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.

This article assesses the size and diversity of Belgium’s interest group population by triangulating four data sources. Combining various sources allows us to describe which societal interests get mobilised, which interest organisations become politically active and who gains access to the policy process and obtains news media attention. Unique about the project is the systematic data collection, enabling us to compare interest representation at the national, Flemish and Francophone-Walloon government levels. We find that: (1) the national government level remains an important venue for interest groups, despite the continuous transfer of competences to the subnational and European levels, (2) neo-corporatist mobilisation patterns are a persistent feature of interest representation, despite substantial interest group diversity and (3) interest mobilisation substantially varies across government levels and political-administrative arenas.

The 20th Accountability Day of the Netherlands House of Representatives is a fitting occasion to investigate whether Dutch Members of Parliament use performance information (PI). Performance information used by managers and politicians is a basic assumption for managing and guiding Performance-based Budgeting. Ironically, based on a literature review on performance use, we know that politicians and especially parliamentarians do not use performance information for decision making or scrutiny. This is specifically so when PI reports are long. Using the framework of accountability of Bovens (2007) and using content analysis of the questions, motions and debates of the Standing Committees on the annual reports, this article shows that MPs use performance information in all phases (informing, debating, sanctions). Contradicting earlier research on parliamentarians, we found that they use annual reports and reports of the Court of Audit as their main sources in the debates. This article shows that the use of PI in parliament is steadily rising. The growing importance of performance information for accountability is further illustrated by the strengthening of the accountability forum.

The goal of citizens participation increases the moments of contact between politicians, policy makers, welfare professionals and citizens. The shared responsibility for local decision making is not an easy task. Often conflicts emerge between parties with opposing needs and interests. Citizens oppose decisions or organize protest. These moments do not only challenge the goal of participation, they also jeopardize the quality of democracy. The democratic value of contentious moments, however, is often neglected. How can public professionals deal with the dilemma’s and chances that emerge during interactions that happen unexpectedly at the street-level? I answer that question by applying the agonistic approach to democracy to the action repertoire of public professionals dealing with conflict. A dramaturgical analysis of contentious interactions provides insights in how we can recognize and acknowledge contentious citizenship.

In his inaugural lecture entitled ‘From Pillars to Bubbles: The future of consensus governance in a globalized society’, Caspar van den Berg examines the consequences of economic and cultural globalization for the model of consensus governance that defined Dutch public administration for most of the 20th century. In doing so he presents an expansion and refinement of the Lijphartian model of consociationalism, and indicates which four factors supported consensus governance in the pillarized period, and how each of them has suffered erosion as globalization proceeded. It has become increasingly visible that globalization has differentiated effects for different groups in society, but also for different types of regions: booming regions benefit greatly from globalization, shrinking regions face major challenges. By combining recent insights from public administration, sociology, political science, economics and social geography, a new social order emerges, consisting of bubbles that are distinguished along socio-economic and territorial lines. These developments cause friction with regard to representation and decision-making at national, regional and local level. These are the themes on which the research within the Chair of Global and Local Governance will focus in the coming years.

Taking Lijphart’s work on consensus democracies as our point of departure, we signal a major shortcoming in Lijphart’s focus being almost exclusively on the political hardware of the state structure, leaving little attention for the administrative and bureaucratic characteristics of governance systems. We propose to expand the Lijphart’s model which overviews structural aspects of the executive and the state with seven additional features of the bureaucratic system. We argue that these features are critical for understanding the processes of policymaking and service delivery. Next, in order to better understand the functioning of the Netherlands and Belgium as consensus democracies, we provide a short analysis of the historical context and current characteristics of the political-administrative systems in both countries.

A large number of people, institutions, journals and approaches have contributed to the history of (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands. Initially (around 1914) the legal approach was dominant; from 1964 onwards, political science would become the dominant approach; and from 1990 onwards, Public Administration would increasingly profile itself as an independent discipline. This essay concentrates on the influence on this development of sociology and its, typically Dutch, predecessor sociography. The starting point here is the promotion tree of the founder of the Dutch sociology Sebald Steinmetz. Through him various lines (via his doctorates Nicolaas ter Veen and Jakob Kruijt) go to modern Public Administration. This essay tells the story of the influence of sociography and sociology on the development of the administrative sciences and modern Public Administration in six acts, in which two persons from the promotion tree are discussed (via Sjoerd Groenman, who is promoted by Nicolaas ter Veen there are two different lines again). The line via Jakob Kruijt contains Aris van Braam (he wrote in 1957 what is considered the first Dutch empirical study in Public Administration) and Jos Raadschelders. The first line via Sjoerd Groenman contains Henk Brasz (the first full-time professor in Public Administration in the Netherlands), Fred Fleurke and Ko de Ridder. The second line via Sjoerd Groenman contains Joop Ellemers, Geert Braam (professor at the first regular Dutch Public Administration programme in Twente) and Wim Derksen. These acts are framed with short intermezzos about the other sociological key figures who played an important role in the story of sociography, sociology and Public Administration. In conclusion, the author of this essay discusses the continuing relevance of sociology for modern Public Administration.

