Robert Davidson

While a growing literature within the study of subjective well-being demonstrates the impact of socio-political factors on subjective well-being, scholars have conspicuously failed to consider the role of the size and scope of government as determinants of well-being. Where such studies exist, the focus is largely on the advanced industrial democracies of the Organization for Economic CoOperation and Development. In this study, we examine the size of the public sector as a determinant of cross-national variation in life satisfaction across a worldwide sample. Our findings strongly suggest that as the public sector grows, subjective well-being increases as well, conditional on the extent of quality of government. Using cross-sectional data on 84 countries, we show this relationship has an independent and separable impact from other economic and political factors.

One form of accommodating historically marginalised social groups is through 'democratic corporatism', in which government to some degree formalises emancipation interests' representation within policy processes. This article compares the corporatist trajectories of the emancipation interests of women and gays/lesbians in the Netherlands to examine why women's interests became excluded from and gay/ lesbian interests remained included in corporatist policy processes. Existing studies have failed to explain why changes in corporatism differently affect incorporated organisations across policy arenas. This article examines the role of the level of formalisation of corporatist relations, and by extension the ability of incorporated organisations to combine top-down and bottom-up resources, in leading to exclusion from or continued inclusion in corporatist policy processes. The findings highlight the importance for incorporated emancipation interests of the ability to combine top-down and bottom-up resources to manoeuvre changes in corporatism and successfully maintain their inclusion in corporatist policy processes.

The gay/lesbian social movement has primarily been understood as an identity movement. This article contributes to expanding understandings of the gay/lesbian movement by following the advocacy of the Dutch Association for the Integration of Homosexuality COC (COC) as a case of a gay/lesbian movement organization’s expansion of its action repertoire to include public policy goals. On the basis of archival and interview data, this article identifies several factors that enabled the COC to see the Dutch government as a potential public policy partner. Previous legal successes and facilitation by the institutionalized wing of the women’s movement, coupled with a constitutional change, resulted in the COC’s development of a policy strategy. By tracing the history of the COC’s strategic interactions, this article demonstrates that, while an identity strategy was constant throughout the COC’s advocacy, the organization could combine an identity strategy with strategies of legal change, cultural change, and public policy.

Interactions between social movements and government actors have been conceptualized as either combative and exclusionary or institutionalized and coopted. This article transcends that dichotomy by tracing one social movement organization’s tactical pursuit of institutionalization, examining the process through which institutionalization occurred, and evaluating its effects. This case study, based on qualitative, archival data, traces the institutionalization of the gay and lesbian social movement organization, the Dutch Association for the Integration of Homosexuality, COC, between 1986 and 1994. The analysis offers three findings: First, institutionalization is a process built through sustained exchange relations over time. Second, institutionalization does not necessarily result in cooptation but does involve tradeoffs. Third, both SMO and governmental actors are affected, albeit differently, by the process of institutionalization. While the COC was primarily affected organizationally, the Dutch government became more activist by attempting to influence the social institution of sexuality to accommodate homosexuality.

This article addresses the identity politics that serve as a base for collective action for many groups active in fighting for LGBT rights and looks at queer theory and queer politics as an alternative to identity based politics. Queer theory is discussed through the work of several prominent queer theorists, as well as in comparison with post-colonial theories. Some suggestions are then made for undertaking a queer politics.

Debates on gay and lesbian advocacy in the Netherlands have often revolved around the role of the political culture of pillarisation in facilitating or hindering the gay and lesbian (GL) social movement. Pillarisation ended, however, just as the GL movement was beginning to gain momentum. In this article, gay and lesbian advocacy is examined from 1986-1994, during which the government engaged in designing a national policy to combat anti-homosexual discrimination. After describing the transition from a political cultural of pillarisation to one of corporatism, I will investigate the extent to which corporatism was extended to the gay and lesbian social movement and structured relations between the government and the gay and lesbian social movement. Last, I will examine the ways in which a political culture of corporatism affected gay and lesbian advocacy. In extending corporatism to the GL social movement, the government created strong partners with whom policy could be negotiated and developed. Incorporation empowered some GL SMOs and secured their ‘place at the table’. Once incorporated into the formal political arena, the SMOs were able to achieve a number of policy advancements, but they also had to compete with much stronger players. Despite the strong position of some GL SMOs, and the COC in particular, some political party opposition to the GL movement resulted in the GL movement’s failure to achieve its most central goal.

This article addresses the controversial term ‘Disorders of Sex Development’, or ‘DSD’, through a comparative analysis of the ways in which three intersex social movement groups have framed and debated over the terminology. Theoretical insights from Alberto Melucci are taken as a point of departure to emphasize the production of cultural codes, in this case terminology, as integral actions pursued by contemporary social movement organizations and demonstrate how the particular frames of each organization are related to each organization’s point of engagement with the medical discourse regarding intersex.