P Achterberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 245805 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P Achterberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | P |
| FAMILY NAME | Achterberg |
| SIGNATURE | ACHTERBERG P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Erasmus University Rotterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2365-6382 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 809 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
What made people (more) positive toward the Covid-19 vaccine? Exploring positive and negative deviance perspectives
This study demonstrates the applicability of traditional health psychology models, such as the health belief model, in explaining deviant vaccination behavior. Additionally, leveraging prosocial motivations and imposing restrictions on non-vaccinated individuals have been effective strategies for promoting vaccination uptake, albeit restricted to pandemic contexts. As some individuals will remain resistant to vaccination efforts, tailored interve…
Career-related learning of non-European full-time master's students in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom
In this paper, we examine the influence of higher education systems on the career-related learning and development of non-European master's students in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Based on 28 in-depth interviews with graduates originating from India, China, and Iran, our analysis suggests that five contextual elements have a major influence on students' career development: change of major, course language, internships, course duration…
It's the middle that matters? Income group coalitions in support of redistributive welfare reform
Many well‐established theories argue that welfare state policies create, and are created by, support coalitions between different income groups. Empirically, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the coalitions forged by the group that matters most according to these theories: middle‐income earners. To address that gap, this article investigates the income differences underlying popular support for two radically opposing redistrib…
The tension between democracy and populism: An empirical test of Canovan's claims of the two faces of democracy
This study provides a first empirical test of Margaret Canovan's influential argument on the relationship between democracy and populism, which posits that populism emerges as a consequence of the unresolved conflict between the pragmatic and redemptive faces of democracy. Despite its impact on scholars of populism, the implications of her framework remain untested. Using data from the EVS/WVS Integrated Values Surveys, we test Canovan's claims a…
Exploring the discourses around microdosing psychedelics within the r/microdosing online community
In the present contribution, we examine the practice of microdosing psychedelics (microdosing) through textual analysis of the content produced by a dedicated online community, the r/microdosing subreddit. We collected a comprehensive dataset of publicly available submissions from this community and used structural topic modelling to identify and analyse the prevalent topics within the discussions. Through our analysis, we identified 16 distinct …
Wetenschap tussen alle instituties
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Dimensions of controversy: Investigating the structure of public support for universal basic income in the Netherlands
As interest in universal basic income (UBI) policy has peaked in recent years, the study of public support for such a policy is rapidly developing. While recent studies recognise the multidimensionality of the UBI proposal, we still know little about to what extent support for UBI is unambiguously supported or rejected. We show that the public holds distinct but related opinions towards three dimensions of UBI: universalism, redistribution and un…
Detraditionalization, mental illness reports, and mental health professional care use in Europe
In this study, we address the question of whether individuals that live in more detraditionalized countries have higher levels of mental illness and mental health professional care use. We argue that it is meaningful to consider the different facets of detraditionalization, that is the level of secularization, the ethos of personal autonomy, and self-realization, the erosion of traditional gender roles when understanding patterns of mental illnes…
Between left and right: A discourse network analysis of Universal Basic Income on Dutch Twitter
Universal Basic Income (UBI) found its way back to media and policy agendas, presented as an alternative to the social investment policies omnipresent in Europe. In spite of the apparent appeal, however, UBI faces a discursive and political stalemate that seems hard to overcome. In an attempt to understand this tension, we explore the discursive coalitions surrounding UBI in a debate on Dutch Twitter. We use discourse network analysis to (a) clus…
More than a Free Lunch: A Content Analysis of the Controversies Surrounding Universal Basic Income on Dutch Twitter
Universal Basic Income (UBI) reached political agendas as a proposal to radically reform welfare systems, followed by scholarly interest in its public legitimacy. While surveys find UBI support to be mostly redistribution-driven, the discussion in science and media suggests a more nuanced understanding. To comprehensively grasp the public response to UBI policy, this article explores the controversies surrounding UBI policy through a content anal…
