During electoral campaigns, the use of voting advice applications (VAAs) has become increasingly widespread. Consequently, scholars have examined both the patterns of usage and their effects on voting behaviour. However, existing studies lead to conflicting findings. In this article, we take a closer look at the effect of De Stemtest/Test électoral (a VAA developed by academics from the University of Louvain and the University of Antwerp, in partnership with Belgian media partners) on vote switching. More specifically, we divide this latter question into two sub-questions: (1) What is the impact of a (dis)confirming advice from the VAA on vote switching? (2) Do VAA users follow the voting advice provided by the VAA? Our study shows that receiving a disconfirming advice from the VAA increases the probability of users to switch their vote choice.

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.

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.

Dutch mayors are expected to act both as moral person and as moral managers. However, the extent to which council members express such requirements when selecting candidates remains underexplored. To identify possible changes in these expectations following the implementation of a 2016 integrity law, which made the mayor responsible for ‘advancing the administrative integrity of the municipality’, the current article quantitatively analyses 349 vacancy texts for Dutch mayoralty for the time period 2008-2019. Unexpectedly, the authors find that moral person requirements still feature prominently in job advertisements, but that attention is declining. In addition, they find a significant shift from moral-person requirements to moral-management requirements, which indicates that vacancy texts mirror the increasing importance of moral leadership requirements for Dutch mayors. Further, whereas the complex integrity concept requires tailoring to the unique circumstances in municipalities, the authors find that councilors make little effort to provide their own definition of integrity in vacancy texts, which leaves ample room for local customization.

Adriaan Koelma fits in with the list of legal scholars who helped to shape the early history of the (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands, which was dominated by a legal approach to local administration. In that respect, he was not only a follower of the first Dutch public administration scholar, Gerrit van Poelje, but also his successor. He held the chair in Public Administration in Rotterdam, which Van Poelje vacated in 1933, first as a lecturer and later as a professor (from 1946 onwards). Nowadays, Koelma is mainly remembered for the state commission named after him: he (in vain) advocated the introduction of districts (next to municipalities). He was chairman of this state commission that was installed by Minister Beel on 19 December 1946. He fulfilled his scientific activities in addition to a career in the Dutch civil service. Koelma was a typical ‘self-made man’ who worked his way up from junior employee at the municipal clerk’s office of Dordrecht to municipal clerk and, if only briefly, mayor of Alkmaar. His experiences in the Second World War had a great influence on his later life. Due to a war-related illness, he had to give up the chairmanship of the Koelma Commission in 1947 and in 1948 his professorship and role as mayor of Alkmaar. This war also gave him insight into the pernicious influence of Nazi ideology on governance theory and governance practice. He could not have suspected how hard the German occupier would put the Dutch administration and its servants to the test during his public lesson of 1934, because at that time the Nazi regime in Germany had not yet shown its true nature at the local level of government.

This article is about how the number of downfalls of aldermen can be controlled or reduced. Behind this main question are two sub-questions: should the alderman, who is now filling his office increasingly professionally, professionalize even more? Or should the alderman take a pause for reflection by thinking about how to hold the office in a more politicizing way, so that it remains accessible to untrained administrators? The answers to these questions are based on the research conducted on the downfalls of aldermen in four consecutive board periods from 2002 to 2018 in the Netherlands. The investigation shows that, for at least half of the downfalls, the alderman directly influenced his fall through his own behaviour or omissions. Better preparation, sharper selection and more professional implementation and guidance during the aldermanship is desirable to reduce the large number of downfalls that are detrimental to the image, role and position of the office of alderman. At the same time, more professionalization of the office because of the desire for efficient and effective implementation, as well as simultaneous decentralization and regionalization, is turning the alderman more and more into a manager. That could mean the end of political aldermanship. The relevance for practitioners is that this article shows that (a) the early departure and the political downfall of aldermen in the period 2002-2018 shows a stable pattern; (b) for at least half of the downfalls the alderman fall through his own behaviour or neglect of influence; (c) better preparation, sharper selection and more professionalization may limit the number of political downfalls of aldermen.

This article examines what explains the performance of Dutch local party branches in the recruitment of candidates for municipal councils. Fielding a list of candidates is the most basic function of political parties. In the Netherlands, party branches are under pressure from the low number of party members. To analyse how branches fulfil their role in recruitment, we employ our own survey of the secretaries of party branches held in the run-up to the 2018 municipal election. We find that party membership drives the successful fulfilment of the recruitment function but that, more than the absolute number of members, the crucial factors are how these party members cooperate, the number of active members and the development of this number.

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.

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.

This article clarifies the democratic problems of multilevel governance, with a focus on the Regional Energy Strategy decision-making process. First, the risks that these democratic problems entail for democratic support and for the quality and speed of decision-making are discussed. Next, these problems – and their possible solutions – are discussed by means of three approaches to democracy: representative democracy, pluralist democracy and participatory democracy. A tailor-made mix of these three approaches is recommended as most useful for a solid democratic anchorage of multilevel governance.