Liesbet Heyse

Reform in Europe: Breaking the Barriers in Government

The myths of reform, Duco Bannink and Sandra Resodihardjo The 1984 reform of the European Dairy Policy: financial crisis, French leadership, and the reappraisal of the ECs core values, Gerard Breeman The rewards of policy legacy: why Dutch social housing did not follow the British path, Taco Brandsen and Jan-Kees Helderman The introduction of national quality policies: a comparison of Denmark and the Netherlands, Mirjan Oude Vrielink, Van Heffen, Wendy van der Kraan & Bente Bjornholt Reforming Germanys constitutional right to asylum: a shifting paradigm, Fleur Alink The Republic of Irelands ban on smoking in the workplace: reframing the smoking issue, Melvyn Read The reform of Dutch disability insurance: a crisis-induced shift of preferences and possibilities, Duco Bannink, Sanneke Kuipers and Tineke Lantink Modernizing English local government: Voice, loyality, and exit in the demise of the committee system, Francesca Gains District development planning in Heidelberg: realizing change through political leadership and community involvement, Michael Haus Safety policy reform in Rotterdam: changing priorities in big city governance, Julien van Ostaaijen and Frank Hendriks Explaining reform in Europe: comparison, patterns and reflections, Liesbet Heyse, Berber Lettinga and Martijn Groenleer Epilogue: friction, resistance, and breakthroughs, Frank Baumgartner Appendix to chapter 11 List of contributors Index.

Work-Life Balance Among Humanitarian Aid Workers

A limited body of research has examined satisfaction with work–life balance of expatriate workers who live abroad, residing outside the typical “family” or “life” domain. This study aims to demonstrate how and under which organizational circumstances job autonomy can increase work–life balance satisfaction of humanitarian aid expatriates. We hypothesize that especially in humanitarian work, trust in management can buffer potential negative effects of high autonomy. We test our hypothesis by means of ordinal logistic regression, using survey data collected among expatriates of the Operational Center Amsterdam of Médecins Sans Frontières (N = 142). Results reveal that high levels of autonomy are positively related with work–life balance satisfaction when trust in the management of the organization is high. When trust in management is low, the effect of high autonomy on work–life balance satisfaction is negative. This implies that trust in management indeed buffers negative effects of high autonomy among expatriate humanitarian aid workers.

The Impact of Decentralization on Educational Attainment in Indonesia

This study contributes to our knowledge on the impact of decentralization of the education sector in Indonesia. We extend existing research by examining the influence of both municipal factors and other explanatory variables on educational attainment in Indonesia. We focus on mean years of schooling as an indicator of educational attainment. We hypothesize that after decentralization, (1) educational attainment is higher compared to the pre-decentralization era, (2) regional variations in educational attainment will have increased, and (3) the fiscal capacity, degree of urbanization, and development will be higher, the higher the municipality’s mean year of schooling. The latter is also expected for the newly created municipalities of the past years. We test the hypotheses with panel data on 5,541,983 respondents aggregated to 3880 observations nested in 491 districts/cities nested in 32 provinces for the pre- and post-decentralization era. The results reveal the following. First, after decentralization, the length of schooling slightly increased, but progress in the length of schooling has slowed down a bit. Second, educational attainment variation between provinces slightly decreased, but the variation among municipalities increased. Third, the degree of municipalities’ development and urbanization has a significantly positive impact on improving educational attainment, while the fiscal capacity and the status of being a new municipality do not have a significant effect on extending the length of schooling. Our findings suggest that especially rural areas and less developed municipalities have lagged behind in the attempt to improve Indonesia’s educational attainment.

Institutional Change and Corruption of Public Leaders: A Social Capital Perspective on Indonesia

Incidents of corruption by local public leaders have increased in Indonesia in the era of a decentralized democratic regime, in which regional governments enjoy greater power and autonomy to manage regional resources. Previous research suggests that the shift of formal power from the central government to regional governments resulted in new actors at the local level becoming involved in corruption. Building on ideas from social capital theory, the current study attempts to complement previous work by analyzing the shifts of public leaders’ corruption behavior under the decentralized democratic government. We suggest that besides formal power relations, informal relations are important for initiating and sustaining corruptive transactions, and corruption requires a different social capital base in different institutional settings. The objectives of this paper are (1) to organize current knowledge on institutional change and corruption, (2) to extend current thinking on public leaders’ corruption in Indonesia and beyond, and (3) to suggest a framework for future empirical study. We present an empirical study on the link between institutional change and corruption, based on a unique data set of real corruption cases as they were reported in Indonesian public newspapers. Based on this first exploration—which indicates that indeed the nature of corruption networks in Indonesia has altered since decentralization—the proposed theoretical framework is deemed of value for further empirical investigation.

Book review essay of

In this book review essay three books on humanitarian aid are discussed: Monika Krause. 2014. The Good Project. Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Silke Roth. 2015. The Paradoxes of Aid Work: Passionate Professionals (Abingdon: Routledge) Rene Fox. 2014. Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press)

Book Review Essay

In this book review essay three books on humanitarian aid are discussed: Monika Krause. 2014. The Good Project. Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Silke Roth. 2015. The Paradoxes of Aid Work: Passionate Professionals (Abingdon: Routledge) Rene Fox. 2014. Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press)

Book review essay of : Monika Krause (2014). The Good Project. Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason; Silke Roth (2015). The Paradoxes of Aid Work: Passionate Professionals; Rene Fox (2014). Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Medecins Sans Frontières.

In this book review essay three books on humanitarian aid are discussed: Monika Krause. 2014. The Good Project. Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Silke Roth. 2015. The Paradoxes of Aid Work: Passionate Professionals (Abingdon: Routledge) Rene Fox. 2014. Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press)