Switch on the Big Brother! Investigating the educational gradients in acceptance of online and public areas surveillance among European citizens
In this study, we investigate whether, and why, individuals express different levels of acceptance of surveillance depending on their educational level, and whether this relationship varies with the level of digitalization and globalization expansion of their country. Additionally, we ask whether the type of surveillance (online surveillance vs cameras in public areas) conditions these differences. We build on two theoretical frameworks, one conc…
The Closing Educational Gap in E-privacy Management in European Perspective
Educational gaps are increasingly salient as skills and knowledge gain prominence in digital societies. E-privacy management, namely, the ability to control the flow of information about the self, is an important asset nowadays, since a skillful use of digital technologies enables full participation in social life and limits the exposure to unwarranted algorithmic processes. We investigate whether and why education affects e-privacy management, a…
Objective and Subjective Socioeconomic Status as Sources of Status‐Legitimacy Effect and Legitimation of Income Inequality
System justification theory proposes that people are motivated to perceive the existing social system as fair, legitimate, and desirable. However, status‐legitimacy effect, understood as the most disadvantaged living in the most unequal contexts experiencing this need most strongly, has only found mixed support in empirical works. This article presents a comprehensive test of the original reading of status‐legitimacy hypothesis which implied that…
The public uptake of information about antibiotic resistance in the Netherlands
In this study, we test to what extent an educational video on the intricacies of antibiotic resistance affects public attitudes towards antibiotic resistance and how such information is absorbed by the most likely targets of public health campaigns. We use a representative sample of 2037 individuals (from 2016) to test how people respond to a video educating them about antibiotic resistance. Our results show that receiving information does increa…
Deservingness in the eye of the beholder: A vignette study on the moderating role of cultural profiles in supporting activation policies
People support welfare policy if its beneficiaries are perceived as deserving of support. This study found that individuals’ cultural worldviews play a role in assessing the deservingness of welfare recipients. We investigated whether four different cultural profiles find some beneficiaries to be more deserving than others and how this relates to support for social rights (welfare benefit, retraining, job coach) and obligations (mandatory volunte…
Science to the people: A 32-nation survey
In this article, we analyze Special Eurobarometer (2010) data via multilevel regression modeling and answer two questions: (a) How a country’s democratization level is related to the rate of public engagement with science and (b) who are those citizens who participate in science policy-shaping and express their approval for democratic governance of science? Reflexive modernization and institutional alienation perspectives are used to examine thos…
Religious polarization: Contesting religion in secularized Western European countries
In light of recent claims about increasing religious polarization in secularized countries, we study the extent to which the non-religious contest religion in Western European countries and whether and how the Protestant and Catholic heritage of these countries plays a role in this. Analyzing data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 1998 and 2008) data by means of multilevel analysis, we demonstrate that religious polarization is s…
Imagining class: A study into material social class position, subjective identification, and voting behavior across Europe
Farewell to the Leftist Working Class
Social conflicts and voting patterns in Western nations indicate a gradual erosion of working-class support for the left, a process that class theory itself cannot adequately explain. Farewell to the Leftist Working Class aims to fill this gap by developing, testing, and confirming an alternative explanation of rightist tendencies among the underprivileged. The authors argue that cultural issues revolving around individual liberty and maintenance…
A science confidence gap: Education, trust in scientific methods, and trust in scientific institutions in the United States, 2014
Following up on suggestions that attitudes toward science are multi-dimensional, we analyze nationally representative survey data collected in the United States in 2014 ( N = 2006), and demonstrate the existence of a science confidence gap: some people place great trust in scientific methods and principles, but simultaneously distrust scientific institutions. This science confidence gap is strongly associated with level of education: it is larger…
Why there is less supportive evidence for contact theory than they say there is: A quantitative cultural–sociological critique
Secular Tolerance? Anti‐Muslim Sentiment in Western Europe
The literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti‐Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from value conflicts between Muslims and the nonreligious majority. The two theories are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of the European Values St…
