The man-woman ratio in municipality councils in the Netherlands varies tremendously. Why does local politics attract women in some municipalities but not in other? The author attempts to answer this question by conducting interviews with municipality clerks and female council members of municipalities where the man-women ratio is even and municipalities where men are in the overwhelming majority. Additionally, the author conducts seven in depth interviews with former local and regional politicians about their motives to quit. Based on the interviews the author concludes that the political culture varies locally, making feel women more or less welcome. Sexist comments were mentioned several times, more often coming from respondents who worked in councils where men were in the majority. Finally, the balance between work, local politics and family life was often mentioned as a major hurdle for young parents (both men and women) for becoming or staying politically active. The author suggests to explore ways to change the political culture, to combat sexism and to find ways to reduce the workload in order to create more equal access to the local political arena.

Objective: there are regional differences in the organization of local Youth Teams, that have been given a crucial role in delivering Youth Care since the transition of Youth Care in 2015. The aim of this article is to examine the influence of the organization of Youth Teams on several aspects of their functioning.
Method: self-managing teams in Holland Rijnland and teams in The Hague that are led by a team manager are compared on several aspects of team functioning. This mixed-methods study is based on an online questionnaire among 237 professionals and interviews with 32 professionals. Quantitative data have been analyzed by conducting a t-test of group means, qualitative data by means of framework-analysis.
Results: the organization of Youth Teams seems to influence certain aspects of the perceived team functioning. For example, professionals in the self-organizing teams Holland Rijnland experience more self-management and more informational elaboration. However, there are also similarities on several aspects. Professionals from both regions have similar expectations of leaders.
Discussion: municipalities and Youth Care organizations should be aware of the influence of the organization of Youth Teams on team functioning. Future research must demonstrate which aspects of team functioning contribute to improved care for families.

In 2019, throughout The Netherlands, 100 years of women’s suffrage was celebrated. This celebration is historically incorrect: the voting law from 1919, broadly seen as the law that gave all Dutch women the right to vote, was a discriminatory law. It excluded many women – mostly those living in the former colonized parts of the Kingdom of The Netherlands – for decades after the laws implementation. This article shares a more complete history of women’s suffrage in The Netherlands, through the history of the voting law in the entire Kingdom of The Netherlands. The article gives insight into how this historical political exclusion still contributes to a lack of representation of many women in The Netherlands.

Beleidsonderzoek is een vak dat in de afgelopen vijftig jaar geleidelijk is ontwikkeld tot een echte professie. In dit essay wordt de eerste helft van deze periode beschreven en op diverse punten vergeleken met de huidige situatie. De terugblik bestaat uit drie onderdelen: professionalisering; relatie met opdrachtgevers; ambachtelijke aspecten.

In this editorial the former chief-editor Bas Denters and the new chief-editor Marcel Boogers of this magazine ‘Bestuurswetenschappen’ (the Dutch word for Administrative Sciences) are interviewed on the occasion of changing the guard. This change is a good opportunity to highlight the views of both prominent figures on developments in public administration, in local and regional government, as well as on the role and significance of our magazine. With its new chief-editor, it is entering a new period. The third decade of the new millennium will prove to be just as unsettled, and possibly even more turbulent, as the previous period. Social developments are unfolding rapidly. Public Administration must provide answers to these developments, but also act as a guide. Not from an inapproachable seat, but from a position that puts local and regional government in the midst of citizens and private initiatives.

From 1964 until roughly 1990, political science would become the dominant approach within the (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands. This central position was taken over from the legal approach. Important impulses from political science for Public Administration came only from the second-generation political scientists: Gijs Kuypers at the Free University Amsterdam, Hans Daudt at the University of Amsterdam and Hans Daalder at the University of Leiden. In their footsteps, a political scientist emerged who, through his contribution to several universities (the Free University, the University of Nijmegen and the University of Twente), had a great deal of influence on the further development of Dutch Public Administration: Andries Hoogerwerf. Two other approaches emerged from political science that were important for the development of modern public administration in the Netherlands, namely policy science and the new political economy (public choice). In this essay the author outlines the input of the main figures from political science, policy science and public choice until 1990 in various stages that are most relevant to Public Administration. These stages take us to various cities and universities in the Netherlands. In addition, we see important cross-fertilization between the institutions through the transfer of people from one university to another. After 1990 however, Public Administration would increasingly profile itself as an independent inter-discipline.

Overweight children are less fit than their peers, are bullied more often and face physical problems. It is therefore important for municipal administrators to devise and implement strategies to tackle youth obesity. Increasingly, the importance of measures in the physical environment is emphasized. However, a healthy living environment does not arise automatically. It requires an integrated and interactive policy approach. Vague policy language, stubborn ideas between public and private and divisions between policy areas stand in the way of measures taken by municipalities to achieve a healthy living environment for young people. To give such a working method a chance of success: (a) more knowledge has to be gained and made accessible about health-promoting policies; (b) professionals from the social and spatial domain must be better attuned to each other; and (c) administrators must commit themselves to an institutional context in which they work integrally and interactively.

