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.

Nederland staat voor forse en complexe beleidsopgaven. Deze opgaven vragen om een bijzondere beleidsaanpak met een aansluitende wijze van beleidsevaluatie – namelijk één die leren ondersteunt om iteratief de kwaliteit van het beleid te verbeteren en de weg naar de beleidsambities te vinden. Beleidsonderzoekers en beleidsbetrokkenen werken in lerende evaluaties samen om kennis te produceren voor het gelijktijdig verantwoorden en leren van beleid. Verondersteld wordt dat de kwaliteit en bruikbaarheid van de geproduceerde kennis met deze benadering groter zijn dan bij reguliere, op verantwoording georiënteerde, evaluatiemethoden. Als gevolg daarvan zou lerend evalueren meer impact hebben op beleid voor complexe opgaven. In dit artikel wordt aandacht besteed aan de waarde van lerend evalueren vanuit het perspectief van beleidsbetrokkenen en beleidsonderzoekers van de lerende evaluatie van het Natuurpact (2014-2017), uitgevoerd door het PBL en de WUR. Geconcludeerd wordt dat lerend evalueren de kwaliteit, bruikbaarheid en impact (minder aantoonbaar) van de geproduceerde kennis vergroot, maar onder specifieke voorwaarden: namelijk wanneer onderzoekers erin slagen om leren en verantwoorden, met de bijbehorende rollen en kwaliteitsstandaarden, te benaderen als wederzijds versterkend in plaats van tegenstrijdig. Onderzoekers hebben voelsprieten nodig voor de wisselwerking tussen het proces van kennisproductie en de politiek-bestuurlijke context waarin deze kennis wordt gebruikt. Zowel in de beleids- als onderzoekspraktijk is ruimte nodig voor een verbrede kijk op de functie van beleidsevaluatie om lerend evalueren toe te kunnen passen.

Rapid technological change and the information society have consequences for the role and duties of municipal clerks. To increase understanding of the implications of digital technologies for the role of municipal clerk (town clerk), this article presents an exploration of the ‘digital leadership’ of municipal clerks, i.e. leadership that suits a time when digital technologies are growing explosively. By using the four leadership perspectives of Bolman and Deal and the public value thinking of Moore, it was investigated which leadership themes are mentioned in the literature. In this way, this article aims to contribute to the leadership role of the municipal clerk so that he gives shape and direction to the organization from a vision on this change task and leads this transition instead of seeing it as a collection of smart gadgets or an issue concerning the IT department. This means that he will have to be aware of technological developments, can think critically about their significance and acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to lead the municipal organization in the information society. This article shows practitioners that: (a) municipal clerks play an important role when it comes to the structure of the municipal organization in the information society; (b) the way in which municipalities innovate digitally has an impact on society and people’s lives; and (c) it is therefore important to shape the leadership of municipal clerks based on public values in order to realize legitimate applications of digital technologies with added social value.

This article is a review of two policy documents on integrated care in the Netherlands. I argue that not a shared definition of ‘integrated care,’ but instead the own factual understandings of care and normative preferences, values or interests concerning care motivates the action of actors that need to produce integrated care. Not the network-level problem, but instead actor-level motivations explain to what extent integrated care is effectuated. The policy documents, but also important segments of the literature on policy integration seem to underestimate this problem.

As a response to the perceived legitimacy crisis that threatens modern democracies, local government has increasingly become a laboratory for democratic renewal and citizen participation. This article studies whether and why local party chairs support democratic innovations fostering more citizen participation. More specifically, we analyse the relative weight of ideas, interests and institutions in explaining their support for citizen-centred democracy. Based on the Belgian Local Chairs Survey in 2018 (albeit restricting our analysis to Flanders), the central finding is that ideas matter more than interests and institutions. Ideology is alive and kicking with regard to democratic innovation, with socialist and ecologist parties and populist parties being most supportive of participatory arrangements. By contrast, interests and institutions play, at this stage, a minor role in explaining support for participatory innovations.

