Over the last decades, the number of European Union member states has significantly increased, resulting into a reduction of the relative formal power of the Dutch government. Improving Dutch influence in Brussels is therefore an important topic on the agenda of public administration scholars and advisory boards. Using experts at the various stages of the EU policymaking process is one option to increase the influence in the EU. This article evaluates the effectiveness of this strategy concerning one of the most complex and most controversial public policy issues in the history of the European Union: the revision of the EU's chemical policy (REACH). The article demonstrates that the 'expert strategy' has been successful in this case. However, the effectiveness of this strategy comes under pressure if the trend towards core departments will continue.

This article analyzes the attention to democratic performance and the functioning of public administration by governments in the Netherlands. The views of national governments on these matters have not been mapped systematically. Through a content analysis of all annual Dutch Queen's speeches between 1945 and 2007, which is part of our broader research on the national politics of attention, we analyze the pattern of attention for democracy and public administration. The theoretical perspective used is the model of policy generations. Our findings show that governmental attention for the functioning of public administration emerged in the 1960s and since then went up and down. The time intervals in which agenda changes occurred often were longer than the duration of individual governments, although some governments contributed strongly to a change in attention and tone. Attention not only showed rise and decline, also the emphasis on efficiency, long term planning, and democratization shifted considerably from one period to the next. This empirical pattern matches for the most part the theory of policy generations, which predicts a fixed sequence in policy emphasis. In addition to general cultural driving forces central to this theoretical model, we conclude that political and institutional conditions contribute to a better understanding of the pattern of political attention.

Uncertainties about climate change are a major incentive for the Dutch government to communicate frequently about risks related to water safety. In September 2008, the 'New Delta Committee' even presented several coping strategies to safeguard the low-lying Delta of The Netherlands far into the next century. The government assumes that increased high water risk awareness and behaviour in society, based on a risk-based approach, is an important factor for sustainable future living with water and thus made this into the spearhead of policy. However, the main part of Dutch society still lives in a flush of victory. The Delta Works symbolize the victory over the water; The Netherlands is safe. The government doesn't succeed satisfactorily to realize high water risk awareness and behaviour in its society, notwithstanding years of campaigning. Cultural sociologists Heems and Kothuis demonstrate by means of a discourse analysis of public campaigns that government communication on high water safety is not only entangled but also creates confusion. Reason of the entanglement in communication is a breakthrough of the taboo on publicly speaking of a flood disaster as a realistic scenario. The confusion obstructs the Dutch government to bridge the gap in perception between itself and society and to achieve its policy objectives.

Decision-making in the Netherlands is generally characterised as (neo) corporatist. Whether stakeholders enjoy a similar level of access to, and influence on the formulation of the national position, which the Dutch government advocates in Brussels, remains however unclear. This article aims at providing a first tentative answer to this question by studying the formulation of the Dutch position on EU resolution 882/2004 concerning the official controls on compliance with feed and food law, animal health and animal welfare.

In-depth analysis of this case reveals that the development process of the Dutch stance on 882/2004 was largely devoid of stakeholder-input. As such, this process may be characterised as essentially etatist rather than corporatist. Moreover, it was established – as expected – that specialised lobby groups – those that could offer additional information and expertise to the dossier team responsible for 882/2004 – were able to exert more influence than general advocacy groups. Finally, the hypothesis that openness leads to more stakeholder-influence was not confirmed in this case. To the contrary, only during private bilateral discussion did a selection of business organizations manage to convince the dossier team of the benefits of limited border controls.