"Contextualizing educational differences in "vaccination uptake: A thirty nation survey
Are all Socialists Anti-religious? Anti-religiosity and the Socialist Left in 21 Western European Countries (1990–2008)
The political situation in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century has led some to suggest that socialism is some kind of secular religion as opposed to ‘normal’ religion. In modern Europe, however, there have been vibrant Christian socialist movements. This article looks into the different attitudes of socialists towards religion and answers the question whether it is pressure of religious activity or pressure of religious identity that ma…
On support for welfare state reforms and deservingness in the Netherlands
Since the mid-1980s, welfare state arrangements have become increasingly conditional and austere. Simultaneously, deservingness perceptions have become increasingly important. This paper examines preferences as to which social categories contemporary welfare state reforms should target. Using unique data from a 2006 Dutch survey, the results reveal that the Dutch discern two principles of welfare state reforms – the first tapping into distributiv…
The new right and the welfare state: The electoral relevance of welfare chauvinism and welfare populism in the Netherlands
Next to their well-documented authoritarian cultural agenda, new-rightist populist parties have developed specific views on the welfare state: welfare chauvinism and welfare populism. This article studies the electoral relevance of these views for Dutch new-rightist populist parties by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population ( N = 1972). The electorate of those parties shows high levels of both welfare chauvinism and welfare p…
Some are more equal than others’: Economic egalitarianism and welfare chauvinism in the Netherlands
Various studies have demonstrated that while the lower educated support economic redistribution more than the higher educated do, they nonetheless dislike welfare support for immigrants more strongly. This paper aims to explain this remarkably particularistic application of the principle of economic egalitarianism (‘welfare chauvinism’) by testing three theories by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population ( N = 1972). The first…
Class Is Not Dead-It Has Been Buried Alive: Class Voting and Cultural Voting in Postwar Western Societies (1956-1990)
By means of a reanalysis of the most relevant data source-the International Social Mobility and Politics File-this article criticizes the newly grown consensus in political sociology that class voting has declined since World War II. An increase in crosscutting cultural voting, rooted in educational differences rather than a decline in class voting, proves responsible for the decline of traditional class-party alignments. Moreover, income differe…
Why do so many people vote ‘unnaturally’? A cultural explanation for voting behaviour
The traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class ‘naturally’ votes for left‐wing parties because they represent its economic interests. Such traditional voting patterns have, however, become less typical, giving rise to the ‘Death of Class Debate’ in political sociology. Against this background, using data collected in the Netherlands in 1997, this article examines why so many people, working and middle class alike, vot…
Immigration and Perceived Ethnic Threat: Cultural Capital and Economic Explanations
This article aims to study to what extent the share of immigrants in a country influences individuals’ perceptions of ethnic threat and how this can be explained by theories of economic and cultural threat. Following an economic logic, people with a weak socio-economic position should have a greater perception of ethnic threat. This would be more so if the share of low-educated immigrants in a country was relatively high. Following a cultural log…
Ideologically Illogical? Why Do the Lower-Educated Dutch Display so Little Value Coherence
In studies of mass ideology, it is often found that political values are ordered two-dimensionally among the public at large. In a first economic dimension, equality is contested; in a second cultural one, individual freedom is contested. While this general rule of two-dimensionality applies to the public at large, there are large differences between educational categories. While two-dimensionality is found for the lower educated, the higher educ…
Progressiveness and the New Right: The Electoral Relevance of Culturally Progressive Values in the Netherlands
Whereas electoral support for new-rightist parties is often understood as driven by ethnocentric anti-immigrant sentiments, scholars have noted that new-rightist politicians have, surprisingly, stressed culturally progressive arguments in the last decade. Using recent Dutch survey data (N = 1,302) especially collected for this purpose, the article analyses the electoral relevance of three types of cultural progressiveness for voting for the new r…
Two of a Kind: An Empirical Investigation of Anti-Welfarism and Economic Egalitarianism
The literature on welfare state legitimacy generally views economic egalitarianism and support for the welfare state as closely related phenomena that can be measured by means of scales that are considered highly interchangeable. This research note argues that economic egalitarianism does not necessarily coincide with support for the welfare state. Moreover, our findings point out that, especially among those with the lowest levels of education, …
