In today’s debate on the impact of new technology on employment, many fear that robots will substitute human labour. Due to increased exposure to market pressure and the decline in union power, the adoption of new technology at the workplace is perceived as an inevitable course in order to remain competitive. This rejects the basic principles behind organizational choice theory: the idea that technology is shaped by social agency. Analysis of qualitative data from 23 in-depth interviews in two sectors of the Dutch economy shows that the use of robotics at the workplace is far more limited than anticipated.

The field of public administration research is continuously changing. This article takes stock of the field by asking four open questions to a large group of public administration practitioners and scholars. The questions prompt a debate about the state of play of the field of public administration in The Netherlands. Several dilemmas become apparent. Firstly, there is the tension between rigor and relevance of research. More rigorous methodology should not come at the expense of relevance in practice. Moreover, pressure to publish in international academic journals draws scholars away from the more practical outlets for research findings. Ever more is ‘written’, but less of that reaches the more practical audiences. This is congruent with the impression that public administration scholars should invest more in their narratives, so that the important message of public administration research reaches wider audiences and helps to reflect on pressing societal issues. Furthermore, there is a need for public administration scholars to be more active in helping practitioners solve the complex policy puzzles they face. This requires the ability to walk the fine line between keeping distance and becoming genuinely involved in policy processes. All of these factors can help the field of public administration take next steps in its development, to regain the connection with practice and raise its academic standards.

This paper analyses the information sources members of the Dutch Lower House base their questions on with regard to EU affairs in the period 1995-2013. Knowledge of the type of information sources to base questions on is vital for determining what the conditions are under which members of national parliaments can scrutinize the decisions taken by the national government at the EU level. The involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs is according to many scholars a necessary condition for closing the democratic deficit of the European Union, especially when the turnout in elections for the European Parliament remains low and for national parliaments remains stable and relatively high. An original dataset is constructed including all sets of written parliamentary questions on EU affairs asked by Dutch MPs in the period 1995-2013, categorized by different types of information sources on which the question is based. These different categories of information sources are regressed with a variable measuring the Treaty changes impacting on the intensity of contact between MPs of different national parliaments and several variables measuring the characteristics of Dutch MPs and their parties. The findings indicate that Dutch MPs base their written questions primarily on coverage on EU affairs by national newspapers. Moreover, MPs are more likely to use sources rooted in a national context for asking questions when they are a member of a party with a negative attitude towards European integration. These findings imply that parliamentary control via written questions over the decisions of the national executive at the EU level can be strengthened by increasing national media coverage on EU affairs, allowing the EU public sphere to develop further in the future.

A gradual process of fragmentation is going on in the Dutch political landscape. This article first describes the political fragmentation (the number of parties in the parliament, the popularly elected body) of the Dutch municipalities after the local elections of march 2014. Next the authors address the background factors of political fragmentation. These factors are the task heaviness, the municipal size, the turnout at local elections and the administrative instability. Then they take up the consequences of political fragmentation. A high level of political fragmentation is accompanied by a somewhat higher absenteeism (so there is a little less ‘civil service power’), a somewhat higher debt per capita (so there are somewhat less financial reserves) and lower performance in the area of separate waste collection (an indication of a somewhat lower level of ‘civil society power’). The absence of an above average political fragmentation can be seen as an administrative resource. The hypothesis that municipalities with a higher level of political fragmentation are characterized by a higher number of administrative crises (early retiring administrators) could not be statistically accepted, nor (not yet) rejected.

In imitation of the G1000 in Belgium in the Netherlands G1000-meetings were held in Amersfoort, Kruiskamp, Uden and Groningen and a citizens summit in Amsterdam with a similar design. In this article the authors investigate the design of these citizens summits and their contribution to a number of important democratic values. What is the diversity of the participants, the influence on policies and the quality of the discussions during the citizen summit? Their research shows that the diversity of the group of participants is rather limited. The selection method that is chosen, whether a lottery selection or an open invitation, doesn’t make much difference for the diversity of the group of participants. In addition the influence of citizens summits on policies and politics is nearly absent. The subjects that come forward at citizens summits hardly ever come back in the local policies, not even at the citizens summit in Uden, where the municipal council has taken the initiative to organize a G1000. Finally, in general the participants qualify the discussions at the table during citizens summits as constructive and inspiring. The specific form of the dialogue has only little influence on the extent to which the participants feel themselves heard and feel free to say whatever they want.

