Welfare Clients' Relational Legal Consciousness:An Empirical Perspective from The Netherlands

In recent years, the Netherlands has increasingly become a punitive welfare state. This chapter analyses how this development affects Dutch welfare clients’ commonsense understandings of the law. Based on a survey among more than a thousand welfare clients, this study points to the relational character of their legal consciousness. Welfare clients’ critical legal consciousness is shaped by their views on the harsh and cold way that welfare officials understand and apply the law. Although most welfare clients are law-abiding, welfare officials routinely treat them as potential fraudsters. In response to this attitude, clients start to question the legitimacy of welfare law

Relational legal consciousness in the punitive welfare state:How Dutch welfare officials shape clients' perceptions of law

With a growing number of strict obligations and harsh sanctions for welfare recipients, the Netherlands has increasingly become a punitive welfare state. This article looks at what this means for welfare clients and their commonsense understandings of the law. To analyze how welfare officials shape clients' legal consciousness, I draw on an online survey among Dutch welfare clients (N = 1305) and a correlation analysis. The findings show that there is a clear relationship between welfare clients' own legal consciousness and their assessment of welfare officials' beliefs about the law. However, not all elements of their legal consciousness are relationally influenced by the same factors. Also, clients' self-reported compliance behavior is less relationally influenced than other elements of their legal consciousness. This study adds to our understanding of the mechanisms that constitute the production of relational and second-order legal consciousness and it contributes to the development of new research methods to study people's perceptions of law

Administrative Justice and Empirical Legal Research:Debunking the Ordinary Religion of Legal Instrumentalism

For many years, most studies on administrative justice were written from a doctrinal legal perspective. More recently, however, administrative justice has also become the subject of a growing body of empirical research. This chapter provides an overview of empirical administrative justice research in three fields: administrative decision-making, redress mechanisms, and the impact of redress mechanisms on administrative practice. In legal doctrine, ‘legal instrumentalism’ has become central to thinking about administrative justice. However, the findings from empirical research provide little support for the underlying assumptions of instrumentalism. In this way, empirical legal research forces us to rethink the relationship between administrative law and administrative justice. The chapter concludes that while in some cases law and legal institutions may be an effective instrument to promote administrative justice in other cases, the direct impact of law is severely limited and law may even have a negative effect on the quality of administrative justice

Policy Research Under Pressure:The Case of the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands

In policy research, the search for the correct balance between proximity and independence has never been easy. Policymakers need proximity to the research in order to ensure that it is relevant. Yet, there are also concerns about the rigour of research. To analyze this relationship in more detail, this paper focuses on the ‘extreme case’ of the WODC in the Netherlands, an internal but formally independent research unit of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. Research methods include semi-structured interviews and a survey (N = 673). We conclude that government leans on WODC researchers in all phases of the policy research process. In most cases, WODC researchers successfully resist pressure from policymakers, yet continuing pressure may easily lead to research methods, conclusions and press releases being altered for policy reasons. Finally, there are general lessons drawn from the WODC case that will assist in achieving a good balance between proximity and independence in policy research

A new instrument – motivational postures in practice:Action research into the role of motivational postures in the enforcement of social security legislation in the Netherlands

Based on previous research on enforcement of social security in the Netherlands, we introduced the perspective “smart enforcement” (Hertogh, Bantema, Weyers, Winter & De Winter). When we ignore other factors and circumstances, we see that the (experienced) sanctioning is not, but the (experienced) persuasion is related to compliance. The extent to which beneficiaries comply with the obligations of their benefit depends on the perceived chance of being caught and the profit that is expected from the violation. Our research shows that the motivational postures of beneficiaries are important for compliance. The individual profile of beneficiaries can be mapped based on five "motivational postures" distinguished by Valerie Braithwaite: commitment, capitulation, resistance, disengagement and game playing. The first two attitudes are characterized by a positive attitude toward the law and law enforcement, and the remaining three attitudes are characterized by an increasing negative attitude. A person can have multiple motivational postures at the same time. "Commitment" and "capitulation" have a positive relationship with compliance, while "resistance," "disengagement" and "game playing” are negatively related to compliance. The level of compliance in social security benefits not so much from "more" enforcement, but from "smarter" enforcement. In other words, the effectiveness of enforcement in social security is not only determined by tougher or softer measures, but also by the extent to which the enforcement style is tailored to the specific backgrounds and expectations of the beneficiary. The principle of "smart enforcement" is that the individual profile of the beneficiary must be taken into account as much as possible when setting up the enforcement relationship. Enforcers should be able to match their behavior to the profile of beneficiaries. To help employees determine the profile of their clients, we developed an electronic analysis tool (the ‘prototype’). We tested the prototype at one social assistance agency in the Netherlands. After the test-phase, we interviewed beneficiaries and employees about their experiences with the prototype