Class Voting in the New Political Culture: Economic, Cultural and Environmental Voting in 20 Western Countries
The purpose of this article is to investigate how the political cultures of 20 western countries have changed in the postwar period and how these changes are related to differences in class voting in these countries. To answer these questions, first political party manifestos are analysed in order to show that class issues have neither decreased nor increased in importance and that new - cultural and environmental - issues have risen in importanc…
A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West
Analysis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data collected in 18 Western countries in 1998 demonstrates that Christian desires for a public role of religion are strongest in countries where Christian religiosity is numerically most marginal. Moreover, Dutch data covering the period 1970-1996 confirm that the decline of the number of Christians in the Netherlands has been coincided by a strengthening of the call for public religion amon…
Ethnic Segregation and Radical Right-Wing Voting in Dutch Cities
Previous studies have linked anti-immigrant voting and other indications of ethnic animosities to ethnic segregation, yielding different results. In this study, we focus on the locally strongly diverging support for Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom ( Partij voor de Vrijheid [PVV]) in the Dutch national parliamentary elections of 2006 and 2010 to assess how it can be understood that the effect of ethnic segregation on anti-immigrant voting varies…
The ideological roots of the support for welfare state reform: Support for distributive and commodifying reform in The N etherlands
This article examines the extent to which four major trends in welfare state reform – privatisation, increasing selectivity, increasing activation and increasing discipline – are supported and how this support can be explained. Using recent public opinion data of the D utch population, it is found that there are two ideological dimensions underlying welfare reform support, the first tapping distributive reform, the latter tapping commodifying ref…
The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalization or New Political Culture
Journal Article The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalization or New Political Culture? Get access Willem de Koster, Willem de Koster * *Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands; [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jeroen van der Waal, Jeroen van der Waal Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
Secular Tolerance? Anti‐Muslim Sentiment in Western Europe
The literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti‐Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from value conflicts between Muslims and the nonreligious majority. The two theories are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of the European Values St…
Farewell to the Leftist Working Class
Social conflicts and voting patterns in Western nations indicate a gradual erosion of working-class support for the left, a process that class theory itself cannot adequately explain. Farewell to the Leftist Working Class aims to fill this gap by developing, testing, and confirming an alternative explanation of rightist tendencies among the underprivileged. The authors argue that cultural issues revolving around individual liberty and maintenance…
Objective and Subjective Socioeconomic Status as Sources of Status‐Legitimacy Effect and Legitimation of Income Inequality
System justification theory proposes that people are motivated to perceive the existing social system as fair, legitimate, and desirable. However, status‐legitimacy effect, understood as the most disadvantaged living in the most unequal contexts experiencing this need most strongly, has only found mixed support in empirical works. This article presents a comprehensive test of the original reading of status‐legitimacy hypothesis which implied that…
Religious polarization: Contesting religion in secularized Western European countries
In light of recent claims about increasing religious polarization in secularized countries, we study the extent to which the non-religious contest religion in Western European countries and whether and how the Protestant and Catholic heritage of these countries plays a role in this. Analyzing data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 1998 and 2008) data by means of multilevel analysis, we demonstrate that religious polarization is s…
Deprivatization of Disbelief: Non-Religiosity and Anti-Religiosity in 14 Western European Countries
This article aims to move beyond media discourse about “new atheism” by mapping and explaining anti-religious zeal among the public at large in 14 Western European countries. We analyze data from the International Social Survey Program, Religion III, 2008, to test two theories about how country-level religiousness affects anti-religiosity and its social bases: a theory of rationalization and a theory of deprivatization of disbelief. Hypotheses de…
A Cultural Globalization of Popular Music? American, Dutch, French, and German Popular Music Charts (1965 to 2006)
In this article, the authors address the question of whether and how the appreciation of popular music consumers has globalized in the four decades since the mid-1960s. They use information from American, Dutch, French, and German popular music charts from 1965 through 2006. They find no corroboration for an overall trend toward an internationalization of hits. However, important shifts are noticeable underneath the surface. For the period up unt…
