The number of boards in the public domain has risen sharply in recent decades and so has the number of reports containing guidelines for effective and good governance. The question, however, is what this flow of advice is based on and what we actually know about board capacity. In this paper, we discuss theoretical expectations on boards, recent developments in governance based inspection, and empirical research on this topic. All in all, it appears that relatively little empirical research is conducted into boards in the public domain. And the research that is available is as yet not very optimistic. Based on these observations, we conclude that it is necessary to re-examine the policy assumptions with regard to board capacity in the public domain.

A key factor to a well-functioning ombudsman’s office is autonomy, which can also be derived from the public turmoil surrounding the appointment of Dutch Children’s ombudsman in 2016. Organization-wise, the Dutch Children’s ombudsman is embedded within an existing autonomous institution: the National ombudsman. This triggers the question to what extent such nested constructions can guarantee sufficient autonomy. Viewing the statutory and de facto autonomy of the Children’s ombudsman, we find that the autonomy of the Children’s ombudsman depends to a large extent on the position of the National ombudsman and on the relationship between the National ombudsman and the Children’s ombudsman. Our findings point out that it is necessary to determine and codify the degree of autonomy at the start of an ombudsman’s office.

Governmental IT-projects regularly make the news due to issues about the quality of end results, planning or costs. The Elias report, which is based upon a Parliamentary Inquiry, recommends to evaluate more and learn from the outcomes of these evaluations. However, the report does not give guidance on how to evaluate. The question thus remains: what constitutes a good evaluation of governmental ICT-projects, and what characteristics should be addresses in evaluation research. After careful study of various scientific disciplines, the researchers developed an extensive reference model, including additional suggestions for defining methods, the evaluation process, and criteria on how to evaluate an evaluation. After using this reference model in a content-analytical document analysis, it became clear that many evaluation reports are not being shared with other professionals or practitioners, that reports often lack a specifically formulated research question, and that conclusions and additional reflections are limited. There is room for considerable improvement in the evaluation of ICT-projects.

The collaborative relationship between the appointed mayor and the non-political highest administrative official is a crucial one in Dutch local government. It aligns two different domains or spheres: the political, decision making domain on one hand, and the administrative, executive domain on the other. Since research points out that 25% of these collaborative relations fail, the need for insight in the factors that shape the relations and the success of it emerges. Non-successful collaboration between public top-officials usually results in financial, societal or personal costs or damage. In this research, 17 factors were indicated that influence the (perceived) collaborative success, divided in three levels: external factors, functional factors and personal factors. Within the success factors, several ‘critical’ factors were determined, without which a successful collaborative relationship never is possible. On the functional level the critical factors are trust, role convergence and shared understanding, and on the personal level consistency and integrity. Best guaranty for a successful collaborative relationship is when both actors adapt their roles to each other’s liking, reciprocally building trust and shared understanding by using open communication, while being consistent and maintaining their integrity.
Finally, officials are being called upon to open their doors, and share valuable experiences.

Research into successful alderman is scarce. Scientifically less is known about the perspective of residents and council members on (successful) aldermen. A recent study investigated the sources of legitimacy that successful aldermen draw on. In addition, the contribution of characteristics of local political leadership to successful alderman has been examined. Based on a survey of residents, councilors and aldermen, differences in opinions about aldermen, aspects and indicators of legitimacy and personal characteristics were uncovered. There are clear differences in judgment, indicators and personal characteristics that are considered important and another source on which the judgment is based. This provides interesting and new research material for public administration literature as well as for administrative practice. The view of residents learns us that the distance to aldermen must be reduced, more connection must be made, a more outside view must be taken and an addition to the management style of councilors with responsive qualities is required.

When we look at the number of people leaving local governance, we see a discouraging trend. According to an investigation of the magazine Binnenlands Bestuur, 126 of 1144 aldermen in the Netherlands were forced to step down in 2019. Making 2019 the year with the highest number since 2004. The same trend can be seen with municipal secretaries. A municipal secretary used to be a lifetime appointment, yet now they often stay at their position for no more than 5 years.
This is why it is of the utmost importance to understand the different functions within local governance and how they can be best understood. This number of Bestuurskunde contains articles that offer more in depth analysis towards successful factors of aldermen and municipal secretaries.

