Suchergebnisse

This study explores the growing interest of governments in co-production and self-organisation by examining the framing of roles and responsibilities of citizens and professionals in care reforms. As in many other western countries, the Dutch welfare state is subject to major reforms, shifting responsibilities back towards society. A qualitative content analysis of policy letters of the Dutch national government shows that newer roles (citizen-as-co-producers) do not substitute traditional roles (citizen-as-clients), but constitute a new layer resulting in an expansion and diversification of roles for regular providers. Activating, supporting and partnering with citizens are framed as new competences of professionals.

This study explores the growing interest of governments in co-production and self-organisation by examining the framing of roles and responsibilities of citizens and professionals in care reforms. As in many other western countries, the Dutch welfare state is subject to major reforms, shifting responsibilities back towards society. A qualitative content analysis of policy letters of the Dutch national government shows that newer roles (citizen-as-co-producers) do not substitute traditional roles (citizen-as-clients), but constitute a new layer resulting in an expansion and diversification of roles for regular providers. Activating, supporting and partnering with citizens are framed as new competences of professionals.

Presidential oversight is a core citizen duty, yet competence is rarely assessed. I use 855 interviews conducted during the final Bush and initial Obama terms to test a novel citizen oversight assessment tool: a classification matrix created by juxtaposing historically important presidential assessment values (effectiveness, morality, and prudence) against equally familiar evaluative "targets" (presidential traits, actions, and results). Eighty‐one percent of mentioned evaluative criteria fit the matrix, establishing its construct validity and enabling meaningful assessment of citizen competence. The yield is (1) a cross‐time record of how Americans judge presidents and (2) new findings concerning the comparative importance of presidential results and actions, citizen sensitivity to presidential differences, and the worrisome rise of partisanship.

This article reports progress on developing a theory of public participation that may prove useful to administrative bodies. The authors review a theory of public participation based on Habermas's theory of communicative action and then reconsider the theory in light of a case study. Participants of a forest policy-making process reported their perceptions of a good process, and the authors used grounded theory methodology to induce criteria of good process. By contrasting the case study results with the theoretical criteria, insights are left into the strengths and shortcomings of the theory.

The aim of the study is to form a systematic approach to understanding and resolving a set of tasks of police activities that guarantee the rights and freedoms of citizens in modern society. It was concluded that the most typical negligence in this area includes violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens such as the installation of administrative actions against them without any sign of the crime, incorrect characterization of administrative infractions, the violation of the procedural order of administrative detention, cases of unjustified detention without preparation of reports, as well as exceeding the legal deadlines for administrative detention. Particular attention was paid to the set of means of appeal in proceedings concerning administrative offences, which may be referred to as the institution of the protection of citizens' rights and freedoms. Common European approaches to the legal regulation of policing and the influence of European Union law and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on the guarantee of human rights and freedoms in policing were analyzed.

Research shows that most citizens are shockingly uninformed about public affairs, liberal-conservative ideologies, and the issues of the day. This has led most scholars to condemn typical American voters as politically brainless and to conclude that policy voting lies beyond their reach. 'On Voter Competence' breaks sharply from this view. According to Paul Goren, people vote based on abstract policy principles, a practice that has escaped scholars because they have searched for evidence of policy voting in the wrong places

AbstractCitizens encounter many street‐level bureaucrats in their lifetime. How do they assess the traits of the bureaucrats they meet? Understanding citizens' assessments of bureaucrats is important, because citizens are not passive receivers of policies. This article explores citizens' classifications of street‐level bureaucrats based on their core task. Using a factorial survey (n = 580), three clusters of bureaucrats are identified: those who are regulation oriented, those who are service oriented, and those who are both regulation and service oriented. Then, the article tests how these three types of bureaucrats are assessed on warmth and competence and whether their gender matters. A between‐subjects experiment (n = 1,602) reveals that regulation‐oriented bureaucrats are assessed as least competent and warm. Moreover, regardless of core task, female bureaucrats are assessed as warmer than males. Female and male bureaucrats are assessed as equally competent. This article shows that bureaucrats are stereotyped by citizens and discusses the implications for the public management literature.Evidence for Practice

While researchers and practitioners tend to focus on commonalities between street‐level bureaucrats, focusing on differences—for instance, in terms of core task and gender—may be helpful to understand how citizens see and react to their encounters with bureaucrats.
Much like street‐level bureaucrats' stereotypical notions of citizens, citizens stereotype the bureaucrats they encounter. These stereotypes are based on cues related to the bureaucrats' core task and gender.
Especially for regulation‐oriented organizations and street‐level bureaucrats, such as inspectorates, being aware of stereotypes may be useful when engaging with citizens because they are rated as the least competent and warm.

Past work on attitudes toward the use of referenda finds that the most politically informed citizens are more sceptical of its use than their less informed counterparts. An intriguing tension presents itself in that those citizens who may be best equipped for referendum voting, the highly informed and politically sophisticated, are the least likely to support the use of this tool of direct democracy. Using data from Canadian Election Studies, we consider three explanations for relative referenda scepticism among political sophisticates. Our analyses provide evidence to support a confidence in government explanation and a concern for minority rights explanation, but not an incompetent public explanation - a curious finding considering the centrality of citizen competence in the theoretical literature on referenda. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]