An Institutional Embeddedness of Welfare Opinions? The Link between Public Opinion and Social Policy in the Netherlands (1970-2004)
A major shortcoming in the existing literature on welfare state legitimacy is that it cannot explain when social policy designs follow public preferences and when public opinion follows existing policy designs and why. Scholars examining the influence of public opinion on welfare policies, as well as scholars investigating institutional influences on individual welfare attitudes, find empirical evidence to support both relationships. While a rela…
"Contextualizing educational differences in "vaccination uptake: A thirty nation survey
Neoliberalism and work-related risks: Individual or collective responsibilization
Based on a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2467), we test four hypotheses about how utilitarian individualism influences the responsibilization of work-related risks (i.e. the risk of dropping out of work because of unemployment, disability, or sickness). The risk society hypothesis understands utilitarian individualism as a laissez-faire ideological orientation and assumes it to lead to individual responsibilization. The blame…
One welfare state emerging? Convergence versus divergence in 16 western countries
In this article we try to investigate the empirical validity of the convergence thesis, which assumes that welfare states are increasingly similar because more generous universal welfare states are adopting policies of retrenchment and neo-liberalization. Using data on the popularity of neo-liberal ideology, welfare state expenditures and the generosity of this spending for 16 western countries, we find that there is no general trend towards neo-…
Deservingness in the eye of the beholder: A vignette study on the moderating role of cultural profiles in supporting activation policies
People support welfare policy if its beneficiaries are perceived as deserving of support. This study found that individuals’ cultural worldviews play a role in assessing the deservingness of welfare recipients. We investigated whether four different cultural profiles find some beneficiaries to be more deserving than others and how this relates to support for social rights (welfare benefit, retraining, job coach) and obligations (mandatory volunte…
On support for welfare state reforms and deservingness in the Netherlands
Since the mid-1980s, welfare state arrangements have become increasingly conditional and austere. Simultaneously, deservingness perceptions have become increasingly important. This paper examines preferences as to which social categories contemporary welfare state reforms should target. Using unique data from a 2006 Dutch survey, the results reveal that the Dutch discern two principles of welfare state reforms – the first tapping into distributiv…
Why do so many people vote ‘unnaturally’? A cultural explanation for voting behaviour
The traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class ‘naturally’ votes for left‐wing parties because they represent its economic interests. Such traditional voting patterns have, however, become less typical, giving rise to the ‘Death of Class Debate’ in political sociology. Against this background, using data collected in the Netherlands in 1997, this article examines why so many people, working and middle class alike, vot…
Class Voting in the New Political Culture: Economic, Cultural and Environmental Voting in 20 Western Countries
The purpose of this article is to investigate how the political cultures of 20 western countries have changed in the postwar period and how these changes are related to differences in class voting in these countries. To answer these questions, first political party manifestos are analysed in order to show that class issues have neither decreased nor increased in importance and that new - cultural and environmental - issues have risen in importanc…
Class Is Not Dead-It Has Been Buried Alive: Class Voting and Cultural Voting in Postwar Western Societies (1956-1990)
By means of a reanalysis of the most relevant data source-the International Social Mobility and Politics File-this article criticizes the newly grown consensus in political sociology that class voting has declined since World War II. An increase in crosscutting cultural voting, rooted in educational differences rather than a decline in class voting, proves responsible for the decline of traditional class-party alignments. Moreover, income differe…
The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalization or New Political Culture
Journal Article The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalization or New Political Culture? Get access Willem de Koster, Willem de Koster * *Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands; [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jeroen van der Waal, Jeroen van der Waal Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
One welfare state emerging? Convergence versus divergence in 16 western countries
In this article we try to investigate the empirical validity of the convergence thesis, which assumes that welfare states are increasingly similar because more generous universal welfare states are adopting policies of retrenchment and neo-liberalization. Using data on the popularity of neo-liberal ideology, welfare state expenditures and the generosity of this spending for 16 western countries, we find that there is no general trend towards neo-…
