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Prak and Van Zanden's book Nederland en het poldermodel offers a succinct and vigorous account of a millennium of Dutch political economy by organising its development around the concept of the 'polder model'. This assessment finds much to admire in the book, but subjects the polder model concept to critical questioning, among which: Does the polder model foster economic growth or does it simply require a rich society in order to function? Is the polder model specifically Dutch or broadly European? Is its modern form truly a linear descendant of the corporate bodies of earlier times? Is it really a 'nursery of democracy' or simply a 'hothouse of rent seeking'? As an historical concept the polder model is a more elusive term than appears at first sight. © 2014 Royal Netherlands Historical Society.

Prak and Van Zanden's book Nederland en het poldermodel offers a succinct and vigorous account of a millennium of Dutch political economy by organising its development around the concept of the 'polder model'. This assessment finds much to admire in the book, but subjects the polder model concept to critical questioning, among which: Does the polder model foster economic growth or does it simply require a rich society in order to function? Is the polder model specifically Dutch or broadly European? Is its modern form truly a linear descendant of the corporate bodies of earlier times? Is it really a 'nursery of democracy' or simply a 'hothouse of rent seeking'? As an historical concept the polder model is a more elusive term than appears at first sight. © 2014 Royal Netherlands Historical Society.

Two developments flowing from the institutional reforms in The Netherlands of the 1980s currently form 'the usual suspects' in a series of scandals or instances of public arousal within the public sector. The first factor is the large-scale decentralization of tasks from central government to provincial and municipal authorities. Initiated under the name of democratization and efficiency this decentralization programme was part of a large package of operations, including deconcentration, deregulation, privatization, and reconsideration, that were to to slim down central government in terms of personnel, tasks and organization. Second, managerialism, i.e. the adoption of business management ideas and concepts by public administrators, entered Dutch public service vocabulary during the second half of the 1980s. Managerialism did not limit itself only to central government agencies but also — and perhaps more succinctly — found openings in provincial and municipal authorities, mainly as a fierce reaction against the 'bureaucratism' of daily administrative practice to counter the relative deprivation perceived by civil servants in relation to their private sector counterparts. This article shows that the decentralization of financial management and the emergence of 'reinvention' ideas have had autonomous but drastic effects. While the former blinded central government and provincial controllers, the latter legitimized practices that even under a private sector regime would have been deemed improbable.

Title Page -- Contents -- European territorial governance: Introduction to this volume -- Introduction -- Purpose of the book -- Structure of the book -- References -- Part I. Background -- European organisations and the institutionalisation of a territorial dimension in EU policy -- Introduction -- The EU: a construct built on treaties -- The search for relevant treaty articles -- The EU decision-making process -- Players and their attitudes towards territorial issues -- The European Commission -- The Council of Ministers and the informal ministerial meetings on spatial planning and development -- The European Parliament -- The Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee -- The substance and legitimacy of a spatial approach -- What is European spatial planning about? -- The legitimacy of European spatial planning -- Lobbying for spatial planning? -- Concluding remarks -- Further reading -- References -- Territorial governance and democracy. A European perspective -- Introduction -- No authority, plenty of influence -- How does the European Union work? -- The apolitical approaches -- Back to politics: a response to the apolitical approach -- The European Union and territorial governance -- Conclusion: three scenarios for European territorial governance -- Further reading -- References -- Territorial cohesion and the European open method of coordination -- Introduction -- Territorial cohesion: spatializing the European social model -- The dilemma of social Europe -- Conclusion: discussing social models -- Further reading -- References -- The long and winding road to EU territorial governance -- Introduction -- The 1950s: no European integration without `planification' -- Planning professionals advocating European spatial planning -- CRONWE: Planners forming a network of their own -- How CRONWE became redundant.

Political innovations aim to strengthen democracy but few connect well to the institutionalized democratic context. This paper explores how political innovations can be successfully embedded in existing democratic systems. It builds upon both the literature on political innovation and on new democratic arrangements and studies a practice of aleatoric democracy – using the lottery instead of elections to select representatives – in the Dutch City of Utrecht. The case study shows how the idealist logic of improving democracy and the realist logic of realizing specific political goals intertwine to get the political innovation accepted by the institutionalized democratic system.

There is much that is unsatisfactory in the way in which the
production function is viewed and described in the literature. This
article defines four dimensions along which aspects of the production
function can be measured. The dimensions are elaborated upon and their
usefulness for describing real‐life situations is explored. Possible
directions for both empirical and theoretical research using the concept
are suggested.

Political innovations aim to strengthen democracy but few connect well to the institutionalized democratic context. This paper explores how political innovations can be successfully embedded in existing democratic systems. It builds upon both the literature on political innovation and on new democratic arrangements and studies a practice of aleatoric democracy – using the lottery instead of elections to select representatives – in the Dutch City of Utrecht. The case study shows how the idealist logic of improving democracy and the realist logic of realizing specific political goals intertwine to get the political innovation accepted by the institutionalized democratic system.

The protection of identity of participants in medical research has traditionally been guaranteed by the maintenance of the confidentiality of health information through mechanisms such as only releasing data in an aggregated form or after identifying variables have been removed. This protection of privacy is regarded as a fundamental principle of research ethics, through which the support of research participants and the public is maintained. Whilst this traditional model was adopted for genetics and genomics research, and was generally considered broadly fit for purpose, we argue that this approach is increasingly untenable in genomics. Privacy risk assessments need to have regard to the whole data environment, not merely the quality of the dataset to be released in isolation. As sources of data proliferate, issues of privacy protection are increasingly problematic in relation to the release of genomic data. However, we conclude that, by paying careful attention to potential pitfalls, scientific funders and researchers can take an important part in attempts to safeguard the public and ensure the continuation of potentially important scientific research.