Compared to regular contracts, infrastructure development and management through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) is expected to lead to better cost and time performance. However, the evidence for this performance advantage of PPPs is lacking. This article analyzes the performance differences of projects with a Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) contract (a type of PPP) and a Design-and-Construct (D&C) contract. Project performance data were collected (N = 65) from the Project Database of Rijkswaterstaat and analyzed using non-parametric tests. Rijkswaterstaat is the executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The results show that DBFM-projects have a significantly higher cost performance than D&C-projects. In particular, DBFM-projects have less additional costs related to technical necessities in the implementation phase. Regarding time performance, DBFM-projects seem to perform better although the difference with D&C-projects is not statistically significant. The article discusses explanations for the performance advantage of PPPs, rooted in principal-agent theory. From this discussion, an agenda is presented for further research into the performance advantage of Public-Private Partnerships.

Complexity theory dares to adopt a critical-constructive attitude to the practice and science of public administration. From the worldview of complex systems, it raises questions about the machine thinking that has influenced public administration strongly and persistently. Many contemporary attempts by governments to simplify societal issues to knowable, solvable and controllable problems – for example the approach to transforming Utrecht Central Station and dealing with multi-dimensional problems in families – can be traced back to machine thinking. Complexity theory points to the ineffectiveness and undesirability of simplifications and considers the complexity of government and society a quality that should be increased rather than reduced. Complexity theory not only keeps the administrative mind sharp on simplification reflexes, but also offers the option to make policy by increasing, rather than reducing complexity.

If the stakes are high, policy researchers can find themselves under strong pressures from politicians or policy makers to compromise on issues like scope of a research project, research methodology, reporting, framing and interpretation of results, and timing of publication. Research organizations experiment with various formal and informal arrangements to cope with such pressures and guard their independence.
This article describes six coping strategies that are being explored by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). These are: i) taking control in determining the project scope and the research questions; ii) making responsibilities explicit and guarding respective roles; iii) installing a broad based societal project advisory group; iv) having some researchers in a project that interact with stakeholders, while keeping others at a distance; v) having a differentiated communications strategy; vi) being fully transparent as to hypotheses and uncertainties regarding data and models.
Safeguarding independence in research through formal rules and provisions is generally insufficient to protect research from undue stakeholder influence. Also changes in labor routines, relationship management and organizational cultures are needed, not only on the researcher side, but on the stakeholder side as well. This calls for dialogue and joint learning processes.

New insights from the field of positive psychology led to the insight that people learn more effectively from positive feedback. Policy evaluation aims to improve public policy programmes through contributing to both accountability and learning. This ambiguous ambition has contributed to a considerable body of research into the impact of policy evaluation. Too often the conclusion is that the outcomes of policy evaluations – which are often negative by nature – are sparsely used by policy makers. This has led to series of improvements in the way we carry out evaluations. First through technical improvements and then by more responsive approaches. Both have not led to the desired breakthrough. Building on a number of positive evaluation studies, we advance a more positive approach in policy evaluation. Focussing on the successes in policy programmes rather than on its failures may contribute to evaluation impact. Consequently, we think a more positive, appreciative approach and using data to find success in policy making is necessary for policy evaluators to be more effective. This article presents practical examples of positive policy evaluations and successful use of data in the domain of policy evaluation.

Local authorities expect citizens to fulfil an increasing number of public services. In that context, citizen-based networks are emerging as means to fulfil a variety of public tasks, varying from supporting young entrepreneurs and strengthening social cohesion, to providing local care. In this article, we address the following questions: Which phases do community enterprises pass through in their efforts towards realising a sustainable contribution and how do participation professionals support these phases? To respond to this question, researchers followed seven community enterprises based in Amsterdam over a two-year period. We identified a typology of four development phases, with particular attention to the interaction between external participation professionals and the key persons of community enterprises. The study has practical relevance for governance of citizen participation and also raises important follow-up questions about the role of the local government.