Ideologically Illogical? Why Do the Lower-Educated Dutch Display so Little Value Coherence
In studies of mass ideology, it is often found that political values are ordered two-dimensionally among the public at large. In a first economic dimension, equality is contested; in a second cultural one, individual freedom is contested. While this general rule of two-dimensionality applies to the public at large, there are large differences between educational categories. While two-dimensionality is found for the lower educated, the higher educ…
A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West
Analysis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data collected in 18 Western countries in 1998 demonstrates that Christian desires for a public role of religion are strongest in countries where Christian religiosity is numerically most marginal. Moreover, Dutch data covering the period 1970-1996 confirm that the decline of the number of Christians in the Netherlands has been coincided by a strengthening of the call for public religion amon…
Two lefts and two rights: Class voting and cultural voting in the Netherlands, 2002
Resume Cet article developpe et teste la portee empirique de la theorie de la nouvelle culture politique (Ronald Inglehart et al.) en se fondant sur la partie neerlandaise de l’enquete sociale europeenne de 2002 (European Social Survey 2002). L’analyse est restreinte pour les raisons theoriques au vote pour les partis emblematiques de cette nouvelle culture politique — parti populiste (lpf) de droite, d’une part, parti ecologiste (GroenLinks), de…
Some are more equal than others’: Economic egalitarianism and welfare chauvinism in the Netherlands
Various studies have demonstrated that while the lower educated support economic redistribution more than the higher educated do, they nonetheless dislike welfare support for immigrants more strongly. This paper aims to explain this remarkably particularistic application of the principle of economic egalitarianism (‘welfare chauvinism’) by testing three theories by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population ( N = 1972). The first…
Two of a Kind: An Empirical Investigation of Anti-Welfarism and Economic Egalitarianism
The literature on welfare state legitimacy generally views economic egalitarianism and support for the welfare state as closely related phenomena that can be measured by means of scales that are considered highly interchangeable. This research note argues that economic egalitarianism does not necessarily coincide with support for the welfare state. Moreover, our findings point out that, especially among those with the lowest levels of education, …
A Cultural Globalization of Popular Music? American, Dutch, French, and German Popular Music Charts (1965 to 2006)
In this article, the authors address the question of whether and how the appreciation of popular music consumers has globalized in the four decades since the mid-1960s. They use information from American, Dutch, French, and German popular music charts from 1965 through 2006. They find no corroboration for an overall trend toward an internationalization of hits. However, important shifts are noticeable underneath the surface. For the period up unt…
An Institutional Embeddedness of Welfare Opinions? The Link between Public Opinion and Social Policy in the Netherlands (1970-2004)
A major shortcoming in the existing literature on welfare state legitimacy is that it cannot explain when social policy designs follow public preferences and when public opinion follows existing policy designs and why. Scholars examining the influence of public opinion on welfare policies, as well as scholars investigating institutional influences on individual welfare attitudes, find empirical evidence to support both relationships. While a rela…
The Transformation of Solidarity: Changing Risks and the Future of the Welfare State
This study investigates the consequences of processes of social individualisation and economic globalisation for welfare state solidarity. Solidarity is defined as the willingness to share risks. The institutions of the welfare state, such as social security or health care insurance, are founded on the willingness of citizens to share risks and organize solidarity between the young and the old, between the healthy and the sick, between the workin…
The Transformation of Solidarity: Changing Risks and the Future of the Welfare State
Beyond the domestication of nature? Restructuring the relationship between nature and technology in car commercials
It is often assessed that the construction of nature, technology and the relation between both is in the midst of a restructuring without specifying exactly what different articulations can be distinguished and how they differ from the modern notion of nature being separated from and domesticated by technology. Through an analysis of car commercials, this study develops a typology of constellations of nature and technology. Besides the well-known…
The ideological roots of the support for welfare state reform: Support for distributive and commodifying reform in The N etherlands
This article examines the extent to which four major trends in welfare state reform – privatisation, increasing selectivity, increasing activation and increasing discipline – are supported and how this support can be explained. Using recent public opinion data of the D utch population, it is found that there are two ideological dimensions underlying welfare reform support, the first tapping distributive reform, the latter tapping commodifying ref…