In practice, diversity interventions do not always appear to be effective. One argument is that there is little or no match between the perspectives of public organizations on diversity and the interventions used. This article provides an overview of the underlying rationales for diversity policy and discusses the perspectives on diversity from the diversity literature, HRM, and management literature and how these overlap, complement each other and differ from each other. What these perspectives have in common is that they all emphasize the added value of diversity. In the diversity literature, the emphasis is on the four perspectives equality, legitimacy, creativity, and the labour market. HRM literature focusses on managing differences. In public administration, there is a shift from active representation by individuals to connecting by all employees. Furthermore, the binding perspective is gaining more and more importance in the public domain because it may be possible to close the gap between the government and its citizen. This perspective emphasizes the importance of the long-term relationship with citizens to strengthen the trust of citizens in the government for realizing social tasks and responsibilities. It makes diversity an issue for all employees. For Hassan and Havva, and also for Hans and Hanna.

This article analyses the transformations of the Dutch civil service over the last 15 years, during which numerous cutbacks and reorganizations took place. While existing research predominantly focused on changes in the total number of civil servants, we examine how the distribution of civil servants changed in terms of rank, gender and age. We theorize four methods for shrinking the government apparatus, and for each method, we identify the possible consequences for the composition of the central civil service in terms of hierarchical make-up and of age. Our results indicate that the total number of civil servants only slightly decreased, but the decrease affected differentially the various ranks of the civil service. While at the lower ranks the number of civil servants decreased strongly, at the upper ranks the number actually increased slightly. The number of women in the civil service increased, also in the higher echelons. Regarding the age distribution, we found considerable changes, with the modal age shifting upwards with up to ten years. Altogether, the civil service has become slightly smaller, more gender-balanced, and significantly more senior (both in terms of ranks and age). The results of this study show that it is important for researchers and practitioners to look beyond the trends in the total number of civil servants and explore the deeper changes within the civil service.

Studies have shown that multiple office-holding, a practice that denotes the simultaneous exercise of any directly elected municipal mandate and parliamentary seat, is more commonplace in European national parliaments than expected. However, research in Belgium, and especially in the Netherlands, is scarce and extremely fragmented. Therefore, our analysis provides a systematic comparison between the Low Countries with a longitudinal focus. In the first part of the paper, the frequency of the practice is described and its evolution in the last two decades tracked. In the second part, we provide aggregated explanations for the identified discrepancy. Indeed, our results show that after the most recent elections, more than 80% of all Belgian members of parliament held a local mandate, and this percentage increased by 10% during our reference period. In contrast, 9 out of 150 members of the Dutch Second Chamber were combining several offices at the beginning of their national mandate, while the degree of cumulards remained stable. Unexpectedly, the legislative framework and the party regulations are not the source of this deviation, as they are almost identical in both countries. We argue that the difference can be attributed to the role and position of the local government, the political culture and the electoral system.

Social media monitoring is a topical and relevant phenomenon. It enables civil servants and politicians to gauge the sentiments voiced on social media, on the basis of which they are in a better position to take into account the wishes and needs of citizens. Social media monitoring is primarily used for rational and strategic purposes. In terms of democratic legitimacy, it may enhance the quality of the processes on the output side of the political system, i.e. authorities can be more responsive and can fine tune public policies. There also threats for the relation between citizens and government. When citizens communicate on networks they perceive as private, social media monitoring can be seen as an intrusion into their private sphere. This not only concerns individual privacy but also an interpersonal private sphere in terms of the right that people have to define a domain within which they can exchange experiences with peers. Transparency and accountability are therefore important conditions for the application of this instrument.

Infrastructure and adjacent areas represent extensive social value. However, infrastructure and areas are still often developed sectoral and independent. In the Netherlands, national spatial policies strive for combining infrastructure and area as one integrated approach as this is expected to result in more spatial quality. Taking this perspective, this article discusses trendy concepts in current Dutch planning, such as: adaptive planning, public and private cooperation and challenge-oriented approaches (‘opgave-gericht werken’ which focuses less on realising a project but more on the current and future issues and challenges in an area). This article argues that these concepts are closely related. Adaptive planning defines the rules of the game and the playing field, within which cooperation may develop. Cooperation is a means for creating spatial quality in interaction within this playing field. After all, generated quality can be considered as a contribution to the specific objectives and interest of the various partners. A challenge-oriented approach is the process for generating spatial quality from synergies in combined infrastructure and spatial development. This article aims to explore the relationships between adaptive planning, public and private cooperation and challenge-oriented approaches and to provide starting points for further research and discussion.

