Samenvatting

The Netherlands has the most public administration scholars per capita in the world. Rather than analysing and understanding problems, they often want to contribute to tackling them. That is why public administration scholars are valuable to civil servants. In this article, the minister of the Interior, Hanke Bruins Slot, mentions three crucial challenges for strengthening connections between scholarship and policy: investing in a value-driven government; recognising the value of operations and implementation; and paying more attention to justice and equality. The quality of government can be structurally improved if the exchange of knowledge and experience between the two worlds is properly organized. Public administration scholars can act as scholarly allies.