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

Reflection and debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

Municipalities play an important role in the Dutch energy transition. Therefore, they are expected to deal both sufficiently and timely with their tasks. The question is whether they have the capacity to do so (governing capacity). This study aims to assess whether improving governing capacity can be used to improve the policy performance. We operationalized governing capacity and built a model to assess the relation between several conditions for governing capacity and policy performance for three domains of the energy transition: built environment, mobility and renewables. We found no direct relationship between perceived governing capacity and energy transition policy output. However, we found relationships between conditions for governing capacity, and the policy output. About 25 percent of the total variance in policy performance could be attributed to population size. This percentage levels up to 55 to 60 percent if the motivation of the local administration, cooperation between municipalities and other governmental organisations and the participation of citizens and businesses are also taken into account. This contradicts the idea that enlarging municipalities is the most important way to achieve a higher policy performance.

In the past decade, large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands have often been implemented through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), specifically using Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) contracts. While the decision to implement projects through PPPs is based on expected advantages for internal parties – the public and private partners in the PPP –, there is a call for more focus on the advantages and disadvantages of PPPs for external stakeholders. External stakeholder management in DBFM projects is based on a contractual division of risks and responsibilities between the partners. However, it is clear from the literature that the contract does not guarantee successful stakeholder management. Relational aspects are important. Little research has been done, however, into the interplay of contractual and relational aspects in achieving successful stakeholder management. This article addresses this research need. A comparative case study was conducted into the PPP projects A9 Gaasperdammerweg and A16 Rotterdam. The study first shows that sanctions, when combined with a relational approach, have a positive effect on the relationships with stakeholders. Second, external stakeholder management cannot be simply outsourced to the private partner and continuous involvement of the public partner is important for success.

Some prestigious urban projects demonstrate many forms of misfit, misfortune, or mismanagement. Without big plans and high ambitions large projects don’t get off the ground, however, with a lack of attention for a diligent implementation and organization, fiascoes will follow. In the city of Rotterdam, the realization of a pop music hall, failed completely. In this case, the municipal public real estate agency played a central role in the failure of this urban project, and even a huge fraud that wasted millions of euros came out in the open. The main question in this article is: what can we learn from projects that fail during the implementation phase, and how can we professionalize public real estate agencies to avoid mistakes, fraud and other fiascoes? Such questions are relevant for public agencies that have to deal with both high and ever changing political and managerial ambitions, as well as with several commercial actors. This article offers insights behind the scenes of a public real estate agency, based on an in-depth case study. The authors demonstrate mechanisms of organizational vulnerability during the implementation of urban projects, as well as critical success factors of a professional, mature public real estate agency.

Incidents in the semi-public sector regularly reveal the underlying problems of managerial mania and decline. Since the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into Housing Associations and the new Housing Act, there have been fewer incidents involving managerial hubris and risky projects. However, in the event of incidents, the share of administrative decline of often long-serving directors of small corporations in particular is still considerable. The question in this article is what forms of managerial mania and decline occur among corporation directors and what internal and external supervisors can do to identify and mitigate this in a timely manner. To answer that question, this article examines the theory and practice of managerial mania and decline. Case analysis shows which manifestations of managerial mania and decline there were in the housing association sector. Internal and external supervisors can counter managerial mania and decline by exchanging knowledge with each other about the weak signals of decline and effective forms of countervailing power.

To get a better understanding of the maniac mechanism that can take place behind the scenes of prestigious projects, we need to further explore practices within the world of commercial real estate that are usually hidden from the public, including public administration. This article presents a conversation with a Dutch research journalist that became famous after his bestseller books about real estate fraud, and his hundreds of national newspaper articles about all kinds of integrity issues. This article delivers insights in the maniac character of commercial real estate within a vulnerable public context. The article demonstrates cases of fraudulent private entrepreneurs and public officials, examples of blind spots in the public management of urban projects that are developed in partnership with commercial real estate firms, and also cases of public failure in preventing integrity issues.

Manic mechanisms in all stages of the development of large, prestigious urban projects can be curbed by internal and external contradiction and control. Someone who has studied this for years is Paul Hofstra, director of the Rotterdam Court of Audit and surrounding municipalities. At the end of his term, he uses research reports to look back with us on the role played by the municipalities in major urban projects over the past twelve years. Recently, the Court of Audit published “Public value in trouble” a meta-analysis of ten years of audit of the Rotterdam municipal administration. In retrospect on the past years, four themes always came back: problems in policy design, implementation problems, internal cooperation and management and cooperation with other parties.

The cabinet has decided to set up a national inspectorate with the task of supervising the quality and the rule of law of the public services provided by the tax authorities. The reason for this is the persistent problems surrounding the Tax and Customs Administration for years (organization, management, IT, personnel) and more recently the crisis surrounding the supplementary child benefit. The Netherlands is not the first and will soon not be the only country with a special regulator for the tax authorities and which focuses on legal protection of taxpayers and the quality of the service. In this article, we ask ourselves how the institution of the new Dutch inspectorate relates to the situation in various foreign countries and we examine which dilemmas and policy questions these raise. We note that with this new inspection the Netherlands is in tune with the situation in various foreign countries. Regarding the relationship and cooperative relationship with the National Ombudsman, the guarantee of the independent and impartial exercise of inspection supervision and the increasing importance of a Charter of the rights of taxpayers, a few important policy questions remain in a comparative sense.

