Contemporary western democracies, such the United States, Great Britain, and The Netherlands have become diploma democracies. They are ruled by the well educated, whereas the least educated, even though they still comprise about half of the population, have virtually vanished from most political arenas. Of course, the well educated have always been more politically active than the less educated, but in the past decades this gap has widened substantially. Well-educated citizens are more inclined to vote, to write letters to the editor, or to visit consultative or deliberative meetings than citizens with a low level of education; and most, if not all, members of parliament, all the political officials, and almost all of the political advocates and lobbyists, have college or graduate degrees. The paper substantiates the rise of diploma democracy in The Netherlands, discusses what is problematic about such an educational meritocracy in the context of democracy, and looks at what could be done to mitigate or remedy some of its negative effects.

Demand-steering policies in healthcare are understandable but problematic answers to the desire for democratization that dates from the seventies of the former century. Prominent critics such as Achterhuis and Illich were very critical of the undemocratic character of health care. Yet their romantic idea of society excused them from the need to articulate democratic alternatives. The empty space that they left was filled by the concept of demand-steering. Demand-steering, however, rather than strengthening democratic practices, merely undermines them, by preferring exit above voice, by putting up new bureaucratic barriers between clients and professionals and by undermining the quality of the relationship between clients and professionals.

Doing more justice to the democratic impulse is possible and desirable. A new step towards this aim is being taken by a fourth logic of steering, (next to the familiar logics of the market, bureaucracy and professionalism) that centers on improving the dialogue between clients and professionals. The one variant, democratic professionalism, starts from the position of the professional and aims at intensifying democratic control, while the other variant, collaboration, starts from the client and aims at providing him with more influence and responsibility for the health care process. This fourth logic however can only provide a new impulse to democratization when the vague notion of the dialogue is elaborated more thoroughly.

This article identifies institutions and arrangements concerning the reconciliation of working life and family life for various European countries. These institutions and arrangements concern time (flexible working hours and leave arrangements), money (tax systems) and facilities (childcare facilities). A fairer distribution of all work and care tasks requires proper facilities at national level in respect of childcare, parental leave, so-called leave savings schemes, the right to work part-time, etc. Such facilities are of particular importance while taking the first steps towards a fairer distribution: they will enable men to take on more tasks at home, while making it easier for women to work outside the home. The article concludes that with regard to reconciliation facilities, the differences between the several welfare states within the European Union are fading away. This is interesting, because as a result the EU countries are increasingly finding common ground in terms of solutions for reconciliation and more specifically the role of men.

Various authors have claimed that postmodern concepts of citizenship have become more important in contemporary Western societies. The new generation of citizens are said to be more critical toward the political system, less likely to participate in conventional politics, but they remain strongly interested in politics and social life (Norris, Inglehart, Dalton). Michael Schudson developed the concept of a ‘monitorial citizen’, who is interested in politics, with high levels of political efficacy and who turns to political action if needed, but does not participate in traditional political organizations. Based on the European Social Survey (2004) we investigate whether this type of citizenship actually occurs in Belgium, and found that approx. 9 per cent of all respondents can be labeled as ‘monitorial citizens’. In accordance with the theoretical expectations, most of them are young and highly-educated citizens. A multivariate analysis shows that, controlling for education, ‘monitorial citizens’ also score relatively high on political trust.

At least four criterions/methods to measure mechanical effects of electoral systems can be distinguished: measuring disproportionality, the reduction in number of parties, the party advantages and the threshold percentages. In this manuscript we focus on the thresholds. We first concentrate on a description of legal, theoretical, and empirical thresholds as measures of mechanical effects. Further, we analyse the relationship between (the natural logarithm) of district magnitude and the empirical threshold and between the empirical threshold and the effective number of parties. As starting point we take districts in Spain, Portugal and Hungary as the level of analysis. We clearly show that there is a negative causal connection between district magnitude and the threshold percentage and between threshold percentage and the number of parties.