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.

The number of boards in the public domain has risen sharply in recent decades and so has the number of reports containing guidelines for effective and good governance. The question, however, is what this flow of advice is based on and what we actually know about board capacity. In this paper, we discuss theoretical expectations on boards, recent developments in governance based inspection, and empirical research on this topic. All in all, it appears that relatively little empirical research is conducted into boards in the public domain. And the research that is available is as yet not very optimistic. Based on these observations, we conclude that it is necessary to re-examine the policy assumptions with regard to board capacity in the public domain.

A pragmatic criticaster or a critical pragmatist is considered a schizophrenic in daily life: it seems impossible to be solution oriented and critical at the same time. You are either an optimist or a pessimist. This schism also seems to run between public administration and political scientists. Public administration is focused on (positive) problem solving, whereas political scientists – especially in a tradition of critical theory – examine the exertion of power. This essay proposes a combination of the two extremes: a critical-pragmatist approach for public administration.
In this approach, critical political theory goes hand in hand with pragmatist reconstruction and design. This design is impossible without normative and procedural principles, for example ideas about sustainability, justice and democracy. This is illustrated with an example for designing just governance arrangements in the Dutch regional energy strategies. The article shows that public administration that is relevant, reflective and democratic builds on a critical-pragmatist approach.

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.

This paper presents the policy theory of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education’s 2017 framework. The framework includes a set of indicators and working methods for the inspections of school boards which are expected to lead to improved quality and organizational learning of the schools and colleges within each board’s portfolio. Inspection feedback, quality assurance, stakeholder involvement and governance are the key mechanisms through which customized inspections are assumed to affect change. These customized inspections start from a set of legal requirements schools and colleges have to meet, but add inspections modules which are agreed on with each school board at the start of an inspection visit. As these inspections are currently being implemented, there is no evidence yet on the validity of these assumptions.

In Dutch semi-public sectors of education, healthcare, and housing there is a tendency towards governance based inspection. The attention of inspectorates shifts from inspection on minimum quality standards to inspection on governance based quality improvement. The aim of this special issue is to learn more about the opportunities and risks of governance based inspection. The survey and sector articles show that governance based inspection (1) puts the responsibility of governors to stimulate quality on the agenda, (2) makes governors more aware of the quality targets they want to achieve within their organisations, and (3) has a deregulating effect. However, the risks are (1) reregulation via sector norms, (2) a lack of reality checks, and (3) a narrow focus on governors instead of the quality of public services. Consequently, inspectors have to learn new skills and competences. All in all, governance based inspection can complement but not replace other ways of inspection.

Incidents in organizations are inevitable. Sometimes these incidents get out of hand and reach the newspapers. But there are also incidents that are addressed in a timely and effective manner and do not escalate to become serious failures. Based on six concrete ‘near misses’ within the education sector, we have investigated how appropriate actions can prevent serious omissions and which mechanisms play a role in this.

The anniversary issue of this magazine (Reussing, 2016/4: 71-101) contained an essay with a short history of the (municipal) administrative sciences. This postscript contains a number of corrections, clarifications and additions to this essay, in chronological order. Examples are the inherently Fabian vision on socialism by one of the pioneers alderman Floor Wibaut, the importance of Jos (not Joop) van der Grinten in the early period (next to the founder of public administration in the Netherlands, Gerrit van Poelje) and the later prime minister Willem Drees as the successor of Herman Nieboer as member of the editorial board in 1921 of the first magazine in the field of ‘Municipal Administration’.

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.

A promising option in energy transition is a more efficient use of heat by linking local heating projects to a regional infrastructure. Although this is technologically feasible and the local officials are often benevolent, such projects only scantily get off the ground. The main challenge appears to be the aspect of the appropriate type of governance for the design and use of regional heat networks. The authors of this article developed a governance-typology for heat networks. The aim of the typology is to help unravel the complexity in the planning of heat infrastructures, taking due account of some legal principles. This typology also enables to categorize heating projects. In this way it is possible to provide some insight in the influence of the stakeholders’ preferences on the governance of heat infrastructures. Barriers and opportunities can be reduced that may hinder or promote the use of waste heat. Local officials may use the information for preventing or breaking through deadlocks in the planning of heat infrastructures.

Healthcare cooperatives are not only attractive to citizens, but they also seen by managers as a source of inspiration and as a means to provide care efficiently. This raises the question of how health cooperatives evolve and which relationship with governments is appropriate for them. The aim of this article is examine the state of the art regarding the rise and development of health cooperatives. This development depends on the degree to which health cooperatives are able to overcome cultural, legal and financial obstacles. Health cooperatives seems to be more promising and stable if they succeed in determining their own course, show that they can realize their aims themselves and while learning to work together with others.

