Spatial planning has become contested ground in Dutch politics. After decades of a broadly shared belief in strategic spatial planning by central government and comprehensive planning by local and regional authorities, the balance of political thought has changed in recent years. The ministry of housing …

Assessing the effectiveness and progress of efforts to ‘build states in order to build peace’ (Call and Wyeth, 2008) is inevitable for several reasons. Politicians want to know what is being achieved with the resources that they have allocated to the state building endeavours abroad. They want to judge …

Burgers en politici hebben behoefte aan verantwoording over ingezette middelen voor ontwikkelingshulp en de bereikte doelen. De resultatenrapportage van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken biedt in theorie een mooi overzicht dat ten dele inzicht verschaft. Het rapport schetst echter een te mooi beeld. …

This paper presents the results of a literature review in regard to Social Media and participation. Besides that, to understand the meaning and impact of Social Media on elections, we show field results from the 2010 and 2011 elections in the Netherlands. There are several challenges when it comes to …

The rise of populist movements in Europe is partly explained by the power of mass media. The press, public and politicians keep each other prisoner. The media increases incidents and looks for personal stories while politicians respond to those stories in order to be noticed by the public. Therefore …

Among politicians and businessmen in the Netherlands, the general feeling is that integrity comes first in their businesslike relationships. Corruption is something that goes on in the Third World. This perception is strengthened annually by Transparency International’s publication of the so-called ‘Corruption …

Communication on Europe was never a priority in the Netherlands, until it became clear in 2005 that the Dutch people did not support the European Constitution. When on 12 June 2007 the Irish people voted against the Lisbon Treaty, the renewed constitutional treaty, one could speak of a consistency in …

Recently, the European Union seems to have a popularity problem. Especially in the Netherlands the attitude of citizens and journalists has changed dramatically over the past fifteen years. This resulted in low voter turnouts over the years and eventually a Dutch 'no' towards the European Constitution …

The Dutch society of today is a very mixed one. Different cultures from all over the world come together in one small country. One of the reasons that the Dutch society contains so many different cultures is because of its colonial history. The Surinamese population is one of the many ethnical minorities …

Politicians and the media frequently refer to the Netherlands as a multicultural society. Everyone in the Netherlands is equal before the law. Equal people with the same starting point should, theoretically, make the same choices. But is this really the case when people choose financial distribution …