In this special issue, recent public sector reforms in South Africa, Denmark, Belgium, Mexico, Singapore and Denmark are analysed. Reforms in the public sector are by and large explained as a chronological development from traditional bureaucracy, via New Public Management to New Public Governance. This is also the way the many administrative reforms in the Dutch public sector are often explained.
The articles give insight in the administrative developments in these countries and their background. They also offer the opportunity to make comparisons with administrative developments in the Netherlands, and to draw lessons. The analyses show that the dominant explanation of reforms in the public sector (from traditional bureaucracy, to New Public Management to New Public Governance) is helpful in making sense of administrative developments, but they put this explanation into perspective too.
For the Dutch situation yet another insight came to light. We often complain that the Dutch processes are cumbersome, take long and involve many -if not all- stakeholders. A close reading of the contributions from abroad must inevitably change this pejorative view on our national sport: the cumbersome process provides valuable checks and balances, that will help to fight the drawbacks and risks that we have seen in the international cases.

In Nederland komen tal van wicked problems (WP) voor. Ze worden ook wel aangeduid als weerbarstige problemen. Kenmerkend is het unieke karakter, het feit dat kennis over probleemaspecten beperkt is en verschillende perspectieven op een probleem en meerdere waardenoriëntaties een rol spelen. Naast cognitieve en normatieve complexiteit bestaat er ook nog sociale complexiteit. WPs zoals voetbalvandalisme spelen zich af in een beleidsnetwerk met tal van elkaar afhankelijke actoren. Kennis, preferenties, handelingsvermogen en middelen blijken gespreid en niet in de hand van één actor. Om toch tot een bevredigend resultaat te komen moeten de actoren gezamenlijk optrekken. Daarom is interorganisationeel netwerkmanagement en deliberatie met burgers een wenselijke responsestrategie. Bij WPs zijn actoren dus tot elkaar veroordeeld. Centralistische besluitvorming werkt niet. Een centrale actor kan overigens nog wel een rol vervullen als initiator, facilitator of regisseur van overleg en discussie; als arbiter bij botsende perspectieven; of beslisser na netwerkberaad en inbreng van burgers.

Een lerende evaluatie combineert leren en verantwoorden. Deze methode past bij complexe beleidsopgaven, waar meerdere actoren en overheden bij betrokken zijn die een behoefte hebben om te leren van elkaars ervaringen. In de evaluatie van het Natuurpact is deze methode op nationale schaal voor het gedecentraliseerde natuurbeleid toegepast. Uit deze casus blijkt dat een succesvolle toepassing vraagt om een voortdurende en zorgvuldige aansluiting van het onderzoek op de beleidspraktijk. Dit is nodig voor het betrekken van en interactie met stakeholders, het combineren van leren en verantwoorden, de wetenschappelijke onafhankelijkheid, het bestuurlijk mandaat en de beheersbaarheid van het onderzoek.

Theory about participation has long moved beyond merely informing citizens, arguing for more influential and effective instruments. Nevertheless, ‘inspraak’ remains widely implemented in Dutch practice, with mixed results. This article argues that the deliberative quality of the instrument is closely related to the performance of power. Dramaturgical concepts are employed to analyze resistance against the siting of a homeless facility in an Amsterdam neighborhood. One particular evening sets the stage for escalation, which ultimately frustrates the policy process. The analysis shows how the performance of the meeting invokes specific kinds of resistance. A different performance of ‘informing’ could potentially improve the quality of the public sphere.

