In 2021, Japan's gender wage gap was among the highest of all OECD countries. A big factor of this economic gender inequality lies in the fact that female participation in regular-work is...Show moreIn 2021, Japan's gender wage gap was among the highest of all OECD countries. A big factor of this economic gender inequality lies in the fact that female participation in regular-work is comparatively low to the participation rate in the more insecure and lower-paying irregular work jobs. Previous research has shown that there are three main obstacles to increased female participation in regular work positions. Those being the long-working-hours culture, a lack of enforcement of policies by the government, and the societal expectation that women are supposed to focus on housework and child-rearing. This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced these obstacles and if there has been any positive change to the female participation rate in regular work. Using the concepts of exogenous shocks and critical junctures as a theoretical framework, this paper argues that the COVID-19 pandemic might have set the stage for real change in the Japanese labour market through the promotion of telework as a legitimate business practice. However, the pandemic has also highlighted or reinforced the existing obstacles to increased female participations in regular work due to the closure of schools and businesses in the hospitality industry, disproportionally affecting women.Show less
Organized crime has remained an incredibly persistent problem in Mexico in the last decades consequently causing severe levels of violence, insecurity, and corruption in the country. Historically,...Show moreOrganized crime has remained an incredibly persistent problem in Mexico in the last decades consequently causing severe levels of violence, insecurity, and corruption in the country. Historically, Mexican organized crime groups have demonstrated strong resilience and overcome various challenges posed by the Mexican and American governments. However, it is not clear how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted organized crime in Mexico. This thesis wishes to explore this by studying the changes in organized crime activity in Mexico before and during the pandemic. Based on the crime rates, it was observed that some organized crime-related activities decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, while others remained stable. These results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent regulations have had a slight, but insignificant impact on organized crime in Mexico. This strongly indicate that Mexican organized crime groups’ have the ability to show great resilience in the face of major disruptions to the social environment. This finding highlights the need for more detailed research on what mechanisms enable organized crime to remain afloat. An understanding of these mechanisms is of great significance to policymakers attempting to limit the harm of organized crime.Show less
The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on Dutch public organizations, and on society as a whole. This study aims to explore the leadership preferences among public servants during times of...Show moreThe COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on Dutch public organizations, and on society as a whole. This study aims to explore the leadership preferences among public servants during times of crisis, and to make concrete recommendations for further research into the underdeveloped knowledge on public leadership preferences in times of crisis. To do so, semistructured interviews were conducted with employees from the municipalities of The Hague and Gouda, during which they were asked to report their needs in terms of three leadership styles: laissez-faire, transactional and transformational. The study found that transformational leadership was preferred during the pandemic and encourages fellow researchers to verify this using quantitative means. Further recommendations include the reexamination of the usefulness of laissez-faire leadership and the usage of different leadership frameworks to touch upon other behaviors.Show less
This paper investigates the causes behind the continual suspension of the European Union’s (EU) Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) under its general escape clause (GEC) throughout the period of 2020...Show moreThis paper investigates the causes behind the continual suspension of the European Union’s (EU) Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) under its general escape clause (GEC) throughout the period of 2020-2023. The GEC was triggered in March of 2020 on the recommendation of the European Commission to give member states fiscal room to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, but has remained in place for over three years, despite the subsiding of pandemic emergency measures, restored levels of economic activity, and the repeated recommendations and predictions from numerous European institutions that the rules were to be reinstated at the end of 2022 by the very latest. With the emergence of a legislative proposal from the European Commission to reform the SGP’s rules, questions have emerged from journalistic endeavours and academic literature as to the purpose of the extended suspension. This paper utilises explaining-outcome process-tracing as described by Beach and Pedersen (2013) to compare the expectations and assumptions of varying theories, particularly the “failing forward” theory of Jones et al., (2016) to investigate and explain the European Commission’s decision-making in the case of the SGP’s continual suspension. It concludes that the continual suspension can be minimally explained by ongoing reform efforts by the European Commission, in line with the theoretical expectations of Jones et al. and the findings of Schön-Quinlan and Sciponi (2017). It cannot rule out that the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the economic knock-on effects, played a part in the decision for continual suspension. The findings of this paper have implications for understanding the European Commission as a fiscal actor in an economic crisis, and understanding the relevance of particular theories of European integration to the historical context of the COVID-19 pandemic.Show less
