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Political bag carriers in the second chamber: The emergence of a parapolitical pathway to parliament In Western parliamentary democracies, a growing number of MPs have worked as special advisers, political assistants, and parliamentary aides prior to their election as members of parliament. They have professional political expertise without being elected officials themselves. We call them parapoliticians, akin to paramedics or paralegals. This paper researches this emerging pathway to the Dutch Second Chamber. The paper operationalizes the concept, provides theoretical and historical context and offers insights into the prevalence of parapolitical backgrounds among Dutch Second Chamber members, and examines variations across political parties. In the 2021 Second Chamber more than a quarter of MPs had previously worked as a political aid and these MPs have prominent positions in the parliamentary factions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ignoring people: The micro-politics of misrecognition in participatory governance Local governments across the globe increasingly aim to engage citizens in participatory governance, encouraging them to take an active stance in community activities and policy or planning decisions. Despite the inclusive and emancipatory ambitions, these projects often reproduce inequality and exclude citizens leaving them marginalized and misrecognized. In this paper, I argue that inclusion and recognition do not take shape via political ambitions or promising institutional frameworks but via informal face-to-face interactions among citizens and state actors at the street level. By drawing on 3 years of ethnographic fieldwork in The Hague, the Netherlands, I critically unpack how the engagements among state actors and citizens misrecognized the latter as political subjects. Building on critical scholarship on the politics of recognition, I propose an agent-centered and practice-oriented approach that analyzes the micro-politics of misrecognition via (1) narrative analysis, (2) the detailed analysis of speech acts and emotional expressions, and (3) with a specific focus on analyzing the spatial practices that construe the geopolitical realm. As a result, I introduce the tactic of 'ignoring people' as a socio-spatial practice of politics. I found five socio-spatial tactics by which citizens were ignored during the very participatory process in which they were invited: disregarded elements of citizens' stories, omitting their counter-narrative, neglecting citizens' memories, showing disdain for their emotional expressions and being spatially absent from their protest. These insights require scholars interested in understanding the exclusive mechanisms of citizen participation, to turn to the micro-politics of interaction where the political is practiced and experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist criminology and complicity with criminal justice – A revaluation of alliances in vain: This paper delves into the complex relationship between feminism and criminology. It questions whether this alliance has hindered the pursuit of feminist and abolitionist goals. In this paper, mainstream criminology is contextualized within a history of governance. However, feminism is discussed as a movement that has historically challenged state authority. However, feminist criminology has aligned feminism with a state-oriented and scientifically realistic stance. The paper addresses the concept of 'complicity' to appoint the role feminist criminology can have played within governance. It suggests that this alliance could compromise feminist political objectives, by scientifically reaching out to governing institutions. The paper concludes by advocating a potential separation of feminism from criminology to better serve contemporary feminist and abolitionist agendas, offering a fresh perspective within critical criminological movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards a visual verdict? The effect of visual features on the comprehensibility of a court ruling: We investigated whether a written court ruling printed on paper, as published on www.rechtspraak.nl and written and rewritten in understandable language, is better understood by non-litigant readers with no legal education if visual features (such as typography, images and color blocks) are added to that ruling. First an existing court ruling (V1) was rewritten in understandable language. Then two visual versions of this rewritten ruling were developed. In one version (V2a) the structure of the text was made visual using typography. In the other version (V2b) images, icons and color (blocks) were added to V2a. These versions were tested for understandability and compared with the original version (V1) by means of a questionnaire survey amongst 219 readers with varying levels of education who answered questions regarding the text comprehension of one of the three versions. Analysis of the results shows that the visual version V2a is the most understandable for the non-highly educated group: it was this version that received significantly more correct answers than the original (V1). Regarding the highly educated group, there were no significant differences in the number of correct answers among the three versions: each version was understood (equally) well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responsible and critical? Exploring the impact of ethics committees on critical criminology: In recent years, there has been a rapid expansion of institutional research ethics boards (REBs) in universities across Europe. While ostensibly part of a growing awareness and concern for the potentially harmful impacts of social science research, this growing institutionalisation of research ethics has also attracted critics who have questioned its impact on academic freedom, methodological innovation, and scholarly independence. These concerns are especially vital for critical criminology, which has a long-standing tradition of investigating the crimes and social harms of the powerful. In this paper, we critically examine the role of REBs specifically in relation to critical criminological research and explore the possibilities for conducting socially and ethically responsible research, while continuing to maintain our commitment to challenging the social harms and crimes committed by institutions of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Double Big Mac – Evidence-based policing and McDonaldization: This paper focusses on the central position of evidence-based policing (EBP) both in the police, and in police science over the past 25 years. In his paper he shows that this can be seen as a double process of McDonaldization. The four core elements as distinguished by Ritzer can be found both in EBP police research, and in EBP tries to have an impact on police work and police profession. In both cases a central assumption is that context and differences in context can be ignored. However, both are based upon a misunderstanding of the importance of the 'human factor'. For that reason, both may result in what Ritzer has called dehumanization and irrationalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historicization of (digital) surveillance – Photography as a means of surveillance and control (late 19th and early 20th century): This article describes the first applications of photography as a practice and technique for police surveillance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores how, through the growing use of photography in law enforcement, the criminal subject was increasingly followed, registered, classified and studied. The article reveals that photographic representations and surveillance shifted from the criminal body (mug shots) to abstract data (fingerprints). However, through describing the history of surveillance, the paper shows that also important patterns of continuity with contemporary practices of (digital) surveillance exist, in particular regarding the cultural motivations underpinning its trajectory and use of technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How Dutch security policy has become entangled in Islam: Since 1998, Dutch policymakers have developed a terminology related to the Islam-security nexus. This terminology has been consequently maintained during 25 years, with very few changes or adaptations, even though it has always been a source of confusion among policymakers themselves as well as politicians and the public. This article demonstrates how this terminological paper trail has been established and entrenched in Dutch bureaucracy, why it is cause for such confusion, and what the effects thereof have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral principles as a remedy against individualism: Patrick Deneen's book Why Liberalism Failed states that liberalism is centered around individual autonomy, and norms, manners and morals were abolished in the name of liberation, leading to individualism and ultimately the demise of liberal democracy itself. In the search for a new moral framework, this paper evaluates the theories of natural law liberalism and common good constitutionalism as formulated by Christian Wolfe respectively Adrian Vermeule. By analysing the constitutional law of the United States, Ireland and the Netherlands, the question is answered to what extent these different moral frameworks can be weighed against individual autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]