Neoliberalism and work-related risks: Individual or collective responsibilization
Based on a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2467), we test four hypotheses about how utilitarian individualism influences the responsibilization of work-related risks (i.e. the risk of dropping out of work because of unemployment, disability, or sickness). The risk society hypothesis understands utilitarian individualism as a laissez-faire ideological orientation and assumes it to lead to individual responsibilization. The blame…
Deprivatization of Disbelief: Non-Religiosity and Anti-Religiosity in 14 Western European Countries
This article aims to move beyond media discourse about “new atheism” by mapping and explaining anti-religious zeal among the public at large in 14 Western European countries. We analyze data from the International Social Survey Program, Religion III, 2008, to test two theories about how country-level religiousness affects anti-religiosity and its social bases: a theory of rationalization and a theory of deprivatization of disbelief. Hypotheses de…
Ethnic Segregation and Radical Right-Wing Voting in Dutch Cities
Previous studies have linked anti-immigrant voting and other indications of ethnic animosities to ethnic segregation, yielding different results. In this study, we focus on the locally strongly diverging support for Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom ( Partij voor de Vrijheid [PVV]) in the Dutch national parliamentary elections of 2006 and 2010 to assess how it can be understood that the effect of ethnic segregation on anti-immigrant voting varies…
The new right and the welfare state: The electoral relevance of welfare chauvinism and welfare populism in the Netherlands
Next to their well-documented authoritarian cultural agenda, new-rightist populist parties have developed specific views on the welfare state: welfare chauvinism and welfare populism. This article studies the electoral relevance of these views for Dutch new-rightist populist parties by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population ( N = 1972). The electorate of those parties shows high levels of both welfare chauvinism and welfare p…
Individualization: A double-edged sword: Welfare, the experience of social risks and the need for social insurance in the Netherlands
For various reasons the process of individualization has always been supposed to be linked to a decline in welfare state support. Because of individualization, it is commonly argued people appreciate collectively organized welfare less and less. This article studies whether individualists really support the welfare state less than collectivists. In order to examine this, the authors use data collected in 2006 in the Netherlands. Distinguishing be…
Immigration and Perceived Ethnic Threat: Cultural Capital and Economic Explanations
This article aims to study to what extent the share of immigrants in a country influences individuals’ perceptions of ethnic threat and how this can be explained by theories of economic and cultural threat. Following an economic logic, people with a weak socio-economic position should have a greater perception of ethnic threat. This would be more so if the share of low-educated immigrants in a country was relatively high. Following a cultural log…
Knowing hydrogen and loving it too? Information provision, cultural predispositions, and support for hydrogen technology among the Dutch
This research note studies experimentally how the public translates information about hydrogen technology into evaluations of the latter. It does so by means of a nationally representative factorial survey in the Netherlands ( n = 1,012), in which respondents have been given seven randomly selected pieces of (negative, positive and/or neutral) information about this technology. Findings are consistent with framing theory. For those with high trus…
Progressiveness and the New Right: The Electoral Relevance of Culturally Progressive Values in the Netherlands
Whereas electoral support for new-rightist parties is often understood as driven by ethnocentric anti-immigrant sentiments, scholars have noted that new-rightist politicians have, surprisingly, stressed culturally progressive arguments in the last decade. Using recent Dutch survey data (N = 1,302) especially collected for this purpose, the article analyses the electoral relevance of three types of cultural progressiveness for voting for the new r…
Are all Socialists Anti-religious? Anti-religiosity and the Socialist Left in 21 Western European Countries (1990–2008)
The political situation in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century has led some to suggest that socialism is some kind of secular religion as opposed to ‘normal’ religion. In modern Europe, however, there have been vibrant Christian socialist movements. This article looks into the different attitudes of socialists towards religion and answers the question whether it is pressure of religious activity or pressure of religious identity that ma…
Political science (47 works) · Law (37 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Politics (26 works) · Law (22 works) · Economics (20 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (20 works) · Social science (18 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Social Psychology (13 works)