This essay contains a short history of the municipal and other administrative sciences in the Netherlands. This history is divided into seven lives. Each life has its own specific characteristics and approaches. The story starts in 1914 with the dissertation of Gerrit van Poelje and the aldermanship of Floor Wibaut (for the Dutch Labour Party) in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the authors make a plea to view 1921 as the actual starting point, because it is the year of the introduction to municipal administration written by Van Poelje and the first Dutch academic magazine on municipal administration (‘Gemeentebestuur’). This means that we can prepare for the celebration of 100 years of (municipal) administrative sciences in 2021. A great challenge for all universities, but certainly for the Public Administration programme of the University of Twente, which is now celebrating its 40^th anniversary. The challenge is to work on current topics such as the relationship between public administration and technology in smart, sustainable and resilient cities.

In the safety domain important developments are currently taking place concerning the way in which administrative and tactical operations are dealt with in crises. It is characteristic for the approach that cooperation in chains and networks is increasingly needed to arrive at a suitable approach. In this essay, the authors analyse two subdomains in two concrete cases on how cooperation between several parties takes shape and functions. For that purpose, they differentiate between acute and non-acute crises. In the subdomain ‘acute crises’, they have chosen the case of the Dutch town Moerdijk (the fire at the Chemie-Pack company in 2011). In the subdomain of non-acute crises, they focus on community safety partnerships (‘Veiligheidshuizen’), especially on the community safety partnership in the Dutch province of Friesland (‘Veiligheidshuis Friesland’). In both subdomains the establishment of a good basic cooperation and leadership structure appears to be of prime importance. From there it is necessary to respond in a flexible manner (to be able to execute custom-made work). Within that framework, the capacity may develop to arrange a well-structured and effective cooperation at the operational level (ad hoc in acute crises), to monitor progress properly and to carry out targeted interventions if the developments in the situation ask for these interventions. A good knowledge of each other’s frame of reference is necessary to make this work, so that a maximum level of integration in the approach is achieved.

In this article we discuss the influence of external policy advisors on the policy process. In the Dutch context, little is known about the role, function and influence of external policy advisors (like consultants) who are hired on a temporary basis by the government. Based on a survey (N = 378) this study provides a profile of external policy advisors and the nature of their advice work. An interesting result is that external advisors generally conduct process-related policy work, but may also provide policy substance. Furthermore, the article develops an empirically and theoretically informed research agenda as a starting point for additional research.

Politicians have started to use social media more often. As such media induce personal campaigning, one might expect more personalization to follow. We explore what type of personalization social media stimulate, whether this is different for Twitter and Facebook and analyze the role of parties. We make use of quantitative and qualitative data about the Netherlands (2010-2014). We find that while theoretically the impact of social media may be big, in practice it is fairly limited: more presidentialization but not more individualization (though Twitter might increase the focus on other candidates slightly). The difference between theory and practice seems largely due to the parties. They adopt a very ambiguous stance: though they often stimulate candidates to use social media, they want to keep control nonetheless.

A profession can be defined as a group of workers with shared knowledge, skills and quality standards. To maintain its professional status, the professional community needs to be relatively autonomous. However, while performing their tasks, many pressures jeopardize the professional worker’s autonomous position. Here, the professional community can make a difference.
Subordination to the political principal characterizes the position of the civil servant. What margin of professional independence do political leaders allow their civil servants? Recent academic empirical reports in the Netherlands show conflicting outcomes.
This essay describes how civil servants from a Dutch ministry deal with their professional standards and argues that, in the process of professionalization, more clarity is required with regard to how autonomy and independence for civil servants are safeguarded. This is especially relevant in a contemporary context where new ways to account for the professional behavior of civil servants need to be sought.

After years of debate, the discussion concerning the legal status of civil servants has reached its climax. The abolition of special civil servant status has never been closer. In February 2014 the Dutch Parliament approved a proposal that is based on the view that the particular legal status of civil servants has to be ‘normalized’, and that the terms and conditions of employment in the public sector could be regulated in line with market sector standards. In this article, both the discussion and the proposal are considered. In addition, we reflect on the extent to which and the way in which the proposal could have a positive impact on the development of the professional competence of civil servants.