This paper focuses on whether the general communication strategy of a European national government battling a national crisis can be predicted using the situational crisis communication theory. By...Show moreThis paper focuses on whether the general communication strategy of a European national government battling a national crisis can be predicted using the situational crisis communication theory. By focusing on two European countries, the Netherlands and France, this research aims to find out if and how it is possible to predict the chosen communication strategy of a government organization, by using the four factors and their characteristics of the 1995 Coombs theory. His framework of the situational crisis communication theory is currently only proven to apply to indicating which communication strategy an organization should use in a certain situation. Since a national government battling a national crisis has to address its communication to all public stakeholders in general, it’s strategy has to be broad in nature as well. This indication of a government organization using a very broad strategy aimed at an entire population and based on the attributes of a crisis also indicates that the same Coombs framework could also be used to predict which strategy is actually used by a national government battling a national crisis. Note that this is only the case when it comes to general crises and a national government, not specific organizations. The expectation then is that the factors Crisis type, veracity of evidence, damage and performance history can then be used to predict which strategy is chosen by a national government battling a national crisis. When an interpretation of the same factors is used to research which strategy was actually chosen by the Dutch and French national government, a different strategy appeared. Since the strategy that was concluded by the framework of Coombs does not match the strategy that was actually used by the national governments, the expectation is wrong. Whether the crisis communication strategy of a European national government can be predicted at all using the situational crisis communication theory cannot be stated, since different frameworks of this theory could be used to make such a prediction. This research then concluded that the Coombs’ 1995 framework cannot be used for such a prediction, even though a comparison with other theories showed it was the most promising.Show less
This study examines the correlation between Quality of Government indicators and healthcare-performance indicators. Quality of Government is measured using state legitimacy, rule of law and...Show moreThis study examines the correlation between Quality of Government indicators and healthcare-performance indicators. Quality of Government is measured using state legitimacy, rule of law and corruption. Healthcare-performance is measured using infant mortality, life expectancy and primary care. The effect of corruption has been researched on the subnational level and the effects of state legitimacy and rule of law have been linked to healthcare theoretically. However the relationship of Quality of Government on healthcare-performance remains understudied for the national level. This study hypothesizes that countries that have a high Quality of Government tend to have better healthcare-performance. Findings from time-series data between 2000 and 2017 from 35 countries out of the OECD and QoG OECD database, report that healthcare-performance is significantly higher in countries that score better on state legitimacy. Results also show that infant mortality is likely to be lower in countries that score high on rule of law and low on corruption. The result suggests an importance of state legitimacy for healthcare-performance.Show less