The vast majority of Dutch municipalities organize part of their activities on a smaller scale than those of the municipality as such: it is called intra-municipal organization. In this article an inventory is made of the existing knowledge about the effects of various forms of intra-municipal organization in the Netherlands. On the basis of recent research, this knowledge is supplemented and it is also made clear which forms of intra-municipal organization are currently used. An analysis is also made of what legal leeway Dutch municipalities have in this regard. A new and richer typology of intra-municipal organization is also being developed. Finally, the authors place the results of the research reported here in a broader perspective. In particular, they reflect on two presuppositions under many forms of intra-municipal organization, namely that activities are location specific and democracy must necessarily be of the ‘representative’ type. Its relevance for practitioners is that the article provides insight into the legal leeway for intra-municipal organization and into the design of intra-municipal organization. It also contains a reflection on the design of the intra-municipal organization.

In many Dutch municipalities, a ‘local external (in)formateur’ is deployed after the municipal elections. Local (in)formateurs guide the process of coalition formation. They investigate which political parties and political groups want to work together and try to bring them closer together. They can also play a role in the board formation, such as selecting alderman candidates and allocating portfolios. External (in)formateurs come ‘from outside’. They do not have an official political or official position in the municipality where they do their work at the time of their deployment as informateur. In 2014, forty percent of the municipalities made use of such an external (information) officer. However, we still know relatively little about the work of these local external informateurs, their background and results. The authors try to fill that gap on the basis of a literature study, interviews with stakeholders and a survey among 115 local external informateurs. They also consider the added value of local external (in)formateurs for local democracy. The work of local external (in)formal formateurs can contribute to a stable and well-functioning municipal executive. Nonetheless, they tend to have a rather one-sided socio-demographic profile and the desired party political experience and involvement with the municipality can be at odds with the desired independence and objectivity.

Despite the enduring importance of Lijphart’s work for understanding democracy in Belgium, the consociational model has come under increasing threat. Owing to deep political crises, decreasing levels of trust in elites, increasing levels of ethnic outbidding and rising demands for democratic reform, it seems as if Lijphart’s model is under siege. Even though the consociational solution proved to be very capable of transforming conflict into cooperation in Belgian politics in the past, the question we raise in this article is whether and to what extent the ‘politics of accommodation’ is still applicable to Belgian democracy. Based on an in-depth analysis of the four institutional (grand coalition, proportionality, mutual veto rights and segmental autonomy) and one cultural (public passivity) criteria, we argue that consociational democracy’s very nature and institutional set-up has largely hollowed out its potential for future conflict management.

Preference votes constitute one of the key features of (open and flexible) PR-list electoral systems. In this article, we give an extensive overview of studies conducted on preference voting in Belgium and the Netherlands. After elaborating on the definition and delineation of preference voting, we scrutinize studies about which voters cast preference votes (demand side) and about which candidates obtain preference votes (supply side). For each of these aspects, both theoretical approaches and empirical results are discussed and compared. At the same time, we also pay attention to methodological issues in these kinds of studies. As such, this research overview reads as an ideal introduction to this topic which has repercussions on many other subfields of political science.

This article analyses the visual communication of the Flemish populist right-wing party Vlaams Blok/Vlaams Belang, and investigates whether or not the party uses a specific populist communication style in its campaign posters, whether or not its visual style evolves over time and how the party distinguishes itself from other (right-wing) parties in its use of images. To do this, the image use will be compared with the CVP/CD&V and the Volksunie/N-VA. This use of images will be investigated by analysing election posters from 1991 to 2018. The analysis shows that there is indeed a ‘populist visual style’. These items consist mainly of (negative) metaphors, false dilemmas, caricatures and the use of so-called ‘agonic’ visual techniques.

The theoretical assumptions of deliberative democracy are increasingly embraced by policymakers investing in local practices, while the empirical verifications are often not on an equal footing. One such assertion concerns the stimulus of social learning among participants of civic democratic deliberation. Through the use of pre-test/post-test panel data, it is tested whether participation in mini-publics stimulates the cognitive and attitudinal indicators of social learning. The main contribution of this work lies in the choice of matching this quasi-experimental set-up with a natural design. This study explores social learning across deliberation through which local policymakers invite their citizens to participate in actual policymaking. This analysis on the District of Antwerp’s participatory budgeting demonstrates stronger social learning in real-world policymaking. These results inform a richer theory on the impacts of deliberation, as well as better use of limited resources for local (participatory) policymaking.

Q-methodologie is een nog relatief onbekende onderzoeksmethode, met veel potentieel voor beleidsonderzoek en -analyse. De benaderingen, doelen en onderzoeksvragen in verschillende toepassingen lopen uiteen, maar vertonen ook duidelijke overeenkomsten. In dit artikel beschrijven we de belangrijkste theoretische en analytische bouwstenen van de methode, en een praktijkgericht 10-stappenplan waarmee men snel zelf aan de slag kan met Q-methodologie. Op basis van een aantal toepassingen van Q-methodologie in Nederland en Vlaanderen laat dit artikel op inzichtelijke wijze zien wat Q-methodologie toevoegt aan de toolbox van beleidsonderzoekers. Naast de theoretische achtergrond van de methode biedt deze bijdrage een praktisch stappenplan voor het gebruik van de methode in de praktijk.

Information platforms can facilitate data sharing and make new applications possible. It is essential to connect a wide range of both public and private parties to a platform if real data-based transformation is to get off the ground. However, organizations are reluctant to share data if they do not know exactly what it can be used for or if they have no direct interest in it. Achieving a good solution requires a lot from the innovation process itself and the way it is managed. This article uses three innovation perspectives for the analysis of a logistics information platform. This analysis shows that different stages in the development of an information platform can be distinguished, each with its own dynamic. For local government the involvement of and connection to local parties is important, while innovation as a whole benefits from the link with an overarching agenda that transcends the local level.