Over the past decade, policy attention for ‘active citizenship’ and ‘bottom up’ citizen initiatives has strongly increased. Nowadays, governments tend to approach citizens more and more as practical ‘doers’: as active citizens that can initiate projects in the public domain – for instance to increase the livability of their neighborhood. The dominant policy perspective on what is called the ‘democracy of action’ is one of a small government (to make room for a ‘big society’) that is not directive but supportive to active citizens.
In this article, we first argue that in practice we observe two ‘silent ideologies’ that suppress this policy perspective of the democracy of action. We call these the silent ideologies of ‘professional centralism’ and of ‘instrumental support’; we claim that in practice these ideologies enable the dominance of professionals over citizen initiatives (and nót that of the citizens). Second we state that the policy perspective of the democracy of action itself contains a silent ideology: it assumes a highly depoliticized form of citizenship. In the short term, this may be convenient for administrators and policy makers but in the long run this can lead to a less democracy because the voices of critical citizens are not heard.

Values like quality of life, efficiency of services, solidarity in finances and privacy of clients are being compromised continuously in daily practices, inspired by opinions and ideology of (groups of) individuals. Yet, systems like healthcare are dominated by technocratic procedures to enforce transparency and efficiency. This functional rationality pushes away the more fundamental debates on values. This doesn’t mean they are not being compromised, but it’s done in a hidden way. It’s the nurse taking decisions on the amount of time available for a patient. Although restricted by procedures nurses compromise differently. The same counts for healthcare executives in their boardrooms. Restricted by system requirements they take decisions differently, inspired by their convictions. It is all ‘hidden ideology’ in institutions, interactions and intuitions. Even the political arena is imprisoned by the self made technocratic way of debating and deciding on important societal issues. Political debates should be about the values behind procedures instead of technocratic in its essence. Critical checks and balances have to be reinstalled (or reanimated) in political decision making in order to do this and meet patients’ or citizens’ needs, instead of maintaining a procedural attitude that drives politics and ideology away from society.

This article analyzes the political discourse of alliance or partnership thinking. The metaphore of a partnership suggests a government which stands alongside civilians embodying a humble and service-based policy-making. We claim that this metaphore is in fact a justification for an interventionist claim towards those who not subscribe to the pact. The ideal of partnership is based on the political mimesis, a political conception which denies the principled distinction between state and society. The identification of a popular and political will is the legitimation of partnership thinking. It creates a problematic distinction between those who are supposed responsible and those who are not. To oppose governmental policy making leads to a high political price: either you’re with us, or against us.

This paper critically reflects on in the idea of ‘silent’ (or concealed) ideologies in society. Its central thesis is that ideologies – in a wider sense: faith and ideals – not only have a negative side, but may also have positive impact on the political and social order. Public safety initiatives serve as examples to support my claim.

In this article we aim to provide an insight in one of the specifics of the dynamic relationship between government and society; the delegation of public tasks to (civil) society. The concept ‘Big Society’ in the United Kingdom generated immense expectations in this respect. By making use of an explorative case study, we examine the origins, visions and best practices in successively the UK, Australia and Scandinavia in order to generate a better understanding of this dynamical relationship. The major insights following from this analysis relate to the economic and cultural background, the political reality and rhetoric, as well as to concrete practices to understand what civil society has to offer in the delegation of public tasks. Finally, as a first step towards theory development, we formulate five concrete lessons for the delegation of public tasks to the civil society.

This article discusses the realization of public value through social entrepreneurship. It shows practices that can at present be seen in the Dutch society and answers the question: what is the relation between social entrepreneurship and the realization of value in the public domain? We conclude that public value is at the same time the result of the efforts of a social entrepreneur (person) in the beginning of his endeavors, the presupposition for social entrepreneurship (activity) in the phase of growth and the good that is preserved by the social enterprise (organization) by the time it has matured. In realizing public value social entrepreneurs come into contact with government. For government this encounter has quite an awkward nature since government has at the same time both a say (it is responsible for policy) and no say (it is not responsible for individual social entrepreneurial initiatives) regarding the realization of value in the public domain through social entrepreneurship.

This article explores the intellectual, political and pragmatic origins of the concept Big Society. The authors argue that although the concept has become intertwined with the political ideas of UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron, the concept has also become firmly rooted in society and is thus likely to survive the political life of Cameron. Also outside the UK, the concept has acquired political attention. The authors explore the meaning of Big Society for the Netherlands. Thus far, the concept has reached the political agenda, but time will tell how the concept succeeds to sustain.

