positions of Ulrich Brand's and Helmut Kramer's conception of a critical project and Thomas Konig's presentation of organisational preliminaries of an academic project of political science. To this end, I firstly reformulate the essentials of a project of critique, referring on a thick notion of critique. Consequently, the relationship of the disciplinary and critical side of political science is rearranged on the basis of an appropriation of certain deliberations on discipline formation and philosophy of science, which centrally draw on the philosophy of Critical Realism. Adapted from the source document.

Trust in citizens' outlooks
Trust in citizens' outlooks
Since 2008 the Netherlands Institute for Social Research | SCP conducts the Citizens' Outlooks Barometer (COB), which explores current trends in public opinion in the Netherlands. In the COB quantitative and qualitative research methods are combined to signal trends and new issues, to explain group differences, and to investigate the feelings and arguments behind public concerns. We use focus groups and open-ended survey questions for qualitative research. A main topic in COB has been the development and diversity of trust in political institutions. By combining numbers and arguments, we have tried to put political trust in perspective (it is often more a diffuse image than a deep conviction) and give a better understanding of the (asymmetric) reasons for trust and for distrust. We deal with the usual problems of representation and generalization in qualitative research as good as we can by discussing interpretations in our diverse research team. A main challenge is now to develop more systematic and less time-consuming ways to analyze large sets of open answers in surveys.

Door de complexe bevoegdheidsverdeling inzake justitie dringt de vraag naar een eventuele herschikking van de huidige bevoegdheidsverdeling zich op. Op basis van een uitgebreide rechtsvergelijkende analyse, en een bespreking van de rechtspolitieke argumenten voor- en tegen een verdere defederalisering, werken de auteurs concrete modellen voor een nieuwe bevoegdheidsverdeling uit. Daarbij rijzen fundamentele vragen over onze staatsstructuur en de toekomst van het Belgische federalisme

An analysis by all (7) Flemish universities of the 2006 Belgium municipal council elections, using the Mediargus database containing articles from all Flemish newspapers (no journals included). Elections for which Belgium counties had unprecedented authority to organize their local government & local elections, & which were marked by arguments within local political parties, belated legislative changes & belated campaigning. Figures. Adapted from the source document.

In hun interessante artikel werpen de beide auteurs de vraag op of Q-methodologie als een mixed method-benadering moet worden opgevat (kwalitatieve en kwantitatieve benaderingen worden in verbondenheid, maar sequentieel gebruikt) of dat het hier gaat om een 'quali-quantologische' benadering. In het laatste geval stellen de auteurs het proces voor als één waarbij het kwalitatieve en het kwantitatieve zowel procedureel als conceptueel in elke stap van het onderzoeksproces zijn verweven. Er zijn argumenten om deze laatste benadering te verwerpen.