Suchergebnisse

The Netherlands and Belgium exemplified the pathology of 'welfare without work' that characterized continental welfare states - until a political crisis in both countries produced a surprising divergence in scope and extent of policy change in the early 1990s. In Belgium, government announced major reforms but its social security arrangements proved remarkably resilient. In the Netherlands, policy makers announced and implemented unprecedented cutbacks and a major overhaul of the disability benefit administration and supervision. This book argues that reform is the product of the deliberate construction of a crisis as an imperative for change. It explains how crisis rhetoric resulted in drastic policy change in the Netherlands and in incremental change in Belgium.

"Accountability and Blame Avoidance After Crises" published on by Oxford University Press.

AbstractThis article aims to enhance understanding of selective politicization processes in policy failures and examine the attempts of policy-makers to use framing strategies to allocate blame. The policy response to alleged submarine intrusions in Sweden and Dutch military involvement in the fall of Srebrenica are the two case-studies used in this article. These cases will be analysed using three perspectives derived from the literature on framing: depicting events as violations of core public values; depicting events as operational incidents or as symptoms of endemic problems; allocating accountability and blame for the occurrence and/or 'mismanagement' of crisis. Finally, we present a conceptual framework of the different shapes that political blaming can take when certain framing strategies are adopted.

This survey of the literature on crises and disasters reveals that crisis and disaster scholars remain focused on 'classic' natural disaster types and on our ability to prepare and respond to the threat they pose. The prevalence of natural disasters as a crisis type and the dominance of preparedness as a crisis theme indicates that the literature remains firmly linked to the world of practice, examining how best practices may be shared to prepare for future incidents. Yet interestingly, the three journals studied demonstrate modest interest in a number of issues that are only likely to increase in the coming years, all of which relate directly to an increasingly interconnected world. Most notably, the lack of attention on system interconnectedness or on advances in communication and cyber dependence (despite the rise of social media and internet use) is a surprising result, given how such systems and methods of communication are becoming so integrated into daily life. Such studies could help scholars and policymakers understand the unexpected turns crises can take and provide practitioners with a range of tools when preparing for or handling future crises.