Development cooperation has grown ever more important in recent years as it has become increasingly tied to domestic political preferences. It is sometimes seen as a tool to accomplish objectives...Show moreDevelopment cooperation has grown ever more important in recent years as it has become increasingly tied to domestic political preferences. It is sometimes seen as a tool to accomplish objectives tied to the latter. To be sure, that notion is applicable to the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTFA), born in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis out of a desire to severely limit migration to the EU. Although it was created as an emergency fund, its scope and organisational design do not reflect this label and have ever outgrown it, until the merging of the EUTFA in the European Commission’s new ‘Global Europe’ instrument in 2021. This paper analyses 8 EUTFA programmes along a frame of public administration theory and various relevant literature. In concert with EUFTA reports it answers multiple questions aimed at understanding the influence of organisational design on development cooperation, specifically in the complex environment of a politically laden fund. Do domestic policies take precedence over aiding countries in the European Neighbourhood?Show less
Deploying a novel conception framework offering new understandings of familialism and the policy logic of PRR party family, this study will argue that the Republican Party’s family welfare policy...Show moreDeploying a novel conception framework offering new understandings of familialism and the policy logic of PRR party family, this study will argue that the Republican Party’s family welfare policy overlaps with that of European PRRPs to a currently limited and inconsistent, but significantly growing extent. Evidence from South Carolina and Wyoming—two of the four states selected for investigation to provide a cross-section of the party—indicates concerted familialisation, while data from Florida and Indiana implies GOP support fortification of the care role of the traditional family is conditional on exclusion of the Other, socially, ethnically, and nationally defined. Both policy offerings are understood as features of PRRP welfare logics concerning the family, but the substantial cross-state variation and continuance of long-standing neoliberal policy choices are too significant to decisively assert a Republican Party re-alignment with a radical right logic on the family. Nonetheless, intensified support for the ‘natural’ family since the early-mid 2010s can be discerned across all cases, leaving open the prospect of a truer policy overlap in the future. From this, the contributions of this study are two-fold: a clearer picture of an oft-posited but ill-understood transatlantic transmission of radical right logics, and an original, conceptually rigorous means to investigate it.Show less
Decennia aan onderzoek wijst uit dat de verhouding tussen de politieke en de ambtelijke sfeer een van de meest bediscussieerde onderwerpen binnen de bestuurskunde is. Dit komt doordat er regelmatig...Show moreDecennia aan onderzoek wijst uit dat de verhouding tussen de politieke en de ambtelijke sfeer een van de meest bediscussieerde onderwerpen binnen de bestuurskunde is. Dit komt doordat er regelmatig frictie bestaat tussen de politiek en de uitvoering, wat een soepele beleidsopzet en beleidsimplementatie in de weg staat. In tijden van de wereldwijde coronapandemie is de Nederlandse overheid er echter in geslaagd om de Noodmaatregel Overbrugging voor behoud van Werkgelegenheid (NOW) bijzonder snel te ontwikkelen en door te voeren in de praktijk. Dit roept vragen op over of de coronacrisis wijzigingen heeft aangebracht in de politiek- ambtelijke verhoudingen ten voordele van beleidsontwikkelingen en implementaties. In dit kwalitatieve onderzoek wordt aan de hand van het bekende principaal-agent model en het relatief nieuwe principaal-steward model een samenwerkingsvisie bestudeerd die de nieuwe politiek-ambtelijke verhoudingen tussen het Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid en het Uitvoeringsinstituut Werknemersverzekering omschrijft. Een continuüm-benadering van de modellen laat zien dat mede als gevolg van de NOW-regeling elementen van het principaal- steward model hun intreden doen in een overheersend principaal-agent relatie tussen het ministerie en de uitvoeringsorganisatie. Het onderzoek concludeert dat de NOW-regeling onderdeel uitmaakt van een bredere tendens die ervoor zorgt dat politiek-ambtelijke verhoudingen aan verandering onderhevig zijn en dat de context hier bovendien een primaire rol in speelt.Show less
This paper examined eight cases of counterinsurgency warfare to uncover conditions that lead to the use or non-use of Private Military Companies in military conflict by minor powers. This was done...Show moreThis paper examined eight cases of counterinsurgency warfare to uncover conditions that lead to the use or non-use of Private Military Companies in military conflict by minor powers. This was done through the use of a crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which combines aspects of both quantitative as well as qualitative approaches. The conditions that were identified as having an impact on PMC involvement are: danger to the political leadership due to continuation of the conflict, quality of equipment and training soldiers receive, and whether the conflict has reached a stalemate. In the universe of cases presented in this paper the most important factor for predicting the use or non-use of PMC’s seems to be whether the political leadership is in danger due to the continuation of the conflict. This is highlighted through case studies of the Sierra Leone Civil War and the Bougainville Conflict. In Sierra Leone, the capital was surrounded which led to the use of PMC’s. In Papua New Guinea the prime minister felt politically threatened, leading to him contacting a PMC. However, the rest of the government and army were not directly threatened by the conflict and thus condemned the use of this PMC, leading to the cancellation of the contract.Show less
The Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine led to protests, violence, violations of human rights, and more than a hundred people lost their life. During the three months of protest (2013-2014), multiple...Show moreThe Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine led to protests, violence, violations of human rights, and more than a hundred people lost their life. During the three months of protest (2013-2014), multiple intergovernmental organisations made statements regarding the violence and called for action against the Ukrainian government. This paper investigates how much influence those intergovernmental organisations have on the decision-making of the Ukrainian government regarding the protests by using press releases. This paper finds that intergovernmental organisations have indeed influence while limited in the decision-making. This is seen due to the use of discourse analysis.Show less