This paper examines the impact that the salience of the threat of contagious diseases has on Dutch citizens’ support for non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) aimed at battling this threat....Show moreThis paper examines the impact that the salience of the threat of contagious diseases has on Dutch citizens’ support for non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) aimed at battling this threat. During the COVID-19 pandemic, populations in Western countries where the salience of the threat of the coronavirus was elevated, reported high support for preventive measures. This level of support did vary between countries which led to the question of whether the outcomes would be the same for previously excluded countries, like the Netherlands. Analysing how salience influences the support for NPIs can help governments with creating the best and most supported approach to battle contagious diseases in the future. For this research, the emphasis will be on the so far understudied Dutch population. Taking previous literature on the Netherlands and its neighbouring countries, this study argues that the salience of the threat of contagious diseases will increase Dutch citizens’ support for NPIs aimed at alleviating this threat. After conducting a survey experiment, no support was found for this hypothesis since both groups, with salience and without salience of the threat, reported an equal level of support for the implementation of NPIs. Overall, as expected from previous literature, the lowest support was found for implementing a complete lockdown. Unfortunately, these findings were not generalisable to the whole Dutch population. Future research should focus on either sampling a bigger group for a similar study, or on researching what does influence the support for NPIs in the Netherlands if it is not the salience of the threat of contagious diseases.Show less
Economic Governance in EU has been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), window for reforms have become visible. To...Show moreEconomic Governance in EU has been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), window for reforms have become visible. To understand the implications of the proposed reforms by the EU Economic Governance Review, we conduct a case-study analysis of both COVID-19 Pandemic and the European Debt Crisis of 2009 to understand how efficient these proposed SGP reforms could be. The case-study analysis compares the public expenditures of member states to derive the efficiency of the Excessive Deficit procedure (EDP) under SGP. The author is able to derive limitations pertaining to policy failure in the analysis. Overall, even though the study might identify the subjective relevance of EDP amongst the member states, the procyclical impact of the reforms suggest further discourse in the field.Show less
During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was assumed that European cooperation, both individually and collectively, would produce better results than autonomous national self-interest. Especially the...Show moreDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, it was assumed that European cooperation, both individually and collectively, would produce better results than autonomous national self-interest. Especially the demand for increased cross-national cooperation to accelerate data exchange for multilateral COVID-19 research to inform public health policy-making was highly critical. However, sharing health data for secondary purposes such as research is difficult, as technical, political, and ethical issues were identified before the COVID-19 pandemic. This thesis focused on data management issues and barriers such as a lack of metadata standards and data interoperability. Facilitating cross-border secondary use of health data to inform public health decisions has been on the EU's agenda for some time, leading to the creation of the Joint Action Towards the European Health Data Space and the European Commission’s recommendation on a European electronic health record exchange standard, among other things. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an excellent case study for determining whether these guidelines were adequate for guiding efficient data sharing in collaborative research. For instance, the EU made a significant investment in cooperative COVID-19 research projects with the goal of providing data to support public health policies. In this thesis, ReCoDID, ORCHESTRA, unCoVer, and SYNCHROS—four projects financed by the EU Horizon2020 program—are discussed in detail. The projects shed light on the challenges of sharing patient-level data from observational cohorts, particularly with regard to data management issues such as data interoperability. It was discovered that EU guidelines did enable the formation of research projects and that these projects were even aimed at improving data harmonisation and exchange in COVID-19 research. However, because there is still no EU-standardised agreement on the selection of data interoperability standards, this has become a difficult task. Specifically, none of the four projects examined was able to locate interoperability standards at the legal, policy, care process, information, application, or infrastructure levels.Show less
