Trust in American Government: Longitudinal Measurement Equivalence in the ANES, 1964–2008

For over 50 years (1958–2012) the American National Election Studies (ANES) survey has been measuring citizens’ evaluations of the trustworthiness of the “government in Washington”—an indicator that has been widely used to monitor the dynamics of political trust in the US over time. However, a critical assumption in using attitudinal constructs for longitudinal research is that the meaning-and-interpretation of such items should be comparable across groups of respondents at any one point in time and across samples over time. Using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis for ordered-categorical data, we test the measurement equivalence assumption with data collected by the ANES from 1964 to 2008. The results confirm that the ANES’ political trust scale has the same basic factorial structure over time. But for two key items, several threshold parameters were found to be different across time points, indicating that the meaning-and-interpretation of these questions, and especially the question about whether the government in Washington wastes money that people pay in taxes, varies significantly over time.

     

Men's sexual health and the metabolic syndrome

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the current literature on the impact of the metabolic syndrome on male sexual health and current developments in the management of sexually dysfunctional men with a metabolic syndrome. The increasing prevalence across the world of the metabolic syndrome-a cluster of cardiovascular disease risk factors-causes the metabolic syndrome to be considered the most important threat to male sexual health of the 21st century. It has been shown to have a negative impact on male sexual function through its relationship with cardiovascular disease risk, its association with hypogonadism, and associated psychosocial factors. Besides established pharmacological and hormonal interventions, lifestyle modification programs are considered important therapeutic tools.     

Public support for the social rights and social obligations of the unemployed: Two sides of the same coin?

In light of the ever‐growing shift towards activation in European welfare states, the present article examines the relationship between citizens’ welfare generosity (i.e., support for social rights) and welfare conditionality (i.e., support for social obligations) with regard to the unemployed. Using data from the 2014 Belgian National Elections Study, we found that generosity and conditionality appear to be two sides of the same coin. The two factors are negatively correlated, and most of their respective attitudinal drivers are quite similar in strength, yet opposite in direction. In addition to self‐interest and conventionally recognised ideational beliefs, such as egalitarianism and individualism, beliefs about welfare deservingness – an explanatory factor that has remained understudied in the field – are particularly influential in shaping people’s welfare preferences. A stronger emphasis on criteria of deservingness such as control, attitude and reciprocity considerably lowers support for social rights and strengthens support for social duties.     

The Cultural Dimension of Metagovernance: Why Governance Doctrines May Fail

National cultures often reflect a preference for one of the ideal-types hierarchical, network or market governance. A comparison of four similar policy cases in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission reveals that successful public managers under certain conditions are able to construct and design productive mixtures of the three styles. They applied metagovernance, a process of designing and managing situationally optimal combinations of the three competing, and to an extent mutually undermining, governance styles. Their national cultures and politico-administrative traditions co-determined the governance mixture which would work in a given situation. The research reinforces the case already made by others, that governance doctrines cannot be transferred as ‘best practices’ from one nation to another without adaptation. The article suggests that the future does not lie in inventing new management and governance doctrines, but in investing in post-dogmatic public management.     

Do Female Colleagues and Supervisors Influence Family Role Attitudes? A Three‐Level Test of Exposure Explanations Among Employed Men and Women in 27 European Countries

This study examines the relationship between various aspects of female labor participation and people's family role attitudes. Following exposure theory, we expect that individuals may adopt more egalitarian family roles as they are more often exposed to employed women because it dispels negative ideas about women's capabilities and brings them into contact with nontraditional networks. This study provides an elaborate test by examining the role of exposure to female colleagues and supervisors in three contexts: workplaces, occupational sectors, and countries. We found that the number of female colleagues at work and in occupational sectors was positively related to egalitarian family roles of employed men. Our study further showed that this positive relationship between exposure to female colleagues at work and men's egalitarian family roles was weaker in female‐dominated sectors. Remarkably, exposure to national female labor participation was not significantly related to the family roles of employed women.     

Migration to European Countries: A Structural Explanation of Patterns, 1980–20041

Various theoretical approaches have provided us with insights to explain the pattern of migration flows. Economic theory considers migration to be a reaction to labor market and economic incentives. Cultural theories predict that migration flows will occur according to a center‐periphery pattern, while social network analysis assumes that migrants follow already established migration networks. We test these three approaches simultaneously, using OECD and Eurostat data on the migrant inflow into the European countries between 1980 and 2004. The analysis demonstrates that migration flows react to economic incentives, mainly with regard to the labor market, but also to cultural and colonial linkages. There is no indication that the importance of the colonial past is declining over time. The response of migration patterns to shortages in the labor market is shown to be highly efficient, while the analysis shows that immigrants are not attracted by high levels of social expenditure.     

Welfarism and the multidimensionality of welfare state legitimacy: Evidence from The Netherlands, 2006

Oorschot W van, Meuleman B. Welfarism and the multidimensionality of welfare state legitimacy: evidence from The Netherlands, 2006 Is it possible that citizens who support a substantial role for government in the provision of welfare are, at the same time, critical about specific aspects of such provision? Based on confirmatory factor analyses, and using a 2006 Dutch survey, this study shows that welfare state legitimacy is indeed multidimensional, i.e. that opinions tend to cluster together in several dimensions referring to various aspects of the welfare state. There is partial evidence for the existence of a single, underlying welfarism dimension which consists basically of views regarding the range of governmental responsibility, as well as of the idea that these governmental provisions do not have unfavourable repercussions in economic or moral spheres. However, the separate dimensions cannot be reduced entirely to this overall welfarism dimension. This is illustrated by the finding that the various attitude dimensions are affected differently by socio‐structural position and ideological dispositions.