Regulatory supervision and inspection have become key features of public governance, some authors even talk about the ‘audit society’ or the age of ‘regulatory capitalism’. Despite international research showing the importance of trust in supervisory relations, there is still a fierce debate about the role of trust in Dutch supervisory relations. Several inspectorates have incorporated trust as a central theme in their supervisory policy. This article describes the role of trust within the policy of the Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate (IGZ). This research addresses four themes in dealing with the concept of trust in supervisory relations: from transparency to accountability, from output performance to performance and risk management, from trust or control to trust and control, and, finally, a special regime for reliable inspectees. The empirical analysis in this paper contributes to the knowledge about the role of trust in supervision (policy) and to the debate about the role of trust in regulatory supervision policy.

Government employs Public-Private Partnerships as a remedial strategy directed at compensating for failures that typically occur in pure market arrangements, networks or pure hierarchical government settings. It is then possible to engage in Public-Private Partnerships corresponding with the three basic forms of social organization: market, network and government. The distinction between: (1) market-PPP, (2) network-PPP and (3) public authority-PPP is elaborated.

In the public as well as the semi-public sector numerous codes of good governance have been written. Although theses codes clearly lay down which public values must be the foundation of our administration, our newspapers often show examples of bad governance. It is striking that these codes mostly just picture an ideal, but do not give insight in tough considerations. In this article the authors show that different public values mentioned in codes are all worth pursuing as such, but that they in practice collide with each other. The manner in which administrators, managers and executives cope with such dilemmas, determines public opinion on good governance. Two cases have been researched: a municipality and a hospital. Through a Q-research six value patterns are demonstrated to exist in these cases. In addition (through interviews) the authors have discovered which values exactly collide in the cases, and which strategies are used to cope with collisions of values.

In this contribution, Kees Breed of the Dutch Council for Public Administration reflects on Roel in ‘t Veld’s discussion of the 2012 Council’s report ‘Letting go and public trust’ in the previous issue of Bestuurskunde (vol. 22, issue 3, pp. 88-94). The discussion focuses on the report’s shortcomings regarding the analysis of tensions and conflicts between government, market, and society. In ‘t Veld regrets that understandings from complex systems’ theories were not used. In this reaction, Breed argues that in order to contribute to the current debates, theoretical and abstract concepts from systems’ theories will have to be confronted and matched with the actual experiences by practitioners. Reports as the one discussed, published by Advisory Coucil’s, stimulate debate and can thus contribute to bridge this gap.

Political and policy decisions are often presented as neutral choices. Yet, seemingly neutral and widely accepted views are ideologically embedded in a vision on how society should look and what role citizens have to play. These ideologies, we argue, remain silent. In this special issue, we discuss the value and risks of silent ideologies. While silent ideologies may be functional in some cases, there are also risks. The various contributions show that there is a risk of criticism, new ideas and innovative solutions being removed from the political debate. Also, silent ideologies may conceal conflicting interests of citizens and the state, which may exclude the ‘irresponsible’ citizen from the public domain. We argue that public officials and civil servants should take up a role in addressing silent ideologies and their workings.

Over the past decade, policy attention for ‘active citizenship’ and ‘bottom up’ citizen initiatives has strongly increased. Nowadays, governments tend to approach citizens more and more as practical ‘doers’: as active citizens that can initiate projects in the public domain – for instance to increase the livability of their neighborhood. The dominant policy perspective on what is called the ‘democracy of action’ is one of a small government (to make room for a ‘big society’) that is not directive but supportive to active citizens.
In this article, we first argue that in practice we observe two ‘silent ideologies’ that suppress this policy perspective of the democracy of action. We call these the silent ideologies of ‘professional centralism’ and of ‘instrumental support’; we claim that in practice these ideologies enable the dominance of professionals over citizen initiatives (and nót that of the citizens). Second we state that the policy perspective of the democracy of action itself contains a silent ideology: it assumes a highly depoliticized form of citizenship. In the short term, this may be convenient for administrators and policy makers but in the long run this can lead to a less democracy because the voices of critical citizens are not heard.

Values like quality of life, efficiency of services, solidarity in finances and privacy of clients are being compromised continuously in daily practices, inspired by opinions and ideology of (groups of) individuals. Yet, systems like healthcare are dominated by technocratic procedures to enforce transparency and efficiency. This functional rationality pushes away the more fundamental debates on values. This doesn’t mean they are not being compromised, but it’s done in a hidden way. It’s the nurse taking decisions on the amount of time available for a patient. Although restricted by procedures nurses compromise differently. The same counts for healthcare executives in their boardrooms. Restricted by system requirements they take decisions differently, inspired by their convictions. It is all ‘hidden ideology’ in institutions, interactions and intuitions. Even the political arena is imprisoned by the self made technocratic way of debating and deciding on important societal issues. Political debates should be about the values behind procedures instead of technocratic in its essence. Critical checks and balances have to be reinstalled (or reanimated) in political decision making in order to do this and meet patients’ or citizens’ needs, instead of maintaining a procedural attitude that drives politics and ideology away from society.

This paper critically reflects on in the idea of ‘silent’ (or concealed) ideologies in society. Its central thesis is that ideologies – in a wider sense: faith and ideals – not only have a negative side, but may also have positive impact on the political and social order. Public safety initiatives serve as examples to support my claim.