Despite the highest ranks on pandemic preparedness assessments European welfare states encounter great difficulty in responding effectively to the COVID-19 outbreak. In this article we compare the governance of COVID-19 response in 48 Eurasian countries and a selection of European and SARS (2003) exposed Asian countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak until 1 June 2020, using data from the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, recent scientific literature and policy documents.
Pandemic preparedness during the first wave of COVID-19 evolved from specialist infectious disease control to a broad governance of population mitigation, which in at least half of Eurasian countries lacked appropriate authority and capacity. In the directly operational response in Asian countries, preparedness encompasses a whole of government approach, an engaged and active community and private actors. Preparedness requires and reflects both vertical and horizontal coordination as well as policies that fit with the political economy of a country and region.

Recent research demonstrates that political parties in western Europe are generally structured along one dimension – and often take more or less similar ideological positions on the economic and cultural dimension – whereas the policy preferences of voters are structured two dimensionally; a considerable part of the electorate combines left-wing stances on one dimension with right-wing stances on the other. These ideologically ‘unserved’ voters are the main focus of this study. Using data from a large-scale survey in Flanders and Wallonia, we demonstrate how the salience of the two dimensions explains whether these unserved voters ultimately end up voting for a right-wing or a left-wing party. Specifically, we show that these voters elect a party that is ideologically closest on the dimension that they deem most important at that time. To summarise, the findings of this study confirm that salience is a key driver of electoral choice, especially for cross-pressured voters.

Since the start of the 21^st century, most nations have followed the lead of the World Health Organization and developed specific policies to tackle the ‘global obesity epidemic’. The medical reasoning is that non-contagious diseases are the most important causes of mortality and morbidity, especially in prosperous nations. As these diseases are conceptualized as ‘caused’ by ‘unhealthy lifestyle choices’, there is dire need for preventive lifestyle policies that help people make ‘the healthy choice’. Seen from this perspective the distribution of responsibilities between governments and their citizens is made in accordance to the ‘intervention ladder’, which has been developed from a stewardship model.
Regarding the ‘obesity epidemic’, this contribution tests the basic medical claims behind this science policy complex. We find that the knowledge base for these claims is highly uncertain and that interventions lack efficacy. Furthermore, research points to increased levels of stigmatization of ‘fat people’, leading more discrimination. All this changes the status of the policies from preventive (i.e. proportionate) to precautionary (i.e. disproportionate). Further analysis of the preventive medical and policy paradigms shows both are by default biased towards precaution. Combined with the notion that citizens of democratic societies are entitled to trustworthy and transparent information, this contribution concludes that a reorientation of both paradigms is called for.

Central concern of this article is tracing back how the making-responsible of citizens takes shape within Dutch speeches from the throne, government statements and reports of the Dutch Social and Cultural Research Institute (SCP) ever since the 1960s. The Dutch participation society, a term much discussed ever since mentioned in the 2013 speech of the throne, is often associated with a withdrawing government and a coming to end of the welfare state. At the same time, according to several authors, the notion of a withdrawing government that operates within a network of multiple equal actors has brought along the need for a widening of the government’s repertoire of action. This has been characterized as making-responsible citizens on conditions of the state. It has raised doubts about true government-withdrawal and authors have related it to the dominance of neo-liberal thinking ever since the 1990s. Applying an analysis framework derived from discourse analysis, it is made tangible in this article how within political discourse beginnings of the making-responsible of citizens can be traced to the 1960s, more than thirty years earlier than expected. It is argued that this longer history makes a plea for encouraging the political dimension of citizenship all the more important.

Cities and regions have long captured the imagination of sociologists, economists, and urbanists. From Alfred Marshall to Robert Park and Jane Jacobs, cities have been seen as cauldrons of diversity and difference and as fonts for creativity and innovation. Yet until recently, social scientists concerned with regional growth and development have focused mainly on the role of firms in cities, and particularly on how these firms make location decisions and to what extent they concentrate together in agglomerations or clusters. This short article summarizes recent advances in our thinking about cities and communities, and does so particularly in light of themes advanced in my recently published book, The Rise of the Creative Class, which focuses on diversity and creativity as basic drivers of innovation and regional and national growth. This line of work further suggests the need for some conceptual refocusing and broadening to account for the location decisions of people as opposed to those of firms as sources of regional and national economic growth. In doing so, this article hopes to spur wider commentary and debate on the critical functions of cities and regions in 21st century creative capitalism.

A post-positivistic view on policy analysis is increasingly accepted within mainstream policy analysis. Post-positivistic policy analysis is a term for a broad range of analytical approaches in the field of policy analysis, which seeks to move beyond an ‘objectivist’ conception of reality. Scholars working within this field primarily object to the positivistic claim that policy problems can be approached in a technocratic, pure empiricist way. According to them, policy problems are constructed within policy narratives and frames. However, the exact relation between frames, narratives, problems, the use of data, values and ideas are connected remains unclear. This contribution follows Brandwein (2006) who proposes to separate baseline categories of thought, such as values and assumptions from their interpretative products such as narratives and problems. Together, these elements form the interpretative frame in which certain aspects of a policy problem is highlighted while other features are ignored. The authors extend Brandwein’s model as they add an extra element to the interpretative product, that is the use of numbers in policy texts. On this model they render an important shift within Dutch emancipation policy – from a concern for equal distribution of care task and paid labor to an exclusive focus on the growth of women labor participation – more intelligible.

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.

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.

This paper deals with the linkage between changes in the political culture and changes in class-party alignments. First, we investigate how the political culture in Western countries has changed over time. Three views are tested using data on party-manifestos. The first predicts that only new-leftist issues will increase in salience. The second predicts that both new-leftist and new-rightist issues will emerge at the same time. The third, which is empirically corroborated, predicts that first new-leftist issues will emerge followed by a rise in new rightist issues.
Second, we investigate how the emergence of these new issues has affected the traditional class-party alignments. We show that the middle class increasingly votes left-wing as newleftist issues become more important and that the working class increasingly votes rightwing as new-rightist issues become more important. The middle class also appears to alienate from the traditional party of their class as new-rightist issues rise in salience.