This article investigates the scientization process in central banks, using the Bank of England (BoE) as a case study. It proposes an ideal type of the scientized central bank, which is tied to the core idea that the scientization of an organization grows with its willingness to contribute to the relevant science. We derive from this ideal type emp...
This article analyses the depoliticisation of Dutch caravan politics, which has resulted in massive pitch shortages threatening the existence of the specific caravan housing culture of Dutch Travellers, Sinti and Roma groups. The rationality underlying the repressive governance of caravans is understood as a depoliticised affirmation of technocrati...
This article explores the temporal dimension of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) by exposing its teleological character and the effects of the latter on the governance of asylum in the European Union. Drawing on EU policy documents, the article shows how the CEAS has been presented since its inception as a teleology, that is, a process that...
Published in Social science & medicine (1982)
This article analyses the politicisation of public health debates by focusing on vaccination and mental health care in the Czech Republic. The mainstream understanding of politicisation commonly refers to politics-as-sphere, linked with the political instrumentalisation of health care controversies as part of electoral campaigning and power struggl...
How are depoliticising discourses on water issues produced and rendered effective? Research on discursive depoliticisation has focused on the ability of different types of policy networks to generate powerful and reasonably coherent depoliticised narratives. In the paper, by tracing the depoliticisation of poor water quality in a wastewater reuse p...
After having been rather marginal in public and political discourse, elites have returned to being central in the last decade, in particular, and not by chance, after the economic and financial crisis of 2007-2008. In the mainstream trade media debate, there are countless publications about the elites, where mostly hostile tones are used, which are...
Policy-makers and scientists often expect that controversies in public policy can be solved by gathering more knowledge, even though this linear model of expertise is widely criticised in social studies of science. To shed more light on this expectation, the role of scientific uncertainties in controversies on mussel fishery in the Dutch Wadden Sea...
In the last decade, the economic crisis and the mistrust in democratic institutions have contributed to a major crisis of political parties across Europe. These are some of the causes that led to the formation of political movements with purely populist characteristics as replacement of the traditional delegitimized intermediary bodies. The crisis ...
Published in Food Security
Since the 2007/08 food price crisis there has been a proliferation of multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) devoted to bringing diverse perspectives together to inform and improve food security policy. While much of the literature highlights the positive contributions to be gained from an opening-up of traditionally state-led processes, there is a str...
Abstract Created in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a normative mandate to promote the protection of the environment at the international level. However, since 1999, the organisation has been conducting field assessments in postconflict situations and addressing the role of natural resources in conflict, framing the enviro...