Wicked problems ask for new, smart forms of governance beyond a singular focus on hierarchy, market or community. Based on the case studies presented in the individual articles of this special issue, this concluding article describes what smart governance could entail and discusses its strengths and weaknesses, both as a concept and a practical tool.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch government public private partnerships (PPP) using DBFMO contracts has become the default option for realizing complex public infrastructures. DBFMO contracts imply the integrated outsourcing of the design (D), building (B), financing (F), the maintenance (M), and also often the exploitation (O) of projects to private actors. The general idea is that by bundling public and private resources, the increasing complexity of today’s public infrastructure projects can be tackled more easily. However, reality is contumacious. As a consequence of several problems related to DBFMO collaborations, the Dutch highway and water management agency Rijkswaterstaat and several private actors recently put forward a new market vision. This vision is a call to reinvent the dominant collaboration practice between public and private actors: relational aspects should be central. In managing projects, more attention should be given to the quality of relations, attitudes, openness and trust. Recent research confirms that the success of DBFMO projects is not only contingent on contractual aspects but also, and maybe even more importantly, on relational aspects. Smart governance involves a shift from the current dominant financial economic-oriented contractual approach to PPP towards a more sociologically inspired relational form of governance.

To be able to realize the ambitions of citizen participation, diversity of participants is a crucial condition. At the same time excluding groups of citizens, amongst them critical citizens, is inextricably linked with citizen participation. In this article in the series ‘Local democratic audit’, the authors wonder what the exclusion of critical citizens means for the process and outcome of citizen participation. Through two empirical studies during a spatial intervention in different municipalities in the Netherlands, they investigated how people involved in a participation process spoke about critical citizens and their manifestations. The results show that the way these critical citizens are discussed either legitimizes exclusion or questions it critically. The legitimization of exclusion is detrimental to the support for spatial intervention. The problematization of exclusion results in a responsive approach to critical citizens, which is beneficial for both the course of the participation process and for the support for the spatial intervention.

Much has been written about the decline of trust in societies: trust in governments and political systems is a popular field of research. Trust of governments in citizens however, is a relatively unknown field. This article presents a research into the trust the Dutch government has in its citizens. By conducting a discourse analysis on policy documents regarding the participation society, the degree of trust was examined. The results show that the government has trust in the capabilities of citizens, but does not trust the intentions of citizens. This results in many control measures, high transaction costs, a fragile base for public cooperation and a disturbed relationship between the government and citizens. In order to gain more trust in citizens the government has to change the way it uses language regarding citizens.

Er is de laatste tijd veel aandacht voor het omgaan met onzekerheid en dynamiek in beleid. Zo is er recent de roep om leren door doen, door een overheid die samen met de samenleving het experiment aan durft te gaan. Zo’n benadering van beleid als gezamenlijk experiment is veelbelovend, maar vergt ook passende methoden voor beleidsevaluaties. Adaptief beleid speelt hierop in. De laatste jaren is een belangrijke stap gezet in de ontwikkeling van methoden waarmee adaptief beleid ontwikkeld kan worden. Voor de evaluatie en de rol van evaluaties heeft dit belangrijke implicaties. In dit artikel wordt hierop verder ingegaan, op basis van ervaringen met adaptief beleid en beleidsevaluatie binnen het Nederlandse Deltaprogramma.

Een gedegen beleidsvoorbereiding kan beleidsfalen voorkomen. Hoewel deze thematiek al jaren aandacht krijgt in de politiek, lukt het de rijksoverheid nog niet hieraan structureel succesvol invulling te geven. In het licht van de recente Tweede Kamer verkiezingen is er hernieuwde aandacht voor samenspraak bij beleid en beleidsexperimenten om te komen tot beter beleid. Het rendement daarvan is naar verwachting beperkt. Ten eerste omdat samenspraak vaak zodanig ingeperkt is, dat de invloed van kennis voor beleid beperkt blijft. Ten tweede omdat wetenschappelijke kennis prevaleert boven de voor beleidseffectiviteit noodzakelijke tacit knowledge. De rijksoverheid kan meer rendement halen uit investeringen in een betere beleidsvoorbereiding, door de structurele afweging tot de inzet van samenspraak en beleidsexperimenten bij nieuw of gewijzigd beleid; verantwoording van deze afweging, alsmede onafhankelijke toetsing van de te verwachten beleidseffectiviteit. Investeringen in handreikingen zijn weinig zinvol. De gemeente Rotterdam geeft een goed voorbeeld.