Master thesis | European Politics and Society: Vaclav Havel Joint Master Programme
open access
In recent years, rising concerns about the spread of fake-news and misinformation across liberal democracies have gained academic prominence, particularly in light of the January 6th Insurrection...Show moreIn recent years, rising concerns about the spread of fake-news and misinformation across liberal democracies have gained academic prominence, particularly in light of the January 6th Insurrection and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a seldom explored aspect is whether people’s lack of responsiveness to facts, or fact-insensitivity, has disparate effects across electoral systems. To fill this gap, I build on Stephanopoulos’s (2014) alignment approach of democracy to empirically test whether fact-insensitiveness exacerbates misalignment effects across majoritarian, proportional, or mixed electoral systems. Methodologically, I conduct a Large-N analysis to test the strength of the relationship between the degree of fact-insensitiveness and electoral alignment in lower house constituencies in 16 democracies (N=2722). Additionally, I bound the scope of inference by taking into account cultural and psychological proximity in the country selection process (Schulz, Bahrami-Rad, J. P. Beauchamp, et al. 2019; Muthukrishna et al. 2020). To evaluate this, I employ a dataset that combines original vaccination data with existing data on COVID-19 disorder events, and electoral outcomes. The results show that electoral systems have significantly different electoral outcomes in terms of alignment, however, there are no statistically significant differences among them with regards of fact-insensitivity. In turn, this denies any normative gains or losses when selecting an electoral system in contexts of varying degrees of fact-insensitiveness.Show less
What is environmental turbulence? How does it affect organisational performance? And how is this relationship moderated by stabilising features? This thesis delves into the topic of organisational...Show moreWhat is environmental turbulence? How does it affect organisational performance? And how is this relationship moderated by stabilising features? This thesis delves into the topic of organisational stability in the wake of turbulence stemming from the outside of (public) organisations. It uses COVID-19 crisis as an example of environmental turbulence and assesses its impact on the provision of education in The Netherlands. Moreover, this thesis investigates the moderating role of stabilising features, conceptualised as personnel stability in the form of personnel tenure, forms of employment and teacher-to-student ratio. This thesis is quantitative and deductive. In order to test this relationship, a statistical model has been set up, with the data on 429 public schools in the secondary education in The Netherlands. This thesis finds positive support for the argument that stabilising features attenuate the negative effect of environmental turbulence on the organisational performance, albeit weakly. This thesis recommends to delve further into contextual factors that could have an impact on aforementioned relationships, by choosing, for instance, a smaller N, or investigating one or few particular schools through interviews and thick description.Show less
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused both academic and financial hardship for students pursuing higher education in the Netherlands, including study delays and layoffs. Given that these types of...Show moreThe COVID-19 pandemic has caused both academic and financial hardship for students pursuing higher education in the Netherlands, including study delays and layoffs. Given that these types of incidents have a bearing on students' overall financial behaviour and that student loans are a common tool among students to finance their postsecondary education, one would expect these effects of the pandemic to have a direct impact on student borrowing behaviour. However, there is another variable to take into account, namely students' financial preferences, particularly with regard to having or taking on debt. Accordingly, this study reports on the degree of debt aversion and how it affects the borrowing behaviour of students in Dutch higher education during this crisis. This relationship is examined by means of three hypotheses and corresponding multiple regression analyses with moderation effects, using data obtained through the use of a survey and an additive index measuring the degree of debt aversion. This research has shown that the financial preference of debt aversion has a negative impact on the borrowing behaviour of students. In other words, the higher a student’s degree of debt aversion is, the lower their monthly amount of student loans will be. This relationship does not differ depending on whether or not a student has been directly affected by the pandemic and the effects thereof.