‘Big Society’ has been one of those inspirational concepts that have recently swept through the public administration literature. With their appeal for a ‘Big Society’, the British Tories contrasted their policy program with Labours’ traditional ‘Big Government’ program. Upon closer inspection, however, it is revealed that the underlying analysis is not new at all, but reflects a specific analysis that can be traced back to Wilson’s famous essay on the study of public administration in 1887. Stripped from its details, the never-ending story claims that public administration now struggles with overwhelming complexity, which makes traditional bureaucratic methods obsolete and calls for innovative, new approaches. The fact that this story has remained fairly constant for over 125 years is cause for some concern. The article traces the historical genesis of this never-ending story and lands on a plea for more sophisticated attention for administrative history, more critical scrutiny of new ideas and more serious study of the nature and effects of complexity.

Based on the experience of citizens initiatives in Antwerpen (Belgium), Dortmund (Germany) and Rotterdam (the Netherlands), this article explores the roles of citizens in these projects. The initiatives were not started by already active citizens, but by inactive citizens who were triggered to take action by an event in their direct surroundings. The cases studied show that many small, simple and everyday strategies, which are often overlooked by researchers, are meaningful for successful citizenship. The will to participate is not so much ideologically or democratically driven, but driven by a perceived practical need for action. Governments should aim to support and facilitate these initiatives without aiming to canalize these activities according to their own political or democratic rationality.

Research on the implementation of air-quality directives in the Netherlands shows that national and local governments have taken substantial measures to increase air quality. Still, the norms of the directive are not met. Besides, as a result of the focus on norms, insufficient attention has been paid to the objective of the directive, namely improving health. To examine this, a case study on the implementation of the directive within four Dutch cities has been conducted by their local audit services. This shows that, due to the enforcement capacity of the EU (Sverdrup, 2007), that was made effective through the national courts, the Dutch national and local authorities have taken substantial measures. Domestic preferences and the characteristics of the Netherlands’ public law system, contributed to this. In line with Sverdrup’s (2007) ideas on the domestic management capacity of member states, insufficient measures were taken to meet the norm because responsibilities were not clearly distributed between national and local governments and because of conflicting policy aims. Since this takes place during a drawn-out implementation process, the participating actors need clear information about the progress that is made the policy can improve and be enforced during the implementation phase. Independent, local and national, auditors can help the European Committee to provide this insight.

The report Confidence in Citizens by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy dominantly supports increased room for citizen participation. Based on many examples, the report shows how society benefits from the many citizens’ initiatives and how government interference can hamper or even obstruct these initiatives, which do not fit the logic of civil servants. The report gives four, rather general suggestions of how policy makers could respond to these citizens’ initiatives. The generic character of these recommendations can be ascribed to a weak problem analysis and a biased understanding of how government actions negatively interfere with citizens’ initiatives. The Council could have asked more critical questions with regards to citizens initiatives and how they should respond to the logic of government.

Amidst the turbulence of recent crises, governments’ capacity to govern and to deliver public value is under serious pressure. Public institutions are working hard to come up with new and improved schemes for dealing with complex and wicked policy issues that have emerged or just wont go away. But government alone cannot solve most of these issues. Governments already attempted to make ‘better, smarter policy’ in the hopes of raising performance. They also invested heavily in ‘participation’ of citizens, by inviting them to ‘co-create’ policy or ‘join-up’ with government agencies. However, this image of collaboration is one-sided. Besides the efforts initiated by governments themselves, there is a wide array of emerging activities. In these practices, it is not the government that takes action, but society takes ‘public matters’ into its own hands. Just as in many other countries, in The Netherlands groups of citizens have started to organize certain services, tasks or activities that used to be provided by the central or decentralized governmental institutions by themselves (and in most cases, for themselves). This article conceptualizes these emerging practices and analyses how they affect the world of policy making and what they may mean for public administration research.

Humberto is the name of a popular presentor on Dutch radio and television. In response to an item on a conflict between the Labour Inspectorate and the police authorities, he hesitantly posed the question whether the government should interfere. This is the paradox of citizens viewing the government sometimes as a single actor, whereas at other times they seem to acknowledge the fact that government consists of multiple actors. The use of co-creation and digital platforms could provide means that help todays government to mediate between the two extreme perceptions of government as a unitary actor and government as a conglomerate of actors operating in a networked society in which sometimes government organisations and sometimes other actors, including (groups) of citizens, in society take initiatives to promote and contribute to public values.

