This editorial offers an introduction to the current issue.

During meetings, policy teams run the risk of producing false consensus and personal conflicts. Asserting one’s own viewpoint often reduces hearing those of others. Changing this requires developing recognition of the perspective of other team members, without depreciating one’s own. We aimed to study the effect of visualizing team members’ views of a problematic situation and their proposed policy approaches. We explored the feasibility of a network diagram visualization method, by assessing team members attitude towards it, expectations about the policy progress and its influence on their mental representation of the policy problem at hand. A field trial was conducted in two policy teams in two non-profit organizations: one healthcare and one financial. In both cases, we compared the newly developed visualization method with meeting as usual. Open and semi-structured interviews were used to collect team members’ views. The qualitative and quantitative analyses showed enhanced mental representations by means of visualization and positive ratings of both the method and its expected effect on consequent policy quality. In conclusion, the results warrant substantive investment into further large-scale research as to sample size, time window, and into its generalizability towards collaborative governance.

In 2019, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Netherlands (FIU-the Netherlands) celebrated its 25th anniversary. This article uses the occasion to reflect on the pivotal role of the FIU in financial surveillance and to describe its core practices of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating financial intelligence. What makes an FIU particularly interesting is that it operates at various intersections: not only on the nexus of finance and security, but also between private and public actors, by transforming unusual transaction information into suspicious financial intelligence. Given this pivotal position of the FIU, it is surprising that little is known about its core activities. Because its practices are often secret and its data are classified as state secrets, its daily operations and operational processes remain obscure. By drawing on interviews, public reports, and an online training programme this article aims to encircle the secrecy, zoom in on the case-study of FIU-the Netherlands and offer a fine-grained analysis of each of the three core FIU activities. Such a case-study is important not only for the study of finance and security as well as financial surveillance, but also for policy makers and the broader public who merit an understanding of how their financial behaviour is being surveilled.

The history of the opening-up of marriage in the Netherlands is mostly portrayed as a fight started by the Gay Krant in the 1980ies resulting in a clear victory in 2001, the ‘purple’ government of Social Democrats and Liberals being pictured as the heroes. This one-dimensional and triumphalist narrative needs correction. Already in the 1970ies the COC initiated a discussion on law reform for non-marital relationships, but rejected marriage as the model to be followed. In the 1980ies both the gay movement and the feminist movement demanded legal individualisation. This avenue was closed off by the review of the social security system in 1987. A clear defeat. The role of the ‘purple’ coalition also needs revision. It was a more traditional cabinet of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats that in 1994 tabled the first proposal, be it not for marriage but for registered partnerships for couples of the same sex. Consensual politics found its limits in the demand for marriage equality. But also the ‘purple’ cabinet had to be forced by parliament to table this new legislation. The acceptance of marriage equality by the Christian Democrats – a decade later – fits in with integration of same sex relationships in a society where heterosexuality still is the dominant organizing principle.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

The most relevant part of a discussion is not what is discussed but what cannot be spoken of. The real taboos are those for which it is taboo to call them taboos. The status quo defines itself as non-ideological while denouncing any challenge to itself as radical. Therefore the column De blinde vlek frames the framers, politicizes the status quo and articulates what is not heard of.