This paper analyzes the impact of linguistic characteristics of accountability reports on public sector organizations. It does so by analysing hundreds of accountability reports by four public sector bodies using the linguistic tool LIWC. The research question is: what linguistic characteristics of accountability reports are related to a bigger impact on the evaluated organization? The impact of three strategic choices is assessed. First of all, the impact of strategic positioning. Authors of texts can maintain a position of power in the choice of language (high clout) and speak top down to the recipient or they can take a more egalitarian, face to face, position. Secondly, authors can choose to use many complex linguistic phrasings, with causal reasoning for instance, or they can opt for simpler texts. Finally, the text can be littered with emotional, positive and negative, wordings or can be set in a neutral tone. Our analyses suggest that more emotional accountability reports are consistently related to a better reception and seem to have more impact. This has important consequences both theoretically and practically, which are discussed in the paper.

In maart 2020 verscheen het boek Beleidsevaluatie in theorie en praktijk van Peter van der Knaap, Valérie Pattyn en Dick Hanemaayer. Joost Fledderus bespreekt de inhoud van het boek en geeft aan welke meerwaarde het biedt voor (aankomende) beleidsonderzoekers.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

Recent developments on the Dutch labour market raise questions about the emergence of new social dividing lines. In this paper we discuss two cases. Both address labour market disadvantages which can easily deepen and sharpen with unchanged policies. The first case shows that there are groups that are less able to respond to the defined trends in the labour market due to a lack of education or disabilities. In the second case we focus on the question of sustainable employability as such that creates dividing lines. A first conclusion from our contribution is that a thorough analysis of existing dividing lines in the labour market is crucial for effective policy, but that knowledge about deepening old and creating new dividing lines is at least as relevant. A second conclusion is that the outlined assumptions in policies around self-reliance of, for example, people with a disability or the possibilities of employers to realize sheltered work and to focus on retraining, for example outside working hours, are not always realistic. Much more will have to be done to match the real possibilities of people and organizations to achieve this. Financial, but also organizational and personal. The motivations and behaviors of employees, employers and educational authorities appear to be very relevant explanatory factors in practice, which are often not sufficiently taken into account. Recent experiences with the Participation Act and lifelong learning show us that. More interaction is needed in the coming years between research, policy and the practice of the labour market.

Citizen participation is a regular feature of recent legislation and policymaking. However, more often than not, the goals of participation remain implicit. As a consequence, exclusion mechanisms well known from the literature keep coming back. A current example is the Dutch Environment and Planning Act, which is expected to enter into force in 2021. In this article we use this Act to identify the exclusion mechanisms at work and suggest an alternative wording.

‘The Netherlands is a country of commissions. Some are useful: they draw up an analysis that clarifies, declares success or denounces failure’, as the author wrote in his PhD-thesis ‘Looking with strange eyes’ in 2014. This essay also deals with commissions. In the three decentralization operations in the Netherlands, a so-called social affairs advisory council has made its appearance in the Dutch municipalities. Advisory committees or councils play an important role in our political system. For a long time discussions have been held about the position of these advisory bodies and their added value for policy and stakeholders. This fits in with municipalities that are in full development with concepts such as self-management, co-creation and vital communities. Advisory councils want to know if their work matters. There may be growing disappointment about the effects of their advice. That feeling of disappointment is understandable. In 1979 Carol Weiss was rather negative at the time about the degree of utilization of research. In 1983 Arno Korsten put this into perspective: ‘The view that there is underutilization on a large scale requires revision. An important reason is the fact that applying research results is often not immediately and easily visible, neither for researchers involved nor for policy makers.’ Research is something other than advice, but the insights are a source of inspiration for the use of advice. An advisory council wants to increase the effectiveness of its advice. For that reason, in this essay an approach is developed that provides insight into the factors that determine the way in which and the extent to which the advice is used in political decision-making. With this insight, an advisory council for the social domain can strengthen the influence of its advice, as is expected.

Exploration of the future is about systematically exploring future developments and the possible consequences for an organization or issue. The demand for future explorations at local policy level has increased in recent years. This article focuses on the relationship between participatory future exportations and local strategic policy processes. On the basis of four case studies, the meaning of participatory foresight studies for local policy processes was investigated. The research, which was carried out as action research, shows that future explorations in local strategic policy processes can be significant in different ways: they provide new knowledge, they promote learning in an integral and future-oriented manner and they encourage social learning processes that are independent of the content, which is valuable for group dynamics. In addition, future explorations can be useful in different phases of the policy cycle. Despite the fact that participatory explorations of the future can be meaningful in local strategic policy processes, there is still a bridge between the method of future exploration on the one hand and policy processes and organizations on the other. The research shows that a demand-driven approach starting from the needs of the participants in the policy process and responding to the culture, structure and working method of the organization is a promising approach. At the same time, the research shows that there are several factors that need to be considered in order to achieve a stronger interrelatedness of future exploration and policy. The policy practice and the exploratory practice seem to be gradually evolving towards each other. On the one hand, policy practice is becoming more rational, transparent and analytical in nature through the use of future explorations, at least in policy preparation. The explorations promote substantive discussions on policy agendas and policy intentions. On the other hand, they are becoming more policy oriented through more reasoning from the policy practice in terms of process design and knowledge needs of the policy process.