The authority of a municipal secretary has to be continuously earned. This is a complex task that demands highly developed personal qualities and attributes. According to an opinion poll, filled out by 120 active municipal secretaries, they believe that they meet these necessary standards. In this poll they were asked what they recognize as their most important sources of authority. The top three answers were, respectively; personal leadership, trust, embodied ethics. Other important factors were their roles as chief executive officer of local governance and/or first advisor. These roles are however no longer enough to establish authority within local governance. Authority and influence must be earned on a daily basis in vastly different spheres and among different social groups.

Boudewijn Marinussen feels right at home working in local governance. He has a deep understanding of the balancing act required by the municipal secretary due to his rich experience in local governance. Marinussen’s work as an entrusted person at the Association of Municipal Secretaries entails being a voice for his colleagues’ opinions. In this interview he will ponder the following questions: which sources of authority are essential? What causes a loss in authority, and can this loss be recommended? On the basis of Marinussen’s direct personal experience in local governance and his experience as an entrusted person, he concludes that in cases where authority is coming under pressure, too little is done to ensuring a fast recovery of authority. His advice would be to start earlier with conversations that quicken the healing process.

Large government investments are regularly preceded by an ex-ante evaluation. This article examines the quality of two ex-ante studies and considers the use made by administrators and representatives of the people of these ex-ante studies. In both cases it concerned qualitatively sound ex-ante studies. In both cases, these studies also demonstrably affected the debate about these investment plans in the people’s representations. But there was no question of power-free decision making. In both cases, the representatives of the people were put under great pressure. Not only was there time pressure. The public debate came late. The use of sound ex-ante studies is not only an investment in rationality, but is also accompanied by political-strategic manoeuvring. The relevance of this article to practitioners is that it (a) contains four reasonable requirements that the representative may make of each ex-ante study offered by the executive board; (b) also shows that an ex-ante analysis on which important decisions are based should not be characterised by secret parts or by undefined assumptions and an ex-ante analysis must be transparent; and (c) demonstrates it is important as a representative to be tenacious, to keep a firm hand and not to decide before all questions have been answered and a full list of safeguards is on the table.

In her farewell editorial Helen Stout (member of the editorial board of this magazine from 1998 till 2020) addresses the contradictions in the climate policy of the Dutch city of Rotterdam. She notices that the new Dutch Climate Act is brimming with ambitions, but that there has not been much progress. The elaboration of the new law is yet to come. That has not prevented several municipalities from getting started. Some have been busy for years. For example, the municipality of Rotterdam launched the ‘Rotterdam Climate Initiative’ in 2007 with the aim of reducing CO₂ emissions by half by 2025. Against this background, the issues of coal transshipment in the port of Rotterdam, the autonomy of the port authority as a public limited company and the commissioning in 2015 and 2016 of two brand new coal-fired power stations on the Maasvlakte arise, which are discussed further in this editorial. The council’s failed attempt at intervention in renewing the leasehold illustrates the powerlessness of the municipality and shows the general feeling that the port authority is not an ‘ordinary’ company. The question arises of how interests other than economic ones can also be involved in the assessment of the port authority, assuming that reversal of its autonomy is not an option. We can use the constitutional framework for the institutional structure formed by the company’s articles of association. The Dutch General Administrative Law Act (Awb) could impose mandatory rules with regard to the content of the articles of association, like the obligation to broaden the objects stated under the articles of association.

Mayors struggle with their role in the digital and online domain. One of the aspects they encounter is online positioning. Positioning is an important factor in public order enforcement. Mayor Femke Halsema of Amsterdam recently indicated that she is not only responsible for public order, but also for virtual public space. This contribution elaborates on online positioning and specifically on whether social media pages can be considered as public spaces. The analysis, which includes recent research in this area, shows that the definition of ‘public order and public space’ in the Dutch Municipalities Act certainly offers scope for an expansion to online places. The way in which internet users deal with data in practice does not stand in the way of this possibility. At the same time, it appears that online spaces differ from physical spaces, especially in the sense that positioning is difficult. Case law from Dutch criminal law shows that, in addition to the place, it is primarily the public reach and effect that determine whether or not it concerns a public expression. In addition to complex positioning online, there are other compelling arguments for not using the legal powers of mayors for maintaining public order on public spaces online.

