"We have a chance to ride out this Omicron wave without shutting down our country once again," (Johnson, 2022). This quote was made by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on January 4th, 2022....Show more"We have a chance to ride out this Omicron wave without shutting down our country once again," (Johnson, 2022). This quote was made by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on January 4th, 2022. It shows the desire not to shut down the country by implementing another lockdown despite the highly infectious Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus. This quote shows his perception on the virus, whilst on the other side of the world, Prime Minister Ardern had closed the national borders of New Zealand back in 2020 which have remained closed until further notice. This difference in policy adoption and decision-making processes between two countries which are seemingly very similar in terms of the economic stability, political stability, territory size, and collaborative international partners is very puzzling. This research will therefore concern the identification of the core cause of this difference in policy adoption. The research has been conducted through the use of official governmental legislative documents as well as reliable secondary sources in order to conduct a comparative small-N design-based research. The method of this small-N design is the Most Similar Systems Design II method which aims to uncover the key cause of the difference in outcome of a specific case. For this research, the theories by Kingdon (Kingdon, 1984) ; (Béland & Howlett, 2016) and Dai et al. (Dai, et al., 2021) are used.Show less
Australia and New Zealand have been known for their British Child Migrants Programme (1920-1970). The Netherlands stimulated emigration after the Second World War as well. Considering overseas...Show moreAustralia and New Zealand have been known for their British Child Migrants Programme (1920-1970). The Netherlands stimulated emigration after the Second World War as well. Considering overseas demand for child migrants was high in the British context, this thesis explores the Dutch perspectives on the phenomenon of child migration. Following a governance perspective the thesis sets out to identify contributing factors and actors in order to explain the rejection of child migration from The Netherlands. The research is built on various primary sources including newspaper articles, personal publications, radio interviews and letter exchanges between governments and NGOs. These sources have identified both the Australian/New Zealand perspectives and the Dutch situation regarding children in The Netherlands during the post-war period. Ultimately establishing that the Australian and New Zealand governments were certainly interested in taking in Dutch children, but that the Dutch government were mostly apprehensive due to perceived Australian inexperience, a lack of parentless children and a lack of adoption regulations.Show less
