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What is the institutional trust of the Dutch citizens towards the government during the corona crisis? Globally there is a lot of change going on resulting from the COVID-19 virus outbreak, including the Netherlands. Various measures and approaches are being implemented by the national government to try and fight against the virus. It is almost every day now that Dutch society receives press messages from the government about the changing measures and policies being implemented, such as social distancing of 1.5 meters. But, how is the trust of Dutch citizens currently situated towards the government during this pandemic?   The transformational approach to trust, by Roy J. Lewicki et. al. (2006), from the psychological approaches to trust has defined trust to come from(1) predictability (2) dependability (reliability and honesty) and (3) leap of faith. In our opinion, Dutch citizens’ trust towards the government would be that (for a large amount of the citizens) (1) predi...
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To see or not to see

“If something was not observable then it was not verifiable and if it was not verifiable then it was metaphysical and meaningless” This is stated in chapter 1 of the book Planning Theory by Philip Allmendinger to illustrate the views of logical positivism. Is this statement really true? The statement seems to speak the truth at first glance, but under closer scrutiny it becomes less solid. Let’s focus on one of the most important branches in social science: communication. We communicate everyday through different ways and in different forms. You might wake up tomorrow deciding on following the rules of COVID-19 quarantine and staying at home, so you spend the whole day on social media platforms communicating to a friend or writing a post on Facebook. Alternatively, you might decide to serve the community and volunteer as a babysitter for healthcare workers. These kinds of activities are all forms of communication in daily life, but some may be easier to observe than others. For exa...
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