This editorial offers an introduction to the current issue.

In the past decades, employment and incomes were on the rise, social spending remained high while passive welfare states were progressively transformed into so-called ‘investment states’. Despite these favourable conditions, however, contemporary welfare states did not succeed in reducing poverty and inequality. What lies beneath the disquieting poverty standstill and how did welfare states miss this ‘window of opportunity’? In this article, we aim to shed more light on this question. We identify three structural trends behind the poverty standstill: rising employment has benefited workless households only partially; income protection for the working-age population out of work has become less adequate; social policies and, more generally, social redistribution have become less pro-poor. In other words, the reorientation of social expenditures to the employed occurred at the expense of those at risk in the labour market. The success of future poverty-reducing strategies will depend on the way policies aimed at labour market inclusion will be implemented and the emphasis on redistributive policies.

This paper offers a critical empirical analysis of the policy terms ‘allochtoon’ and ‘autochtoon’, which have been used in Dutch public policy and administrative practices in recent years, as well as in general public discourse, to distinguish between people with a migrant background and those with a so-called native background on the basis of birthplace. Taking an interpretive policy analysis perspective, we present metaphor and category analyses to show the determining role that ‘place of origin’ has in the policy terms. The analysis includes a historical contextualization of the categories within Dutch policy discourse. The metaphor analysis focuses on the etymology of the terms, and the category analysis examines the taxonomy used by Statistics Netherlands since 1999. The role of ‘place’, and in particular country or land of birth, in these etymologies and taxonomies link to elements from ancient racial thinking, showing that ‘birthplace’ is a surrogate for race in this policy discourse. The analysis leads us to argue that the terms are inherently exclusive and that the exclusive work that the essentialist categories do is in marked contrast to the policy goal of integration.

Behind many notions of ‘governance’, there lies the image of a ‘modest’ or ‘retreating’ state. The assumption is that local and national authorities can only perform effectively if in cooperation with other public and private actors. Generally, it is said, governments increasingly lack the legitimacy for top-down interventions and hence the need of including participative citizen involvement in policy making and implementation. In recent years this democratic image has been disputed in scientific debates because of its lack of attention for new forms of interventionism by the state in societal processes, e.g. crime, youth care, immigration and integration. In this article, we aim to contribute to this other understanding of modern governance by analysing Dutch political discourse between 2001 and 2010 on (implicit) notions of the role and responsibility of the state. We show how the idea of ‘responsibilisation’ of citizens is turned into an argument for more instead of less state involvement in societal processes and citizens’ lives. By emphasizing ‘shared responsibilities’ between government and society, a tricky picture of parity is sketched of this relation. Dutch government presents itself as ‘an ally’ of citizens in fighting pressing social problems, but in the meantime an ideal of ‘responsible behaviour’ is constructed, namely, citizen behaviour in concordance with government’s policy ambitions. Within this political discourse, the socio-liberal idea of ‘responsibility’ turns into ‘responsibilisation on government’s terms’ and ‘irresponsible’ behaviour becomes a legitimate focal point for deep state interventions through techniques of governance.

There are many different ways in which employees may choose to address unequal treatment at work. They may do so themselves, in an informal or formal manner on the work floor. They may also, at some stage in the dispute, decide to involve specialized advisers such as legal advisers, anti-discrimination officers, health and safety executives and labour unions. It is generally assumed that consulting such specialized advisers will help the employee to address unequal treatment more successfully. In this paper, the effectiveness of the interorganizational field of specialized advisers is analyzed on the basis of an elaborate study among different types of respondents. The main finding is that fear of retaliation plays a crucial role in seeking and receiving specialized advice and that the existing interorganizational field broadly fails to cope with this fear. To resolve this issue, the field needs an improved governance structure with better co-ordination between different types of advisers.

Reflection and Debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

Reflection and Debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

Reflection and Debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In a column a journal editor or an author expresses his or her opinion on a particular subject.