What causes occupational stress in the Dutch judicial organization? And what can be done to moderate the effects? This article addresses these questions from an organizational perspective. The well-known job demand/job control-model (Karasek) and sociotechnical principles for organizational design are used as a theoretical framework. Increasing job demands (workload, complexity) combined with reduced opportunities for individual judicial professionals to control their work are considered root causes for organizational stress. In addition to these factors, the specific characteristics of the judicial organizational culture should also be acknowledged. This culture is based on a strong emphasis on individual professional performance and responsibility, making it a complex task to mitigate occupational stress from an organizational perspective. A short overview of recent developments to manage occupational stress in the Dutch judicial organization concludes the article.

This article serves to gain insight in the use and non-use of various types of legal advice, particularly in relation to income levels and legal costs. Based on (logistic regression) analyses involving survey data on 1,928 Dutch citizens who experienced a non-trivial problem in the period May 2009 to May 2014, main findings are as follows: (1) 37% of citizens facing a (potential) legal problem contacted various types of legal advisers once or repeatedly. (2) In the explanation of use/non-use of advocates, problem characteristics turned out to matter significantly, in contrast with the level of household income. Entitlements to subsidized legal aid (lower income groups) as well as legal expenses insurance have made income a factor of less importance. (3) Looking at the degree in which citizens reported (high) costs being a reason for not using legal advice, again no significant differences were found between income groups. Especially advocates were deemed too expensive, regardless of household income; a reason for non-use in half of the cases in which advocates had been considered.

In recent years, contacts between citizens and the government have increasingly become digital. Most people believe that the development toward more digital and thus more impersonal contact could be negative in terms of procedural justice and policy effectiveness. Higher educated and younger citizens embrace contact through the internet more than lower educated and older citizens. This study questions the call for more personal contact. Based on a panel survey, two different kinds of recipients of public assistance are compared: recipients of municipal social services (N=596) and recipients of unemployment benefits (N=709). Because of the social-demographic characteristics mentioned earlier, the recipients of the former are expected to be more negative about digital contact than the latter. This study identifies how these types of recipients of public assistance prefer to have contact with their municipality or agency, and how that works in practice. It shows that neither personal contact preferences, nor the way contact works in practice are decisive for satisfaction with the contact, but the way those two elements are matched. A match of impersonal contact leads to similar satisfaction as a match of personal contact.

Many scholars interpreted the lifting of the ban on brothels in 2000 (often called the legalization of prostitution) in The Netherlands, as a sign that selling sex was no longer deemed morally objectionable. Governing prostitution thus became primarily a technical matter of government. A task that, for a large part, was delegated to municipalities. However, nearly two decades later, the debate surrounding prostitution (policy) is still characterized by its moral tone of voice, and we lack insight into the strategies and techniques deployed by local governments. This raises two important questions. First, what actually happens in legalized local prostitution markets? Extant research, focusses too much on (changes in) national policy, and too little on what key actors (such as municipalities) are actually doing in local prostitution markets. Second, what is the role of moral aspects? When local actors are studied, insufficient attention is paid to the influence of moral issues. My PhD research addresses these two questions, by looking at the relationship between moral beliefs surrounding prostitution and the way in which local governments attempt to stabilize or change the modus operandi of a local prostitution market. It develops a theoretical framework combining field theory and Foucauldian governmentality concepts, and tries to shed light on the broader theme of the relation between morality and governing in late modern times.