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Most theorists on international relations agree on recognizing natural resources, economic strength, technological development, political stability, & military strength as the five bases of a state's power. This unanimity is in sharp contrast with the divergences in the operationalizations of the power of states. Most operationalizations use only one or two bases of a state's power & thus are very limited in scope. Therefore, the demand for an operationalization sticking as closely as possible to the unanimity among theorists forces itself on the researcher. An attempt is made to transform the theoretical unanimity into an operational measure. Each power basis represented by partial indicators is listed: (1) natural resources--area, population, production of energy, (2) economic strength--gross national product, energy consumption, monetary stability, (3) technological development--level of alphabetization, number of students in higher education, scientific production & infrastructure, (4) political stability--length of independence, internal stability, & (5) military strength--number of men in the armed forces, conventional weapons, nuclear strength. The operationalization was obtained by granting all five power bases an equal share in the index & by giving an equal weight to the sums of the arithmetical values for fifteen partial indicators & thus, for the five indicators. The nation's power-index, thus obtained, was applied to 110 nation states as they existed at the beginning of the '70s. On this power scale, ratings differ from 29,046 indexpoints of world power (IWM) for the US to 276 IWM for Gambia & even less for a number of the smaller states that could not be investigated. Modified HA.

Does the fact that the majority of Turkey's population is Muslim form a hindrance to its EU membership? According to a recent policy advice by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), the answer is an adamant 'no'. Why is this issue of Turkish Islam relevant? After all, Turkey should not be judged by standards other than the Copenhagen criteria. The answer is that the public debate outside 'Brussels' will not be limited to these official criteria. Many people in Europe are worried about Turkey's 'Islam factor'. They believe that Muslims are (potentially violent) fundamentalists who want to establish a theocracy. By explicitly examining the role of Turkish Islam and Muslims in Turkey, the WRR wants to contribute to a well-informed European public debate on Turkey's accession. - Bij de vraag of Turkije lid kan worden van de Europese Unie speelt de islam officieel geen rol. Maar binnen en buiten de politiek vragen velen zich af of Turkije als moslimland wel past bij de Europese Unie. Kan de islam samengaan met democratie, mensenrechten en de scheiding van religie en staat? In dit rapport gaat de Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid in op de plaats van religie in de Europese Unie en in Turkije. Het leerstuk van de scheiding van religie en staat vormt hiervan een belangrijk onderdeel. Naast het rapport bevat deze publicatie ook de verkenning van Erik-Jan Zürcher en Heleen van der Linden Zoeken naar de breuklijn, die onder meer ingaat op de houdbaarheid van het wijdverbreide beeld dat er een culturele en religieuze 'breuklijn' loopt tussen Turkije en Europa. Zij hebben deze studie speciaal voor het WRR-rapport geschreven.

From young elite athlete to chronic pain patient. A reflection on working with students as a researcher
A qualitative study on the (psychological) characteristics of young, former elite athletes with chronic, non-specific pain complaints was initiated to answer the following questions: (1) Which factors could play a role in the development of chronic, non-specific pain in young, former elite athletes? And (2) How can we optimize treatment for young, former elite athletes with chronic, non-specific pain? A master student in Mental Health first interviewed six young former elite athletes with non-specific pain complaints who were receiving treatment in the rehabilitation clinic. The student analyzed the data. As data analysis based on six interviews is rather limited and the findings did not lead to unambiguous conclusions, several parts of the interview were re-coded by researcher 1, leading to different conclusions. We then decided to re-code all interviews in a new project by researcher 1, have researcher 2 double code several interviews and recruit at least six more participants to expand the qualitative sample. Reflecting on working with students in our qualitative study, we found another researcher coding the interview data to be important as it minimizes interpretation bias and allows for a check of the thoroughness of the interview content. Secondly, master students writing their thesis have limited time for these projects, which may lead to a small number of participants in the study. This holds especially when recruiting from a patient population, as availability depends on the number of suitable patients during this period of time.

'Polarization' has become a catchword in Dutch politics, denoting the emphasis on conflicting rather than mutual interests. It is assumed that the efforts made to 'polarize' the voter population are aimed at reducing the large reservoir of middle-of-the-roaders. In its weekly opinion survey, the Netherlands Institute of Public Opinion (NIPO) consistently finds about 30% of the Rs choosing the center of a left/right semantic differential scale with almost an equal number of Rs going to right & left positions. The almost Gaussian overall distribution is shown to be highly correlated with party choice & voting behavior. The frequency distributions along the left/right Osgood scale are highly skewed inside each separate political preference group. The results of a new additional question are reported. The question reads: "If you were not allowed or could not choose this position would you then go for the one adjoining to the right or to the left?" A very large proportion of Rs move over to the left or right even beyond the extremes of the seven-point scale, effectively extending it to a nine-point scale. The popular center position is then reduced to about 12%. Even more interesting are larger variations over time that are shown for an interesting period extending from late Sept to the end of Nov 1977, during which efforts to form a new socialist-dominated government failed. The extended scale is shown to be a more sensitive instrument than the seven-point semantic differential alone. 6 Tables. Modified HA.

Since the dualization of the municipal administration in 2002, the municipal council has access to the right of local inquiry to strengthen its supervisory role. This control instrument gives the municipal council extensive control powers, such as the possibility to hear witnesses under oath. These powers are a means for the municipal council to obtain - whether or not under duress - all factual information regarding the conduct of the council and the mayor. Thus, right of local inquiry serves as a tool with which the council and the mayor can be monitored to ensure the best interest of the population. A precondition for the local right of inquiry is that the control instrument is used proportionally. There has not been much research to determine the extent to which local right of inquiry actually strengthens the supervisory role of the municipal council. This paper, aims to address this gap hence it forms the basis of the thesis. In order to answer this question, the local right of inquiry has been examined normatively and empirically. The normative study, in which the regulations of the local right of inquiry were compared with the expectations of the control instrument, shows that the summary regulation contains many bottlenecks. The consequences of these bottlenecks have been empirically investigated by (among others) examining all local inquiries up to 2019. This revealed that municipal councils rely on obtaining information through local inquiries which do not present factual information. This hinders the process of obtaining the actual on ground information. Moreover, the control instrument is only sporadically used proportionally. Another fact that came to light was that the local right of inquiry is of value for various (political) accountability relationships. This is a gross misuse as the control instrument is not intended for this purpose. In light of the summarized aforementioned findings, it has been established that the local right of inquiry does not strengthen the supervisory role of the municipal council as expected, but legal amendments can be implemented to rectify this.