The Internet of Things generates a wealth of data (big data) about personal behaviour, which can be used for marketing purposes. It brings about both benefits and costs in terms of societal welfare. Various forms of government intervention are needed to safeguard the public interests associated with these welfare effects. These public interest relate, on the one hand, to public availability of data and information, to repairing informational asymmetries, and on the other hand to providing personal security and privacy protection. This article discusses, from the perspective of the principal/agent approach to regulation, how the design of applications and systems in the Internet of Things can best be shaped. The example of the smart thermostat Toon® of the Dutch energy provider Eneco shows how an intensive collaboration between designers and software engineers may contribute to both proper data protection and to provide an incentive to save energy.

In this paper we investigate the effect of political sophistication on turnout and whether this effect differs in second-order national elections. Political sophistication is thought to influence turnout because the more sophisticated voters have access to more information about the electoral and the party system. In this paper, we start from the expectation that these effects should be even stronger in the context of secondorder national elections, where information about the stakes of the election is not readily available. We analyse citizens’ willingness to turn out to vote at different levels of government in Belgium and the Netherlands. The results show that a higher degree of political sophistication increases the probability to turn out at the national as well as the European level. Our expectation that this effect would be larger at the European level, however, is not supported by these results.

The Dutch municipality of Leiden used to be a rather ‘politically troublesome’ municipality, but after the formulation of a short coalition agreement during the 2010 to 2014 term of office, for the first time in a long while, no alderman was sent away. So, could short coalition agreements help to diminish the number of political conflicts, so that aldermen can remain in office for a longer period? In the first place, the answer to this question is important from a societal point of view because in the Netherlands an increasing number of aldermen are sent away. In the second place, it is important from an academic point of view because there is a lack of studies into local coalition agreements. In the third place, it is important because the analysis of the length of coalition agreements and the number of conflicts in almost all Dutch municipalities in the period 2010 to 2014 offers a good opportunity to test the contradictory expectations on the relationship between coalition agreements and political conflicts in Dutch municipalities at a national level. From the analysis, the authors conclude that there is a relationship between a high number of coalition parties and a large municipality, on the one hand, and longer coalition agreements, on the other hand. The length of the coalition agreements is not necessarily related to the number of conflicts measured by the number of aldermen sent away for political reasons. It is clear that the higher the number of coalition parties, the more conflicts there are likely to be, which is not an inviting prospect considering the ongoing fragmentation of municipal councils.

Polling is being done a great deal in the Netherlands, especially during election campaigns when market researchers sometimes present new polls every day. The national government also takes polls that are often larger and more complicated than the quick and small polls conducted by market research agencies. They are often called surveys, and they gather information on the state of affairs in society. That information can become the basis for new policies. Local governments also take polls, although on a smaller scale than national government. Dutch municipalities have a tradition of organizing omnibus surveys in which (as the name indicates) several subjects can be addressed. Nowadays many ‘omnibus surveys have been replaced by ‘citizen panels’. One thing all these polls and surveys have in common is that they are based on random samples of the population and statements are made about the population as a whole based on these samples. Such generalizations are only possible if the sample is drawn using by random sampling methods. This article describes good and bad polling. This is illustrated using a unique example: the research into the opinion of the inhabitants of Alphen aan den Rijn, a Dutch municipality, on Sunday shopping. At the same time, and using the same questionnaire, three different polls were carried out. This example makes clear that the wrong sample can lead to incorrect conclusions and maybe to incorrect policy decisions.

The research programme Urban Regions in the Delta (URD) wielded an approach worthy of emulation. Create ‘vital’ project consortia, crosslink the research project with on-going planning and policy making processes, give senior scientists a major role and engage expert process managers. These are four key success factors for knowledge co-creation in the field of area development, according to the programme (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; URD, 2010-2014 http://urd.verdus.nl). Within URD scientists and practitioners were cooperating from the very beginning. The scientific insight and innovations generated are considered not very visible in traditional scientific publications, but the knowledge that was developed provides considerable added value to society.