Social media changes society and causes new dilemmas in local government. Little is known about the nature of these conflicts and the way government organizations deal with them. Therefore the authors of this article have carried out empirical research into the manner in which police officers deal with value conflicts concerning the use of social media. Their research shows that the well-known conflicts in the literature between effectiveness and efficiency and between effectiveness and legality were also dominant in this case, but that many more conflicts than are known from other studies concerned transparency and participation. In addition they discovered that the bias strategy was often used, which suggests that a conservative response is preferable in a situation with a lot of dynamics. In this way the research shows how government officials deal with the tension between a stable organization and a dynamic environment and look for appropriate forms of coping at this specific interface. The authors stress in their recommendations that the further strengthening of the learning ability of organizations deserves attention: not just to find the right way to deal with value conflicts, but to be able to find new ways to deal with the new conflicts that arise.

Decades of neoliberalism have placed emphasis on individualism, self-responsibility, and self-interest. As a result solidarity, and charity are losing ground and inter-subjective suspicion enters society. With a dominant focus on the economic life, happiness can be found in working and consuming, which has led to a morbid focus on performance. As a consequence self-exploitation, stress, fear of failure and auto-aggression undermines self-love. Competing individuals, with whom man cannot identify himself, see the other as someone who also has to take care of himself; empathy for the stranger is far to seek. Problematic because in the participatory society people need to care for themselves, and others, which calls for public love. Economic actions of man should be perceived as a social activity that presupposes love. A supplier must show empathy towards its customer before a decent product can be created. A prerequisite for empathy and cooperation is equality. However with scarcity as the engine of hyper-capitalism market thinking inequality between people increases. It seems that men should embrace the ‘difference’ of others. The acceptance of ‘the strange’ could start with a heterogeneous student population during education, and a variety of inhabitants in neighbourhoods. Furthermore a more relaxed working climate with the focus on cooperation instead of competition could contribute to the return of empathy and self-love.

A provincial government in the Netherlands (Limburg) wants to start a movement designed to encourage citizens to live longer and healthier, and to participate in society. The province mobilizes partners to achieve these goals, with important tasks for the municipal governments. This article addresses the question how to help municipal governments in this approach. To draft a guide, a literature search was carried out, interviews were held and the policy practice was explored. This approach resulted in several building blocks that promote a departure from the trend in the health and participation of the citizens in Limburg. These building blocks are set in municipal activities in a Participation Compass social domain. Applying them indicates whether a municipal government is doing the right things to actively engage citizens. It gives an overall picture of the functioning of administrators, networkers and service providers. The report mentions strong points as well as learning points. It is crucial that results are recognized and accepted. The report also suggests improvement points for municipal governments and their partners on their path to the participation society.

In 2012, the municipal council of Emmen (a municipality of 107,000 inhabitants in the northeast of the Netherlands) took the final decision for the transformation and rehousing of the Wildlands Adventure Zoo on the basis of a so-called business case. Business cases are also being increasingly used in other organizations and sectors. However, not much is known yet about the qualities of the instrument. This article shows that the use of the business case in a specific case had value. For this case study, over 100 very diverse mainly digital sources, such as official decision-making documents, research reports and statement via social and other media, were used. In this way, in-depth knowledge was acquired about one of the mechanisms that underpinned the creation of the park. The sources are carriers of the narrative ‘Wildlands Emmen.’ Despite the success, a warning is called for. A healthy focus on results can result in ‘escalating’ commitment. Then the parties involved are linked to the project to such an extent that a way back is excluded by definition. Although the business case should be a ‘business-like’ justification, it seems that the mechanism of ‘self-justification’ enters into force. One shows through rationalization that previous decisions were right and then acts on these decisions in a sensible and competent manner. However, alternatives are not explicitly weighed against each other and there can be a tendency to underestimate the risks.

