The recent introduction of leadership primaries within the Dutch political parties PvdA, VVD and D66 has attracted much attention, but the opinions about this form of party-reform are divided. This article discusses the reasons for the recent popularity of internal primaries for the selection of the heads of the list of candidates for the national elections and describes the procedures used by the various parties. The article concludes that leader-ship primaries are not always beneficial for parties and democracy. Only if the procedures for primaries are carefully designed and the candidates behave prudently and in an integer way, leadership primaries can have a positive effect on internal party democracy and on the political system as a whole.

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.

Fraud seems to be on the rise. That feeds a demand for controls. This paper sketches the diversity of supply in reaction to this demand: public regulators of course, but also commercial information providers and benchmarkers, self-regulating associations, hallmark producers, certification and accreditation bodies, and internal business management control systems, whereby ever more levels of control are piled on top of each other. More than a million Dutchmen earn a living in this booming control-industry, or 14% of the working population. In addition to fraud, other causes of this trend are being discussed, among them, paradoxically, neo-liberalist deregulation policies. All these causes contribute to a sense of risk and uncertainty. Although this trend has a number of negative consequences, it has a major benefit: jobs! Economists may have long thought that transaction costs are there for the transactions. But it looks as if transactions exist to produce transaction costs.

During the last decennium, social theory has provided us with path-breaking insights into the emergence of a new type of social risks (post-industrial, manufactured risks), and on policies which might deal with these risks (life politics; the social investment state). Especially the writings of Anthony Giddens are relevant in this respect. Unfortunately, these abstract ideas have thus far hardly been tested in empirical research. This article aims to fill this gap, by focussing on a telling example of a new, lifestyle related risk, which is the problem of overweight. How useful are Giddens' ideas on risk and social policy when applied in a concrete analysis of this particular problem and related policies? To answer this question, a comparative analysis has been carried out in two welfare states, the British and the Dutch. It will be argued that Giddens' abstract notions can indeed be applied effectively in a practical and fruitful framework for policy analysis. In this respect, the concepts of life politics and the social investment state seem promising, both for the practise and analysis of social policy development in European welfare states.

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.

The growing interest in demand-based delivery is to be comprehended regarding the criticism on the traditional 'apply-based' delivery. Regarding the literature, the main stream notion on demand-based delivery contains the transfer of the tasks and duties from the intermediate professional to the client. Consequently, the (demanding) client is directly able to affect the provisions he is eligible to and to influence the acquirement of the services and goods.

The main issues are:

This article focuses on the new role of intermediate professionals. The intermediate professional can maintain a role in realising the demand-supply relationship between the client and the supplying professional; he can get the task to acquire and spread the required market information, but as well can get the responsibility to support the market participants using this information. In the same time, this responsibility can help to avoid the normative risks, especially the risk of inadequacy.

This new role must probably be regulated and in any case be monitored to prevent from the situation that the intermediate professional will take over the new responsibilities of the client. If this does not happen, the transfer to the demand-based delivery of public services will fail. On the other hand, if their will be no accessible client support by the new intermediate professional, the transfer to the demand-based delivery will tarnish the fundaments of the social system.

'Demand-based organising' has become popular throughout public domains, sometimes complementing, sometimes working against 'fact-based' and 'market-based' organising. This raises critical questions, about ways in which 'customer' and client demands are and can be known, and how multiple demands can be aggregated. In addition, it is difficult to link demand-based strategies to public service contexts, full of professional practices. How do public managers cope with such contradictory conditions? How can they organise in demand-based ways, amidst contradictory demands? This article, firstly, explores how demand-based rhetoric and instruments have been introduced. Secondly, it explores how public managers really (can) work in demand-based settings. Thirdly, it explores how demand-based practices can be organised, so that public service contexts can be managed 'professionally'. This leads to a paradoxical conclusion. Professional public managers organise in demand-based ways by not handing-over or 'outsourcing' content to customers and clients, but by substantiating demands themselves.

The recent decline in professionalism has frequently been explained as a result of the rise of New Public Management (NPM). As will be shown in this article, however, NPM does not automatically result in a decline in professionalism; its effects differ in various professional contexts. In a case study of the work of social insurance doctors and labor specialists the authors demonstrate that NPM structures the technical aspects of professional tasks, that are the verifiable elements of the professional's judgment. NPM proofs to have strong influence on the techniques for quality insurance (performance of production, time and lawfulness). On the longer term this influence can undermine professional self-regulation. NPM has little impact on the indeterminate task aspects, the professional judgment itself, even though this part has become more 'technical' in years. The case study shows however that this is not due to NPM but to the impact of bureaucratization of the professional task. Furthermore it becomes clear that this impact is stronger in the case of the labor specialist than with respect to the social insurance doctor.

