Samenvatting

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.