Planning research is increasingly focused on bridging the gap between practice and academia. However, this requires much effort and is not as commonplace as it seems. To ensure success, innovative research approaches, practitioners and academics are required. The experiential learning cycle of Kolb and Fry (1974) offers a research framework for the authors to reflect on their practice-oriented research on Cost Benefit Analysis processes (CBA) and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) respectively. Both research projects are compared using the learning cycle. The cycle was completed in the CBA project but only partially resolved in the TOD project. Reflecting on their experiences with applying the learning cycle, the authors conclude on the possibilities and limitations of this application and offer insight into how the interaction between theory and practice can occur.

Forty years ago, Dutch Public Administration started as an independent academic discipline. The founding fathers considered empirical application and multidisciplinarity the most important characteristics of public administration. This article assesses the current state of the discipline in the Netherlands. The assessment is the result of a series of five debates throughout the country, focussing on different elements of the Public Administration discipline: education, academic research, consultancy and policy advice. In brief, the article argues that the discipline has reached maturity in these forty years. It has become an accepted academic discipline, on the verge of a mono-discipline. The Netherlands is considered as one of the leading countries in public administration research. However, these successes also create a gap between public administration as a successful academic discipline and its roots as a multi-disciplinary, applied science. Renewing the balance between these two will be the main challenge for the decades to come.

Co-production is regarded as a way to actively involve vulnerable citizens with public service delivery. However, there are several critical aspects that may lead to the unexpected exclusion of this group by public organizations, which have been insufficiently addressed hitherto. On the basis of a dissertation research, these critical aspects are analyzed for three phases of co-production. In the first phase, self-selection and organizational selection may lead to the exclusion of vulnerable citizens. In the second phase, a lack of commitment of the user and organizational support increase the chance of early discontinuation of co-production by vulnerable citizens. Finally, in the evaluation phase, it is likely that disadvantaged citizens attribute potential success of co-production to themselves and do not reward the public service provider for this. This has the possible consequence that there is no recognition for the added value of co-production, which may lead to less co-production that involves vulnerable citizens in the future.

In de praktijk is het niet altijd haalbaar om effectonderzoek uit te voeren met behulp van een experimentele trial. Het N=1 design is een alternatieve opzet voor effectonderzoek bij interventies met kleine aantallen. Centraal bij de N=1 aanpak staat dat bij een kleine groep deelnemers via verschillende observanten op meerdere tijdstippen informatie wordt verzameld over de ontwikkeling van deelnemers. Daarbij kan zowel gebruik worden gemaakt van kwantitatieve als kwalitatieve onderzoeksmethoden. Dit artikel beschrijft de toepassing van het N=1 design in een onderzoek naar de doeltreffendheid van de justitiële gedragsinterventie Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC). Deze interventie is ontwikkeld voor jeugdigen tussen de 12 en 18 jaar met ernstig antisociaal gedrag. In het onderzoek is de ontwikkeling van acht MTFC-deelnemers in kaart gebracht via vragenlijstonderzoek en interviews. Naast de toepassingsmogelijkheden worden in dit artikel tevens de beperkingen en risico’s van het N=1 design beschreven.

The discussion on how to resolve mass disputes stemming from faulty financial products among banks, insurance companies and other stakeholders in the Netherlands ended in deadlock. While diligent action is considered imperative, parties shy away from discussing options for settling damages suffered by consumers for fear of triggering mass claims themselves. To contribute to a new framework for resolving mass disputes, a responsive evaluation was conducted between 2011 and 2015. In such evaluation, the way stakeholders make sense of the situation serves as an organizing principle in knowledge production. This article discusses the methodical challenges implied in adapting the methodological guidelines for such inquiry to fit the ill-structured, controversial and complex legal issue and its highly politicized context. Because of a careful handling of confidentiality in the inquiry and a focused selection of participants on the basis of their proximity to the issue, the evaluation resulted in insight in options for resolving mass disputes that are supported by various parties. Furthermore, the evaluation itself served, it is argued, as a vehicle to overcome the deadlock by sensitizing stakeholders to the fact that they all aspire similar practical objectives and all acknowledge the need for cooperation on the issue.