Why is there an on-going debate about climate change? We analyse this question from a framing point of view. We analyse four well-known frames in the climate change debate, and see what kind of reactions and reframing they invoke. The analysis shows that simple frames with an inherent logic, which activates underlying values and which are easy to communicate strongly resonate. It is difficult to counter such a frame. Opponents of the frame are often seduced to counter the frame by using the same wording. In this way, they step into the frame of their opponents and thus confirm the frame. To conclude, the article discusses two possible strategies for reframing: to couple the frame with other frames, and to suggest an alternative frame without stepping into the opposed frame.

Over the last decades an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions between Dutch healthcare organizations has taken place (up scaling). More recently there is a rise in the numbers of new small-scale healthcare organizations and small-scale care facilities (down scaling in the numbers). The wide variety of scales, each with its pros, cons and (historical) contexts, makes the existence of one optimal scale an illusion. Our research question is: when, and on the basis of which values, is scale of healthcare organizations legitimate? We answer this question by analyzing 650 newspaper articles from fourteen national newspapers. By using theory about legitimacy and values, we argue that five values underlie the public discussion on scale: governance, the human size, quality of care, market power and efficiency. We conclude that achieving legitimate scale involves dealing with those five values, which are not always commensurable and sometimes conflicting. With this article we contribute to the scientific debate about scale and values. We also give recommendations to policy makers and executives that can be used to improve the legitimacy of scale decisions.

Over the last decade educational regulation has changed dramatically. Attempts to develop more cost-efficient regulation and to reduce the regulatory burden paralleled an increased focus on student achievement and sanctioning of failing schools. Additionally, the Inspectorate of Education holds school boards (instead of school principals) accountable for the quality development of their schools. Also, a change in legislation now requires schools to establish an internal supervisory board and improve their accountability to stakeholders.

These changes greatly impact the role of the Dutch Education Inspectorate as they are placed in a polycentric, instead of a monocentric, steering context. This article discusses the new position and role of the Dutch Education Inspectorate and evaluates the extent to which the educational sector and the Inspectorate of Education meet the requirements of such a polycentric context.

Public organizations delivering public services are the subjects of approximately a third of the daily news in the quality press. This article investigates the media frames in which public organizations are portrayed and also investigates the direct and indirect strategies that public organizations use to influence those frames. The analysis is relevant because public organizations are subjected to decision making processes by politicians that are informed by the frames in media stories. The article is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis of media reporting, and focus-groups and interviews with senior officials from multiple Dutch and Australian public service providers. The analysis reveals that public organizations deploy both direct strategies via communication as well as indirect strategies (such as networking with journalists and applied research) in order to influence media framing. The interaction between news media and public organizations is depicted as a struggle for control over media messages, where journalists and politicians often get the upper hand but where public organizations have specific traits that may serve to generate specific frames.

Problems with the rivers were the incentive to change Dutch flood safety policy in 2000. ‘A different approach to water’ became the new policy slogan. Government presumes that public engagement in decision-making on flood safety will lead to more water awareness and risk aware behaviour. ‘No or hardly any negative side-effects’ are expected from this strategy. However, our research shows that public engagement in flood safety decision-making leads to fierce policy contestation, since proposed solutions do not meet the safety perception of local citizens. ‘A different approach to water’ strategy does not resonate in Dutch society because most people are convinced that government guarantees water safety. In this article we explain that this so-called ‘myth of water safety’ is based on a deep frame of risk control. We argue that flood safety needs to be reframed and that a new frame should be based on acceptance of vulnerability instead of risk control.

This article explores the role of frames about the future in policy reform, by analysing Dutch debates about population ageing and their impact on welfare policies in the period from 2000 until 2008 as a case study. Mapping the debates around ageing in the Netherlands, the article demonstrates that frames are a powerful force in the policy process. Diverging frames about the future enable fundamental changes of deeply embedded policy institutions. The case study shows the process of argumentation about the future that took place between 2000 and 2008, and reflects upon the frames about the future that were of crucial importance in bringing temporary closure to the controversy over the proper response to the demographic shift, which then lead to several important and rather strong changes in institutions of welfare state policies and fiscal policies.