Nordic welfare states are known for their universalistic and all‐encompassing approach to welfare and having a long tradition for active labour market policy as tool in economic crises with adverse impact on employment. They have had a long tradition for strong egalitarian approaches and their residents are consistently among the happiest in the world. A key issue is whether a crisis like the COVID‐19 outbreak is changing the Nordic welfare states. This article focuses on providing a description of what instruments the Nordic countries have taken or expect to use as part of dealing with the welfare challenges resulting from rising unemployment and greater social and economic insecurity in the wake of the crisis. The tentative conclusion is that the crisis so far has strengthened key characteristics of the Nordic welfare states by the state taking on a strong central role not only for the functioning of the market but also continued in a path‐dependent way with universal and relatively generous benefits such as for those who become unemployed or have reduced income because of the crisis.

Based on a novel experimental design, the current study examines the impact of economic and cultural characteristics of potential immigrants on anti-immigrant sentiments. We investigate the extent to which individuating cues affect public support for individual immigrants in the USA and the Netherlands through a series of online survey experiments carried out by the YouGov online panel in 2010 and the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences Panel in 2011. Our findings demonstrate that individual immigrants elicit different levels of public support for their temporary and permanent immigration applications, and that support depends overwhelmingly on educational and occupational credentials of potential immigrants. Other individual attributes, such as presence of family dependents, country of origin and skin complexion also affect acceptance rates, but to a much lesser extent.

Local governments, especially in decentralised states, are increasingly performing tasks previously the responsibility of national government as well as new tasks. This research studies the conditions affecting the adoption of a mandated e-government innovation -'Basic Registration Addresses and Buildings' (BAG), in Dutch municipalities (N = 429) between 2008 and 2011. In contradiction to what theory suggested, a great deal of variation in the timing of adoption was found. The results of Event History Analysis (EHA) show that early adoption of BAG was primarily the result of a municipality's command over resources. More resourceful municipalities, that is, with better past e-government performance, that are better informed, and included in more extensive policy networks were more likely to adopt this innovation relatively early. Of the motivational factors included in our study, the degree of political alignment between the municipal council and national government proved an important factor in the timing of a municipality's adoption. This is a surprising finding, as it is an uncontroversial and technical governance innovation. This research also shows that classical diffusion explanations play a role, even in the case of a mandated innovation for which the time frame, and thus the time to learn from other governments, was relatively short.

This article investigates variations in the domestic impact of the European Union's largest financial instrument, the European Social Fund (ESF), in The Netherlands and Spain. We find that, despite the large differences between the two countries examined in terms of 'goodness of fit', the ESF had significant effects on both The Netherlands and Spain. These effects, however, occurred through rather different dynamics: intermediate variables such as leverage, learning and aid conditionality determine how the ESF actually 'hits home', in addition to the degree of institutional, political and policy (mis)fit. At the same time, we qualify our analysis by exploring the role of countries' past experiences with the ESF, their problem load, the availability of (European Union and domestic) resources and member states' uploading capacities. The 'goodness of fit' literature has suggested that these factors may be important, but they have not yet been sufficiently explored for the ESF.

One year after the European work–life balance directive, which recognises the need for work–family policy support, measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic began shaping parents’ work–life balance in significant ways. Academically, we are challenged to explore whether existing theoretical frameworks hold in this new environment with combined old and new policy frameworks. We are also challenged to understand the nuanced ways in which the first lockdown affects the combination of paid work and care. We address both of these issues, providing a cross-sectional comparative analysis of highly educated mothers’ perceptions of work–life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland and the Netherlands. Our findings show that highly educated Finnish mothers have more difficulty combining work and care during the first lockdown than Dutch mothers. The absence of state-provided care during the lockdown creates greater difficulty for full-time working Finnish mothers in a dual-earner/state-carer system than an absence of such care in the Dutch one-and-a-half earner system, where most mothers work part time. Further analyses suggest variation in part-time and (nearly) full-time hours mitigates the work–life balance experiences of highly educated Dutch mothers. Additional factors explaining cross-country variation or similarities include the presence of young children and the presence of a partner. We discuss these findings in light of current theoretical frameworks and highlight avenues for future research.