Numbers increasingly govern public services. Both policymaking activities and administrative control are increasingly structured around calculations such as cost-benefit analyses, estimates of social and financial returns, measurements of performance and risk, benchmarking, quantified impact assessments, ratings and rankings, all of which provide information in the form of a numerical representation. Through quantification, the public services have experienced a fundamental transformation from “government by rules” to “governance by numbers”, with fundamental implications not just for our understanding of the nature of public service itself, but also for wider debates about the nature of citizenship and democracy. This project scrutinizes the relationship between quantification, administrative capacity and democracy across three policy sectors (health/hospitals, higher education/universities, criminal justice/prisons) and four countries (France, Germany, Netherlands, UK). It offers a cross-national and cross-sectoral study of how managerialist ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted and how they mattered. More specially, it examines (i) how quantification has travelled across sectors and states; (ii) relations between quantification and administrative capacity; and (iii) how quantification has redefined relations between public service and liberal democratic understandings of public welfare, notions of citizenship, equity, accountability and legitimacy.

This study concerns how public service professionals align their public service motivation (PSM), a personal commitment to the public interest, with contrasting demands from organizational and social contexts. Most PSM-studies test measurement scales and rely on quantitative analyses to identify antecedents and consequences of PSM. The need to supplement this approach is acknowledged. Little is known about how PSM is actually put into practice. This study will provide much needed data by means of various methods -questionnaires, observation, interviews, dilemma scenarios- and uses an interdisciplinary approach to further our knowledge of the nature and everyday impact of PSM. The study focuses on veterinarian-inspectors working in Dutch and Belgian food safety services. This provides a unique setting. Inspectors work in a demanding environment involving both face-to-face interaction and social and political attention for their work. Demands set by the organizational goal to preserve food safety may contrast with inspectors? professional ethos, cultural values, the extra-organizational focus implied in their PSM, or the need to address public opinion. Central factors in this study are: - professionalism. Veterianarian-inspectors correspond to the ideal-type of professionals: they have a specific academic background, hold skill-based autonomy, and are directed by an ethical code maintained in the peer group. - national/cultural backgrounds. Comparison is made between Dutch and Belgian (Flemish and Walloon) inspectors, and between (foreign) inspectors in Dutch services since, due to shortage of skilled labor, veterinarians of varying national backgrounds are employed in the Netherlands. - employment in public services. Comparison is made between inspectors working in public inspection services and independent veterinarians who combine a private practice with special inspection assignments. Next to theoretical advances based on empirical research, this project will offer practitioners insight into the potential gains and risks involved in promoting PSM, and provide input for outlining Human Resource Management-strategies.

Top-level bureaucrats operate amidst an abundance of information and unclear political objectives. Their attention allocation explains if and how government responds to societal issues. This project investigates (1) which issues bureaucrats prioritize, (2) how they define the relevant characteristics of a problem, and (3) how they generate policy solutions. The preliminary findings of the project indicate that decision-makers tend to prioritize societal issues that are articulated in objective rather than subjective performance information, and are compared to formal goals or requirements. Exposure to negative performance feedback increases attention to solution-generation, but to a lesser extent problem-definition.

Not everyone is equally susceptible to environmental influences such as negative life events or rearing effects. Temperamental and genetic factors that are often considered risk factors may however actually be susceptibility factors reflecting heightening susceptibility to the effects of the environment in general, with adverse contexts fostering negative outcomes, and supportive contexts promoting positive outcomes. Based on the evidence generated so far, I have chosen temperamental reactivity and dopamine-related DRD4 and COMTmet158val polymorphisms as candidate susceptibility factors, for children as well as for parents. In the proposed study I test whether these susceptibility factors operate independently, which of them shows the largest effects, and/or whether they operate in interaction. Two projects address differential susceptibility in parents and children: a correlational project and an experimental intervention project. The Correlational Project tests differential susceptibility in the negative direction, that is, the influence of daily hassles on parental responsiveness (for parents), and of unresponsive parenting on externalising behaviour (for children). The Intervention Project tests whether susceptible individuals are more affected by positive environmental support, that is in the case of parents by video-feedback intervention aimed at enhancing parental responsiveness and sensitive discipline, and in the case of children by increased parental responsiveness and positive discipline strategies that result in decreased behaviour problems. For the first time the theory of differential susceptibility is experimentally tested in a complete randomized control trial, with intervention and control groups stratified according to genetic and temperamental susceptibility factors. What works for whom, and why? That is an unresolved and crucial issue in parent training and therapeutic intervention more generally. More insight into differential susceptibility and differential effectiveness of parenting interventions has important implications for family (and childcare) policy. A better fit between target group and intervention will result in a more effective use of resources for parent training.

Het huidige internationale recht biedt onvoldoende antwoord op het mondiale probleem van milieuvluchtelingen. In dit onderzoek wordt de praktijk bestudeerd van een tweetal landen dat nu al volop te maken heeft met gedwongen migratie als gevolg van milieudegradatie. Er zal worden gekeken naar een ontwikkelingsland (Kenia) en naar een ontwikkeld land (Nieuw Zeeland). Het vergelijken van de juridische aanpak van dit probleem in deze landen biedt waardevolle informatie voor het formuleren van een Nederlands beleid. Dit beleid kan zowel betrekking hebben op de inrichting van ontwikkelingshulp als op het beleid ten aanzien van (toekomstige) gedwongen migratie naar Nederland. Vervolgens richt het onderzoek zich op bestaande juridische regimes zoals de Responsibility to Protect (hierna: R2P) en wordt geanalyseerd in hoeverre er aanknopingspunten zijn voor een plicht tot interventie door de internationale gemeenschap. Hieruit volgen conclusies en aanbevelingen.