In recent decades, an increasing number of European women have taken up paid employment, but there has been no equivalent rise in the proportion of care tasks assumed by men. The distribution of care tasks between the sexes in household and family life is unbalanced. This article show the strategies of households to diminish time spend on household and caring tasks. A complete outsourcing of caring tasks is not possible (it would lead to de-familiarisation) and redistribution of these tasks remain a necessity. This article also shows that the present distribution of care tasks between the sexes is capable of change. The purpose of this change is not an exactly equal distribution of tasks between man and woman, but a situation where both sexes are in principle able to carry out any household and family care tasks, i.e. where men can perform the so-called 'feminine' care tasks and women the 'masculine' tasks. We describe this process as degenderfication of household and caring tasks.

Fathers may fundamentally change their behaviour, depending on the context. In this article, this aspect was investigated on the basis of three exceptional practices. The 'standard practice' has been defined as a living unit consisting of a man, a woman and one or more children, with the man working outside the home at regular times (generally from 9-17 hours) and the woman being (largely) responsible for household and care tasks. We speak of an exceptional practice if the man works non-regular hours, or has an unusual working pattern, or is part of a special type of household. The study involved around thirty such households, subdivided into the households of homosexual fathers, shiftworkers and teleworkers. The main conclusion of the article into exceptional practices is that men's views and preferences as regards the distribution of tasks between men and women are closely linked to the context in which they perform these tasks. In households characterised by a more balanced distribution of tasks, the alleged skills and preferences of men and the tradition in which they grew up have become largely or totally irrelevant. It turns out that men's opinions may change in situations where men are forced to carry out certain tasks because of a change in circumstances (different working hours, working patterns or alternative lifestyles). In that case, even supposedly poor skills are suddenly of little or no importance. Being 'alone' at home with the children appears to be an important stimulus to actually perform care tasks.

Fathers may fundamentally change their behaviour, depending on the context. In this article, this aspect was investigated on the basis of three exceptional practices. The 'standard practice' has been defined as a living unit consisting of a man, a woman and one or more children, with the man working outside the home at regular times (generally from 9-17 hours) and the woman being (largely) responsible for household and care tasks. We speak of an exceptional practice if the man works non-regular hours, or has an unusual working pattern, or is part of a special type of household. The study involved around thirty such households, subdivided into the households of homosexual fathers, shiftworkers and teleworkers. The main conclusion of the article into exceptional practices is that men's views and preferences as regards the distribution of tasks between men and women are closely linked to the context in which they perform these tasks. In households characterised by a more balanced distribution of tasks, the alleged skills and preferences of men and the tradition in which they grew up have become largely or totally irrelevant. It turns out that men's opinions may change in situations where men are forced to carry out certain tasks because of a change in circumstances (different working hours, working patterns or alternative lifestyles). In that case, even supposedly poor skills are suddenly of little or no importance. Being 'alone' at home with the children appears to be an important stimulus to actually perform care tasks.

Cities are in stage of transformation under the combined effect of enlargement of scale and the enlargement of scope of urban activities. The enlargement of scale is visible in the regionalization of urban development. Housing markets, labor markets and mobility patterns crystallize at regional level. However, the scaling up of urban life is not just an extension of the city as is experienced over more than a century. The simultaneous enlargement of scope makes the transformation more complex and dependant on external connections, both in the private and the public sector. The essay explores concepts that try to explain the nature of this new complexity. What is the meaning of 'urban space' and 'urban place' under the conditions of globalization? And what are the consequences for the guidance of collective action in the context of multi actor and multi level governance? The nature of urban change is illustrated in the case of the Randstad Holland, in particular the region of Amsterdam.

In February 2004, a highly debated research report with the title 'A Burdened Relation. 25 Years Development Aid between the Netherlands and Surinam' was sent to parliament. The study was conducted by a Netherlands scientist and a Surinam senior official (Kruijt and Maks, 2004). Their central aim was to execute a 'quick scan lessons learned evaluation' in order to arrive at a research agenda for a more detailed and profound study of the bilateral development aid relations of the two countries. In spite of this, the Netherlands minister for Development Aid decided in June 2005 to terminate the research project. Main argument she put forward to underpin the decision was that further research would add just about nothing to what already was known, or could be thought relevant for policymaking. The author of this article questions the validity of the argument of the minister. She scrutinizes the threefold research task, the research process and the results of the joint exercise. This demonstrates that the review holds a future scientific research agenda that is both innovative and provocative. Furthermore, she points out that the political ups and downs that accompanied the publication contain some additional practical insights.

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.