The Netherlands

"In the Netherlands, abortion is legal, safe, easily available, and free of charge. Paradoxically, it is also extremely rare. Little quantitative research into the Netherlands’
abortion practice has been done. We analyse the fertile life-course of N¼3,793 Dutch women between 1954 and 2002. Using repeated event history analyses and sequential logistic regression, we test hypotheses on individual and societal effects on women’s likelihood of experiencing (unintended) pregnancies and abortions during their life-course. The most important findings pertain to the effect of policies and laws intended to regulate reproductive behaviour. During the observation period, permissive abortion legislation and higher availability of abortion services increased the likelihood that Dutch women terminated unintended pregnancies. Abortion insurance did not affect the likelihood that women terminated an unintended pregnancy. Results suggest that the legalization, availability, and insurance of contraceptive pills helped to prevent abortions, because these measures effectively reduced the demand for abortion."

"This dissertation is about project management education in Dutch universities. Specifically, a descriptive account of what the Dutch project management community’s educational needs are and to what degree Dutch universities are fulfilling those needs. This topic is of interest to PM practitioners who are interested in further education, academics who which to further the quality of PM education, and PM community leaders, certification institutions and trainers who wish to understand the role of universities in PM.

PM is a very young science and as such it has not yet matured its own pedagogical paradigm. That is part of the motivation for this research, to help develop project management’s pedagogical paradigm. The other part is that PM is very important to the Dutch economy, but Dutch universities give sporadic attention to project management. This research is an effort to set the requirements of how a holistic project management education could be provided. The method surveyed 90 project managers in the Netherlands on their perceptions of project management education in the Netherlands, and what their needs are. Additionally investigation was conducted into the study guides of prominent universities to discover the nature of current project management education, and the results were compared with the needs and perceptions from the survey.

The results show that Dutch universities were not up to standard in the eyes of project managers as places of project management learning, lacking in advanced concepts and theories and not using the most ideal of learning methods. It was also found that project management education was not significant enough in non-technical universities to have representation in relevant faculties were project management is of importance, such as business and IT faculties.

The implications of these findings can help universities adapt their project management courses or programmes which relate to project management to better suit the needs of the project management community, as well as help the project management community orientate on education status quo. Ultimately, project management as a discipline and the education thereof will take one more step towards maturity through this research.
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As Western European nation-states adapt to the challenges posed to the nation-state by globalization and immigration, adjusting citizenship criteria for immigrants has been one of the responses to these developments. In this article, we compare the current changes in citizenship policies of three Western European states: the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. Our main concern is to shed light on the emerging development of a form of neoliberal communitarian citizenship that involves an increased emphasis the need to earn one’s citizenship. While many have signaled a shift towards neoliberal citizenship, we assess to what extent such a shift is characterized by a contractual view that sees citizenship no longer primarily as a prima facie right but as a prized possession that is to be earned and can be lost if not properly cultivated. At the same time, we analyze the content of citizenship criteria to see how the nation-state in these three countries is sacralized by an emphasis on the national community. We conceptualize these two trends of earned citizenship as neoliberal communitarianism.

""This is the Introduction to an article written by myself and Max Smeets, which is part of a recent Special Issue of International Journal entitled 'The I(nternational Politics of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter' (Vol. 68 No. 1, Winter 2012-2013).
The article investigates the long-running determination to make the F-35 the next strike fighter for the Dutch Air Force, despite increasing delays, rising costs, growing political opposition, and declining defence budgets. The F-35 is a remarkable case of how 'interoperability' results in the United States having a decisive role in the security decision-making of allied nations.
While it lasts, all the articles can be found online via this link:
http://ijx.sagepub.com/content/current";

In reflecting on Dutch Christmas shoppers, this article will discuss Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), postmaterialist values hypothesis, and ecological modernization theory. According to the EKC hypothesis, while at the initial stages of industrialization material resources are often used unsustainably, continuing industrialization leads to a threshold after which lead to progressively more sustainable technologies. According to the postmaterialist values hypothesis, only wealthier societies can ‘afford’ to care about the environment, assuming that wealth will lead to development of greater concern about and valuation of environment. Finally, ecological modernization theory postulates that environmental conditions improve with advanced technological development and suggests that enlightened self-interest, economy and ecology can be favorably combined and that productive use of natural resources can be a source of future growth. In generalizing economic, political and social trends in relation to consumption in The Netherlands, the aim of this article is to consider the consequences of Western-style consumption for the enterprise of global development.

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In this article I compare the active religious engagement found among many of today’s young Dutch Muslims and Christians. I show that such comparison requires a move beyond the separate frameworks through which these groups are commonly perceived, found both in widely shared public discourses (‘allochthons’ versus ‘autochthons’) and in academic research (minority studies versus the sociology of religion). In their stead, this comparative analysis examines in what ways both groups give shape to observant religious practice in the shared context of contemporary Dutch society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I show that young Christians as well as Muslims participate in social settings of religious pedagogy, where they are encouraged to attain, sustain and improve personal piety in today’s pluralist Dutch society. Such social participation does not preclude, but rather comes together with a strong emphasis on reflexivity and authenticity.

"This article discusses ethnographic research on the planned transition from an all-white Dutch management towards an ethnically diverse management of an amateur football club. The article is based on a three-year period of ethnographic fieldwork in a football club, located in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in the Netherlands. We argue that the transition led to contested understandings of cultural practices and artefacts within the club. The meaning-making processes of the club’s organizational culture reinforced us-them divisions between the two groups. What is at stake is the symbolic ownership of the club that comes from a deep-rooted desire among members of sport clubs to be ‘among themselves’. The findings suggest that apparent equity in terms of shared participation in the club’s management does not necessarily lead to bridging of ethnic differences on the level of the club’s culture.

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