The Dutch minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Plasterk, has resolved to obligate municipalities to set up an independent audit office. Other variants of the audit office function, in which counselors themselves are members of local audit offices or commissions, will be forbidden. The minister’s assumption is that an independent audit office will control the municipal government more effectively. The disappearance of counselors as member of audit offices (or commissions) may have implications for the impact of local audit reports. The supposed effect of the membership of counselors is that there will be better coordination between the local audit office (or commission) and the need for control of the municipality. In addition one might suppose that the presence of counselors in the audit office guarantees that the audit reports will receive enough attention in the municipal council. Both effects concern the impact of local audit investigation. In this article, the authors study the extent to which membership of counselors really contributes to the impact of local audit investigation on the basis of quantitative (a survey amongst secretaries of local audit offices) and qualitative (an explorative case study in a number of Dutch municipalities) research. The results show that the membership of counselors as such does not lead to a greater impact, but that a proper consultation is required between the audit office and the municipal council.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In many OECD countries, healthcare sectors have become increasingly concentrated as a result of mergers. However, detailed empirical insight into why healthcare providers merge is lacking. Also, we know little about the influence of national healthcare policies on mergers. We fill this gap in our knowledge by analyzing the results of a survey study among Dutch executives about mergers between healthcare organizations in the period from 2005 to 2012. During this period, Dutch healthcare providers faced a number of policy changes, including increased competition, more pressure from purchasers (health insurers), growing financial risks, de-institutionalization of long-term care and decentralization of healthcare services to municipalities. Our study shows that Dutch healthcare providers predominantly merge to improve the provision of healthcare services and to strengthen their market position. Efficiency and financial reasons are also important drivers of merger activity in healthcare. Motives for mergers seem to be related to changes in health policy, in particular to the increasing pressure from competitors, insurers and municipalities.

Bij bijvoorbeeld de bouw van een gemeentelijk multifunctioneel centrum of de aanschaf van een nieuw computersysteem wordt bijna standaard om een business case gevraagd, om daarmee een zakelijke rechtvaardiging van de te nemen beslissing te verschaffen: nut en noodzaak moeten goed uit de doeken worden gedaan. Dit artikel presenteert de eerste resultaten van een zoektocht naar de (vermeende) kwaliteiten van dit besluitvormingsinstrument. Als ijkpunt voor het praktische gebruik van de business case wordt een nieuw ideaaltype van de business case geconstrueerd. De bestaande definities bieden daarvoor afzonderlijk onvoldoende houvast. Aan de hand van het ideaalmodel wordt vervolgens onderzocht hoe de business case in het publieke debat wordt gebruikt. Het datamateriaal bestaat uit 244 nieuwsberichten uit binnen- en buitenland over uiteenlopende business cases. Het artikel laat zien dat de business case sterk in opkomst is en zijn weg vindt in een divers palet van maatschappelijke thema’s en sectoren. Kwalitatieve argumenten voeren sterk de boventoon ten opzichte van cijfermatige inzichten. De belangrijkste kracht van de business case in het publieke domein ligt in het gegeven dat zowel de belangen van initiatiefnemers en bestuurders als van andere stakeholders worden benoemd.

Politicians and scientists in the Netherlands often claim that only municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants (so called ‘100,000+ municipalities’) have enough administrative power to be able to carry out their tasks in the future well. This is also the case for the responsibilities that recently have handed over to the Dutch municipalities as part of the three decentralizations. Against the background of this debate, the authors of this essay argue that the experiences of the four European microstates – Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino –may offer an interesting frame of reference where it concerns the delivery of public services. These four countries have all the responsibilities and tasks of a sovereign state, but at the same time three of the four countries have a population of fewer than 40,000 inhabitants. Also, the fourth country is smaller than a 100,000+ municipality. Despite the small size of these states, their public services are of an exceptionally high level. Therefore this essay tries to answer two questions: How is this possible? What can we learn from the experiences of these microstates about the debate on scale and administrative power in the Netherlands?

De meerwaarde van lokale rekenkamers is nog niet vanzelfsprekend. In dit artikel betogen de auteurs dat deze wordt beïnvloed door drie factoren: de relatie met de andere spelers in het lokale politiek-bestuurlijke krachtenveld, de kwaliteit van hun werk, en de processen waarmee dat werk een plaats krijgt in de gemeentelijke beleids- en besluitvorming. De ultieme meerwaarde van lokale rekenkamers zoeken zij niet in de onafhankelijkheid van de rekenkamer of in diens onderzoeken an sich, maar in de onzichtbare beïnvloeding van beleids- en besluitvorming door de robuuste positie van het instituut, in termen van onder meer waardering, gezag en vanzelfsprekendheid; een positie die wordt beïnvloed door bovengenoemde drie factoren. De toekomstige opgave voor gemeenteraden en rekenkamers ligt er dan ook in om verder te kijken dan de structuur, en met elkaar het gesprek over de rekenkamer te voeren op de punten relatie, kwaliteit en proces.