Sometimes dreams become reality, but there are also many examples in which manic ideas for image-defining projects turn into fiascos. How do you find the right balance in the planning and decision-making of image-defining projects between taming manic mechanisms that cause these projects to fail and unleashing manic mechanisms that are necessary to make these projects happen? This article attempts to answer this question by exploring how the taming of mania (through welfare-economic analysis) and the unleashing of vision and ambition (through imagination) can be combined in a better way. We call this a search for an ‘imaginative utilitarianism’ and draw up three preconditions under which this approach can work: (1) more attention to incremental and less grotesque projects, (2) a different appreciation and historiography that places individuals less centrally and also appreciates what has not been built, and (3) a stronger interweaving between the design process and a welfare-economic approach.

Subsoil interventions in the Netherlands are crucial elements in the transition to a sustainable energy future. These subsoil interventions concern reduction of fossil energy mining, extraction of thermal energy, energy storage and CSS storage. These geo projects cause tensions. Planning under the mining law leads to local resistance, debate and often delay or cancelling of initiatives. The central characteristics of this planning are an important cause. As the transition to sustainable energy asks for more interventions in the subsoil, these tensions get problematic, and hinder the transition. In this article we investigate this problematic nature of planning under the mining law. In examples we show the problems, and accordingly we analyse them. We explore a more prominent role of local actors, using localism and soft power. With this article we want contribute to national and international discussions about the planning and governance of subsoil initiatives and strengthening of local involvement in these.

Prestigious urban projects demonstrate many insights in the functioning of public administration. Especially, prestigious urban projects can teach us about what we call ‘managerial mania’. Following the perspective of behavioural public administration, this article observes significant characteristics of managerial mania, such as elated behaviour, an exaggerated positive self-image, infectious enthusiasm, selective argumentation, tunnel vision, and an unsubstantiated faith that plans will succeed. As a consequence of managerial mania, prestigious projects are at risk of cost overruns, project fiascos, or underdelivering the expected outcomes promised by politicians or top-level managers. This article explores the phenomenon of managerial mania based on examples of large and controversial urban projects. Furthermore, this article describes and analyses the symptoms of managerial mania, its implications, and its mechanisms. Finally, the authors suggest some means of restraining the most extreme forms of managerial mania.

From 1964 (until around 1990), political science became the dominant approach within (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands. This position was taken over from the legal approach. In this period, the concepts of politics, policy and decision-making were central to research and theory. In the period up to 1990, we still see a predominantly administration-centric or government-centric perspective among these political scientists, although we already see incentives from different authors for a broader perspective (the politics, policy and decision-making concepts remain relevant however) that will continue in the period thereafter. This broader perspective (on institutions, management and governance) took shape in the period after 1990, in which Public Administration would increasingly profile itself as an independent (inter)discipline. This essay tells the story of the (local) administrative sciences in this period as envisaged by twelve high-profile professors. The story starts in 1990 in Leiden with the (gradual) transition from classical to institutional Public administration, as is revealed in the inaugural lecture by Theo Toonen. This is followed by eleven other administrative scientists, who are divided into four ‘generations’ of three professors for convenience. In conclusion, the author of this essay argues that there is mainly a need for what he calls a (self-)critical Public Administration.

For administrative sciences in the Netherlands in general and for local administrative sciences in particular 2021 is a special year. It is the year in which our Dutch journal Administrative Sciences (the first issue was published in November 1946) celebrates its 75th anniversary, even though 1947 was the first full volume. But it is also the year in which it is 100 years ago since its predecessor, Municipal Administration, was founded; the first issue was published in January 1921. This means that we can speak of 100 years of having an (academic) journal for local government in the Netherlands. In 2016 we paid extensive attention in an editorial to the start of our Administrative Sciences journal and the men (and a woman) who have worked in it from the very beginning. In this editorial, we therefore draw attention to the men from the very beginning (this time there was no women involvement) of the Municipal Administration journal. It is the first academic journal in the field of local government in the Netherlands, first published every two weeks from January 1921 and on a monthly basis after 1922. The editorial board of the new journal was entrusted to a committee, of which, in addition to the board of the VNG (that is the Dutch association for municipalities) and its secretary, six people were members: Herman Nieboer (after his sudden death on 16 November 1920, he was replaced by Willem Drees in January 1921), Gerrit van Poelje, Willem van Sonsbeeck, Ate Roelof Veenstra, Bastiaan Verheij and Jacob de Wilde. Henri Vos, Pieter Bakker Schut and Jakob Herman van Zanten joined them in 1922.

It had been on the wish list of the author of this essay (Nico Nelissen) for some time to devote an essay to the phenomenon of ‘populism’. The publication of Pierre Rosanvallon’s new book Le siècle du populisme (‘The Age of Populism’) was a good reason to act on this intention. The book is structured as follows. An introduction presents the broad outlines of what is discussed in the book. Then populism is discussed in three parts. The first part is mainly analytical in nature, in which the phenomenon of populism is analyzed from the perspective of unity and diversity. The second part of the book discusses the history of populism, not only now and in France, but also in the past and in other countries. In the third part of the book, a critical reflection on populism is given based on setting it against the background of the failures of modern democracy. Finally, there is an annex in which the history of the concept of populism is explained. Reflections on populism usually take place in the field of nation states and national democracies. But perhaps much more relevant is populism at the level of local democracy. It is often the ‘local annoyances’ that give rise to criticism of local government and local politics. It is to the credit of Rosanvallon who, on the whole, has nothing to do with populism, yet has the courage to deal with this protest against mainstream democracy with a little less bias.