The regulatory agencies in various public service sectors are said to be changing (some) of their regulatory attention issues of internal governance of organizations in education, health care en social housing. This paper aims to assess how (if, at all) responsible actors within those organizations experience this shift in regulatory focus. We report on the findings from a survey with modest N, distributed at an early stage of this new policy. The paper shows that respondents have fairly divergent views on whether or not this regulatory shift has indeed occurred, something which is not uncommon for a new policy. We distinguish three mechanisms through which governance-based oversight may have an impact on public service providers. This new regulatory regime could 1) have an agenda-setting effect within organizations, could 2) stimulate organizational decision-makers to take well-considered decisions and could 3) induce a sense of relational felt accountability towards the regulator.

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.

In the Netherlands citizens increasingly unite in cooperatives to realize common facilities and services in their neighborhood themselves. Apparently neither markets nor governments succeed in providing all the public goods and services that citizens strive for. Although these forms of self-organization are still young and their success is far from sure, they are seen as sources of social innovation and new ways of organizing that inspire many. Their example is followed widely: cooperatives seem to be rapidly emerging almost everywhere. Yet not much systemic knowledge is available on their nature, drivers, and impacts, nor on the conditions under which they flourish. In this special issue the state of the art regarding these cooperatives is examined in the areas of energy, care, broadband connections and housing. The various contributions show that the main challenge that cooperatives have to deal with is finding the balance between the ambition to preserve their identity as grass root organizations and the need for professionalization. Also they have to learn to build and maintain relationships with other organizations and actors in their environment on which they are dependent: governments, private parties and professionals.

In the Netherlands at January 1^st 2015 municipalities will most likely receive administrative and financial responsibility for work, youth and societal support. Anticipating this change almost all large municipalities have introduced social neighbourhood teams, inspired by the successful model of the ‘Achter-de-Voordeur-aanpak’ (Dutch for ‘Behind the Front Door-approach’). In this article the authors reflect on this development, because of criticisms about the vagueness surrounding the social teams and with its further development in mind. In a historical analysis they look at this phenomenon in relation to its political and policy context. The central research question is the change in vision that has occurred since the first experiments with neighbourhood social teams and the implications for their design. The authors show how the focus in the policy discourse has gradually moved to arguments concerning the efficiency of the societal support, more self-responsibility and self-direction and more participation in the society and the labour process. This makes a different model for neighbourhood teams desirable, especially in terms of (1) the target group of the approach, (2) the depth of the support and (3) the role of the generalist and the room for manoeuvre or the powers this generalist receives. A lot of municipalities choose to discover gradually what works. Next to the time pressure this might explain the vagueness of the plans for the design and organization of neighbourhood teams.

In the coming years, a major decentralization operation in the social sector will make the Dutch municipalities fully responsible for support, assistance and home care. The starting point for decentralization is the ‘one family, one plan, one coordinator’-approach. Under municipal reign, professionals will have to coordinate their actions in order to provide more customized services and to enhance citizens’ involvement. In this contribution we discuss two pilots, of the municipalities of Enschede and Leeuwarden, which have experimented with the new approach. We describe the background, institutional structure and results and conclude that there is evidence that the new approach has worked. We end with a reflection on the present challenges that municipalities are confronted with, when applying the approach under the current conditions of new responsibilities and severe budget cuts.

In this issue of Bestuurskunde we deal with the claim that municipalities should be first port of call for citizens when it comes to the provision of public services. We discuss what this position means for municipalities and which challenges and dangers it brings.

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.

Recent developments shed a new light on the role of Lipsky's classic analysis of the street-level bureaucrat. A growing number of social services is provided as a product of cooperation between different actors: government agencies, societal organizations, private businesses, citizens. As a result of this development, the street-level bureaucrat now increasingly operates in an interorganizational network, rather than within one single organization. This (partly) changes the dilemmas he has to deal with. The authors demonstrate this by analyzing the so-called ‘Achter de Voordeur’ projects, whereby house-calls of street-level bureaucrats are linked with full cooperation between local authorities.

In the Netherlands it is widely acknowledged that neighbourhood oriented citizen’s initiatives often require some professional support. Little is known, however, about the various types of support that professionals may provide. Moreover, Dutch policies usually tend to take an instrumental stance towards citizen initiatives, focussing on their possible contribution to governmental goals. In this contribution we make an effort to develop a typology of different types and roles of professional support. Four basic types of professional support are derived from two axis. The first axis distinguishes between an instrumental approach and a more personal approach, the second between professional support focussing on the initiative/the initiator or on the broader institutional and civil society context. From our empirical findings we conclude that a vital context for citizen initiatives may be produced through the combination of an instrumental and personal approach. The latter comprises efforts of empowerment attuned to both the specific personal needs and capacities of citizens and the typical neighbourhood context. A combined approach may reduce the risk of ‘crowding out citizenship’ that exists when citizen’s initiatives become an instrument in a government’s policy.