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Metaphors effectively explain a complex (scientific) topic in terms familiar to the non-expert audience. However, metaphors also affect attitude. This thesis investigated the effects that the path...Show moreMetaphors effectively explain a complex (scientific) topic in terms familiar to the non-expert audience. However, metaphors also affect attitude. This thesis investigated the effects that the path metaphor and the wildfire metaphor have on the personal control people experience over the further course of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, participants received a text about the ongoing yet hidden threat of COVID-19, in which a new outbreak was either described as a wrongly taken path, as a wildfire flaring up, or without a metaphor. To measure the experienced amount of personal control, the participants were asked about their feelings of fear and control of the virus and the measures, and how they would bring these feelings into practice by reacting to multiple scenarios involving the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Statistical testing revealed no significant effect of the metaphors on the participants’ responses, potentially due to (amongst others) the time frame of the research. It is necessary to research in which circumstances a metaphor does and does not affect attitude. Then, it can be determined how and when a metaphor can best be employed in daily life to influence the hearer’s perception of a message, for example in the contexts of climate change, disease, and politics.Show less
De laatste jaren neemt het aantal uren en het aantal werknemers dat werkzaamheden buiten kantoor (telewerk) uitvoert in de publieke sector toe. De opkomst van COVID-19 heeft geresulteerd in een nog...Show moreDe laatste jaren neemt het aantal uren en het aantal werknemers dat werkzaamheden buiten kantoor (telewerk) uitvoert in de publieke sector toe. De opkomst van COVID-19 heeft geresulteerd in een nog snellere en verdere toename in telewerk. Deze toename kan problemen opleveren op het gebied van leiderschap omdat leiders moeten omschakelen naar leiden op afstand. Dit kan vervolgens resulteren in een lagere werkbevlogenheid onder werknemers. Gevolgen hiervan kunnen bestaan uit mindere prestaties en een lagere mentale gezondheid van werknemers, waardoor de kans op burn-outs toeneemt. Om in kaart te brengen of telewerk daadwerkelijk deze negatieve gevolgen met zich heeft gebracht, is er gekeken welke invloed telewerk door COVID-19 heeft gehad op het leiderschap waargenomen door werknemers in de publieke sector en de mate van werkbevlogenheid die zij ervaren. Om dit te onderzoeken zijn werknemers van de Amerikaanse overheid die werkzaamheden zoals gewoonlijk door konden zetten, vergeleken met werknemers die door COVID-19 verplicht moesten telewerken. Hiervoor is gebruik gemaakt van data uit The Office of Personnel Management Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey 2020. Uit de data-analyse is gebleken dat telewerkers tegen de verwachtingen in over het algemeen hoger scoorden op waargenomen leiderschap en werkbevlogenheid dan niet-telewerkers. De hogere score bij werkbevlogenheid is voornamelijk te danken aan de indirecte invloed die telewerk uitoefent middels waargenomen leiderschap. Waargenomen leiderschap heeft dan ook een grote positieve invloed op werkbevlogenheid. Andere aspecten van telewerken hebben wel een minimale maar negatieve invloed op de werkbevlogenheid. Het onderzoek kent wel enige beperkingen. Zo worden hoger- en lager management beide meegenomen, wat de resultaten minder toepasbaar maakt voor beide takken van management. Ook worden veel verschillende afdelingen meegenomen in het onderzoek waardoor de toepasbaarheid op individuele afdelingen niet hoog is. Vervolgonderzoek kan zich toespitsen op individuele afdelingen waardoor er voor deze afdelingen bruikbaar telewerkbeleid geschreven kan worden.Show less
De coronapandemie heeft ervoor gezorgd dat wetenschapsnieuws, in het bijzonder nieuws over de coronavaccins, continu relevant is voor de samenleving. Door deze unieke situatie kan er opnieuw...Show moreDe coronapandemie heeft ervoor gezorgd dat wetenschapsnieuws, in het bijzonder nieuws over de coronavaccins, continu relevant is voor de samenleving. Door deze unieke situatie kan er opnieuw gekeken worden naar concepten zoals nieuwswaarden en uitingen van wetenschappelijke onzekerheid. Deze scriptie kijkt specifiek naar hoe het nieuws over de coronavaccins gepresenteerd wordt op Instagram, een steeds belangrijker nieuwsplatform voor jongeren. Door middel van een kwalitatieve inhoudsanalyse wordt er gekeken naar de nieuwswaarden die aanwezig zijn in het vaccinnieuws op de Instagram van de Nederlandse nieuwssite NU.nl. Ook wordt er gekeken of er sprake is van zogenaamde hedging, te weten taalkundige uitingen van (wetenschappelijke) onzekerheid, iets waar het in de wetenschapsjournalistiek veelal aan ontbreekt. 96 posts over de vaccins uit een tijdsbestek van een half jaar zijn vervolgens geanalyseerd. Hieruit bleek dat de relevante nieuwswaarden vooral bekende nieuwswaarden van socialemedianieuws en wetenschapsnieuws omvatten, zoals positief nieuws en personificatie. Interessant genoeg was sociale relevantie de hoofdmanier waarop het nieuws relevant gemaakt werd, en niet overige zaken zoals economische of politieke relevantie, wat de invloed van de pandemie op de samenleving extra duidelijk maakt. Verrassend genoeg bleek er wel degelijk ruimte te zijn voor uitingen van wetenschappelijke onzekerheid in de Instagram posts, hoewel er wel willekeur was qua wanneer er twijfel aan statements werd toegevoegd en wanneer niet. Hoezeer dit komt door de unieke situatie rondom de pandemie en dus in hoeverre deze bevinding door te trekken is naar wetenschapsjournalistiek in het algemeen is echter onzeker.Show less