The urbanisation of society is a well-known fact. It is perhaps less well known that this process is accompanied by the emergence of ‘city gurus’. By this, the authors mean advisers, scientists and other authors who have an international influence on the thinking and actions of city administrators and other urban policymakers. City administrators nowadays often find their intellectual inspiration from ‘contemporary city gurus’. They are usually not public administration experts; instead they come from the fields of urban geography, urban economics, or urban sociology. Their ideas do however resonate in administrative practice. The questions that the popularity of contemporary city gurus raise are: is this a hype or is it really about thoughts that have a lasting impact on ‘urban development’ and city management? Which city gurus are we actually talking about? There are several of them, but in this essay the authors highlight a few that can be counted among the favourite speakers among the ‘science and advisor conference goers’ in recent years: Richard Florida, Bruce Katz, Richard Sennett, Benjamin Barber and Jeb Brugmann. The city gurus ask us to have an eye for the city. But the authors of this essay believe that that also means that we must be aware of differences, because every city and every city dweller is different, and that requires an interpretation of the ‘city of difference’. The popularity of the city leads to an increase in those differences and they present us with various considerations and management issues.

Given the increasing importance of local administration and its range of tasks, it is important to know whether municipal councils are succeeding in properly controlling the administration. That is one of the main tasks that has been entrusted to the municipal council when dualism was introduced in the Netherlands in 2002. Council members are aware of the importance of the monitoring task, but little is known about the way in which they perform this task. Research in ten Dutch municipalities into the use of the available set of tools for framing and monitoring shows that municipal councils make little or no use of some of the instruments, in particular with regard to information gathering and the support of the council. Good information provision to the council sometimes appears to be subordinated to the political importance of the coalition. And everywhere councillors are struggling with the set of programmes for programme budgeting and accounting introduced during the dualisation process: it offers insufficient possibilities for framing and checking. In the absence of a clear assessment framework, it is not possible to determine whether this detracts from the effectiveness of control and framework. What good or effective control is and what its purpose is are also apparently not a topic for discussion in the local arena. This article shows (a) that council members can make more and better use of available framework and control instruments and the possibilities for supporting the council; b) the instrument of the programme budget (and the program account) does not seem to live up to the expectations of the dualisation process; c) mayors, as chairmen of the council, do not always feel responsible for the proper provision of information for the council and, in a broader sense, for better positioning of the council as a framework-setting and controlling body. More leadership is required here.

Designing and implementing participation processes that are perceived as meaningful by both municipalities and citizens requires insight into the assessment by participants. In this study the theory of experienced procedural justice is applied in the context of citizen participation. To gain insight into the importance of the outcome and the course of the process in the assessment by participants, the authors have used survey research to collect data from four different participation processes in a Dutch municipality (Delft). The results of this explorative study show that the respondents rate the participation processes in which they have participated as reasonably fair. There is a fair process effect when respondents experienced the process as fair and their confidence in the municipality increases, even if the outcome is unfavourable for them. For practitioners, this study shows that the dimensions of procedural justice, namely respect, having a voice and explanation, are guiding principles for the design and implementation of participation processes. There is still much to be achieved, especially when it comes to being given an explanation, so information about the decision-making process and accountability for the substantive choices that have been made. Finally, regular evaluation research is needed to set up participation processes that tie in with what participants think is important.

In the light of the broader debate on the mediatization of politics, this study wants to better understand how the media perceptions and media behaviour of politicians are related to their appearances in the news. We opt for an innovative actor-centred approach to actually measure the views and actions of individual politicians. We combine surveys conducted with 142 Belgian representatives with data on politicians’ external communication behaviour and on their appearances in television news, newspapers and news websites. The results show that media behaviour is not so much related to beliefs of media importance. We do find a significant positive relationship between strategic media behaviour and media attention suggesting that politicians who put in more effort appear more often in various news media. However, this positive relationship depends on the specific form of strategic communication and the political position of the legislator. Our study adds to the mediatization literature by showing how and when politicians are successful in obtaining media attention.

This article assesses the size and diversity of Belgium’s interest group population by triangulating four data sources. Combining various sources allows us to describe which societal interests get mobilised, which interest organisations become politically active and who gains access to the policy process and obtains news media attention. Unique about the project is the systematic data collection, enabling us to compare interest representation at the national, Flemish and Francophone-Walloon government levels. We find that: (1) the national government level remains an important venue for interest groups, despite the continuous transfer of competences to the subnational and European levels, (2) neo-corporatist mobilisation patterns are a persistent feature of interest representation, despite substantial interest group diversity and (3) interest mobilisation substantially varies across government levels and political-administrative arenas.