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This paper aims at analysing the relationship between anticipation and public administration based on a case study focusing on a specific public agency in charge of knowledge production for policymaking.

It is based on a case study methodology: anticipatory practices of a public organisation are critically assessed based on data that originates from public documents and from participant observation within the concerned agency.

Several dimensions impact the interrelation between anticipation and public administration. First, the organisational set-up is decisive in fostering the development of specific type of anticipatory activities. Second, it confirms a common finding that policymakers are oftentimes more interested in ready-to-use results than in processes of future thinking. And third, it shows that distinctive anticipatory practices can rely on very different networks and, therefore, have different degree of maturity.

The use of a case study, unfortunately, may lead to a lack of generalisability. The authors therefore encourage researchers to test their propositions further.

Nevertheless, the originality of the paper is its central focus on anticipation within public administration – a topic that has not received much attention or study by academics or researchers. Anticipatory practices have been studied at a more general level, but not necessarily in particular public sector environments, which also have their own particular constraints.

Although EU directives were issued quite some time ago, implementation progresses slowly and at an unequal pace in Union member states. Certification of assessors, auditors and verifiers differs widely and is sometimes inordinately complicated; in some instances accountants have stepped into the “vacuum”, in others “certification” documents are issued by private organizations. Uniformity is far from being the rule. This paper takes Belgium as a case study. In opposition to what has developed in the USA where federal authority can be completed, even toughened by US regulations, but remained national (viz. federal), in our example responsibility has nearly entirely been devolved to the next (regional) level of authority. A survey was conducted of EMAS implementation in 11 European States: its results are disclosed and commented on.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a non‐parametric methodology to construct composite scores of citizen satisfaction with local police services. More precisely, the paper advocates a custom made version of the popular Data Envelopment Analysis approach, also referred to as the “Benefit‐of‐the‐Doubt” model. The key advantage of this approach is that it weights the citizen satisfaction rates with the multiple local police functions and tasks into the composite score in an endogenous manner, thereby allowing for different values and interpretations of “good local policing” among police services. The methodology is illustrated with citizen satisfaction data on a sample of Belgian local police services.

The paper develops a multidimensional measure of local police effectiveness based on citizen satisfaction measures. It uses a non‐parametric evaluation methodology related to the popular DEA‐model. The paper looks for strengths and weaknesses in the performances of local police services both at the micro level (per local police service) and at the macro level (region).

With an average overall satisfaction score of 91.94 per cent, it seems safe to say that the majority of the citizens are generally satisfied with local police services. The BoD‐model identifies per local police service the basic functionalities that citizens rated relatively highly and poorly. Results show that urbanization per se does not drive the satisfaction scores of the participating local police services. Of much more importance are the regional disparities. Participating local police zones in Flanders receive higher satisfaction scores than those in the Walloon Region (the two big regions in Belgium). One of the findings is that the BoD‐model offers both conceptual and practical advantages in the evaluations of local police services. BoD grants each police service the benefit‐of‐the‐doubt in the effectiveness evaluations. The BoD‐model also identifies the factors of strength and weakness that explain the citizen satisfaction scores.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that multidimensional scores of citizen satisfaction are used in the effectiveness evaluations of local police services. The paper uses a methodology that accounts for the own particular circumstances of the local police services (by assigning in an endogenous manner weights in the evaluations).

This paper aims to present a multi‐dimensional measure of poverty. The proposed method has been applied to the Panel Set of Belgian Households dataset for Belgium for the years between 1994 and 2000.

First, a common model is decided upon by exploratory factor analysis, and applied by confirmatory factor analysis. Cluster analysis (CA) is then used to separate the multi‐dimensional poor. Finally, the possible causes of multi‐dimensional poverty are surfaced by estimating a discrete duration model.

The proposed method reveals three dimensions of poverty: “material deprivation”, “social deprivation” and “psychological health”. Between 9 and 11 per cent of the representative sample of Belgian individuals are poor. The paper also identifies causes of poverty, including not having a job, not having the Belgian nationality, having a poor health or a disability, being lower educated, experiencing financial poverty, being divorced or widowed, living in the Walloon or Brussels regions, and having a bad psychological health.

Research implications include the use of polychoric and tetrachoric correlations as a starting point of factor analysis, as well as the combination of factor analysis and CA.

The paper proposes an alternative multi‐dimensional measure of poverty. It argues that previous measures may suffer from categorisation errors and suggests a solution to this problem. The advantages of the proposed method are that all information is used to disentangle the poor from the non‐poor and that dimensions of poverty are defined using the correlations between deprivations. Finally, the paper identifies “psychological health” as one of the dimensions of poverty.

Single-family houses are a common form of housing in Europe. Most were built in the context of the suburbanization after World War II and are now facing challenges arising from generational changes as well as increasing living and energy standards. According to the hypothesis of this paper, in several EU regions, single-family houses may face future challenges arising from oversupply and lack of adaptation to current demand. To examine this, the paper analyses the present situation and discusses the prognosis for the challenges described above regarding the three neighbouring north-western European countries Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, based on available data and a review of country-specific characteristics of housing markets as well as national policies. Despite an impending mismatch between demand and supply, planning policies still support the emergence of new single-family houses. The comparison of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands shows the growing polarization between shrinking and growing regions and central and peripheral sites apparent at different stages in the three countries. While a high rate of vacancies is already registered for some regions in Germany, in the Netherlands this phenomenon can only be seen near the borders and in villages within the Randstad conurbation. In Belgium also, this phenomenon is not yet widespread, but in some suburban neighbourhoods dating from the 1950's and 1960's more and more single-family houses are becoming more difficult to sell, indicating an emerging mismatch between supply and demand. This article proposes some instruments which enable municipalities to intervene in single family housing neighbourhoods which are largely dominated by private ownership. These instruments are not yet widely established in single-family housing neighbourhoods but that may become important in the future.

The paper aims to present an analysis of today's key themes in the field of public futures studies.

Compares publicly available research results on futures activities in countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, The Netherlands, Quebec, Sweden, the UK.

The paper shows that there are striking similarities between countries in terms of themes and topics for public futures study and also that the themes are relatively stable over time. However, specific topics are determined by the challenges of the day: the themes are abiding, the subjects are changing.

The paper offers an interesting approach of the state's changing roles and priorities across the world. To help readers go further, links to web sites of the most relevant futures studies institutions are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to explore automobile fuel efficiency policies in the presence of two externalities: a global environmental problem and international innovation spillovers.

Using a simple model with two regions, the authors show that both a fuel tax and a tax on vehicles based on their fuel economy rating are needed to decentralize the first best.

If standards are used instead of taxes, the authors find that spillovers may alleviate free-riding. Under some conditions, a strict standard in one region may favor the adoption of a strict standard in the other one.

The authors also show that if policies are not coordinated between regions, the resulting gas taxes will be set too low and each region will use the tax on fuel rating to reduce the damage caused by foreign drivers.