De Nederlandse rijksoverheid maakt steeds meer gebruik van DBFM(O)-contracten om grootschalige bouw- en infraprojecten te ontwikkelen en te realiseren (DBFM(O) staat voor Design, Build, Finance, Maintain en eventueel Operate). De organisatie en inrichting van deze contracten en projecten zijn ‘als vanzelfsprekend’ gegroeid en gestandaardiseerd, veelal gebaseerd op de internationale praktijk en buitenlandse voorbeelden. Dit artikel zet uiteen hoe DBFM(O)-projecten georganiseerd en gestructureerd worden door publieke en private partijen. Uit internationaal onderzoek blijkt dat de resultaten wisselend zijn, maar de potentiële voordelen van DBFM(O) zijn groot. Deze potentie blijkt uit de eerste praktijkervaringen in Nederland, maar we kennen inmiddels ook de eerste negatieve gevolgen voor betrokken risicodragende partijen. We onderscheiden bij DBFM(O) zes ‘conventies’ met onderliggende spanningen waar praktijk en wetenschap, in de Nederlandse verhoudingen, kritisch op zullen moeten reflecteren.

This article analyses the Dialogue Table (‘Dialoogtafel’ in Dutch) in Groningen, the most northern province in the Netherlands, as an example of connecting vertical and horizontal steering. The Dialogue Table was set up to supervise the spending of compensation money for the damage from the earthquakes caused by gas extraction in this province. The Dialogue Table combines vertical forms of governance, such as a unilateral imposition of the budget and the presidency of the Dialogue Table, and more horizontal forms such as equal deliberation between administrative bodies and stakeholders. The central questions are which tensions will occur in these two different logics of steering, how one deals with these tensions and which competences this requires from civil servants. An exploratory analysis of the case shows that tensions occur around (1) the starting conditions (costs, presidency, selection and representation), (2) the progress of the process (desired results, openness, inequality) and (3) the outcomes of the process (influence). On the basis of their research, the authors offer recommendations about the organization of such hybrid steering processes and indicate which competences are required in this respect from civil servants.

Citizens’ initiatives are the focus of public attention as part of the popular ‘do-democracy’ (associative democracy). However, it is not clear to what extent citizens are able to shape self-organization in a sustainable manner, what the important factors in this respect are and if citizens’ initiatives are the sole preserve of a better educated group of citizens. Through a secondary quantitative analysis of 56 citizens’ initiatives, this article offers an empirical contribution to answering these questions. The authors explore the effects of three possible factors on the sustainability of citizens’ initiatives: the network structure of the citizens’ initiative, the organizational design of the initiative and the revenue model. They show significant relationships between the organizational design of citizens’ initiatives and their sustainability. They also show a relationship between the network structure of these initiatives and their sustainability: initiatives that develop into a fully connected network or a polycentric network are more sustainable than initiatives with a star network. The personal characteristics of the initiators show a dispersal in age, descent, gender and retirement. Relatively speaking, many initiators have a high level of education: 80% has a higher professional or university education. But there are no significant relations between these personal characteristics and the sustainability of citizens’ initiatives.

Big Data is the new hype in municipal policy and the promise of Big Data is rationalization: better policy that is based on better information. In this article the authors investigate the extent to which the use of Big Data in municipal organizations results in a more rational policy process. Their empirical research was held in two Dutch municipalities: Tilburg, in the south of the Netherlands, and Assen, in the north of the Netherlands. They investigated how Tilburg deploys Big Data for the fight against crime and Assen is trying to improve its traffic management with Big Data. Their analysis shows that policy, more so than in the past, is being steered by specific information because Big Data is being used. The rationalization of policy, however, is limited by the possibilities of Big Data and by political dynamics. Their final conclusion therefore is that the uncertainty, unfamiliarity, complexity and constant change are partly made manageable and controllable by the use of Big Data in municipal organizations. Politics is also partly ‘tamed’ because politicians have to relate to ‘objective data’ from information systems.

During the first decades after World War II income policy was an important topic of public debate in the Netherlands. This changed in the eighties and nineties when gross wages were ‘demoralized’ and taken off the political agenda. Income policy was deemed pointless, inefficient, or superfluous. Moreover wages were determined according to technocratic schemes designed by consultancy firms. These schemes encourage employees to compare themselves with people with a comparable education in other organizations rather than with coworkers in their own organization thus fostering a caste mentality.
However, following the financial crisis a cry for remoralization was launched which ended in a new law which determined that civil servants and top administrators in public organizations should never earn more than a government minister (178.000 euros per annum). In this article it is argued that such a partial remoralization of the highest wages in the public sector is unsatisfactory. It is argued that wages at large should be a moral topic for organizations that should explain their reward policy for their highest and lowest employees, thus encouraging workers to see themselves as members of their organization rather than their educational caste. Public administration scholars should play a role in this debate.