Barack Obama’s autobiography ‘A Promised Land’, of which the Dutch translation was published in 2020, is a clearly and vividly written (political) life story devoted to the first term of his US presidency. Of course it also mentions the journey to the top and the efforts he had to make to achieve it. Not an easy task for a young, inexperienced newcomer, who is also African-American. The book is a candid account of what happened during the primaries and his first term in office. It gives the impression that it is based on diary notes, which he later processed, and then turned into a successful story by the editors of the publishing house. The book is also pedantic to a certain extent: it points out what is worth pursuing, how to approach things, and what you can learn from your experiences (and mistakes). By extension, it contains numerous (intended) messages and (life) lessons. Above all, it provides a fascinating insight into the immense struggle that Obama had to fight to be able and allowed to hold the highest office in his country as a black man. Nico Nelissen also discusses the question of what local politicians and local administrators can gain from this autobiography.

In this political philosophy article we contribute to the question whether the covid-measures of the state fundamentally change the relation between state and society. One the one hand, we seek to explain this from the perspective of different forms of power government applies. On the other hand, we seek to understand the nature of freedom and the legitimation to restrict freedom. We notice in contemporary administration a habitus that is extremely ambivalent. On the one side, freedom is perceived as not being restrained to do, say or think whatever one wants (negative freedom). On the other hand, we notice that this freedom is not entrusted to civilians (or civilians do not entrust it to themselves), but is materialized, in great detail, by government itself. Although a pandemic may legitimize extraordinary measures, we argue that, for the sake of the future of our political democracy, the state and its administration needs to develop more self-consciousness regarding the forms of power it applies. Also, it needs to be accountable to what extent it values freedom.

This article digs into the relationship between voters’ political resentment and their electoral choice in 2019 by focusing on the respondents’ emotions towards politics. Using the RepResent 2019 voter survey, eight emotions are analysed in their relation to voting behaviour: four negative (anger, bitterness, worry and fear) and four positive (hope, relief, joy and satisfaction). We confirm that voters’ emotional register is at least two-dimensional, with one positive and one negative dimension, opening the possibility for different combinations of emotions towards politics. We also find different emotional patterns across party choices, and more crucially, we uncover a significant effect of emotions (especially negative ones) on vote choice, even when controlling for other determinants. Finally, we look at the effect of election results on emotions and we observe a potential winner vs. loser effect with distinctive dynamics in Flanders and in Wallonia.

This paper discusses how Michel Foucault’s governmentality approach contributes to our understanding of the climate crisis and climate policy. After adopting a governmentality approach to the domain of climate change, the paper highlights how this approach contrasts with dominant conceptions of governance in Public Administration. Finally, the paper argues that Foucault is an innovative and important thinker and should be considered a classic for critical governance researchers.

Over the past four decades of its existence, Dutch public administration has developed into a science which mainly produces knowledge that either caters to a very specific scientific niche or aims to optimize policy processes in an instrumental fashion. This type of knowledge is not well equipped to provide answers or improve understanding of the challenges of our time. We argue that public administration needs to shift its focus more towards producing reflexive knowledge in the form of what we would call critical public administration. Based on the contributions in this special issue, this article outlines what the contribution of such a critical public administration could be. The article shows that, even though it is theory driven, critical public administration is close to policy practice and can fuel a productive public debate by imagining alternative futures.

By analysing the current self-presentation of educational programs, this article problematizes the dominating instrumental knowledge within Public Administration. By foregrounding ‘productive subversion’, the authors provide a perspective on more reflexive types of knowledge and methods, to re-value educational programs within Public Administration.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

The word neoliberalism has often been the object of fierce controversy in the Dutch public debate. Prominent intellectuals have equated neoliberalism with extremism and fundamentalism, with some going as far as calling it a ‘totalitarian faith’. The opposite camp in the debate has argued that neoliberalism is largely a self-invented bogeyman of the left, a swearword used by critics to engage in an intellectual witch-hunt. Of course, neoliberalism is not the only social science term suffering from a polemical status. Common concepts such as populism, socialism, nationalism or conservatism have given rise to similar lasting disagreements and comparable accusations of their derogatory use. What does appear to be exceptional about neoliberalism in the Dutch debate, is that very few conceptual and historical studies have been published on the subject. While the word neoliberalism is commonly employed in Dutch mainstream social science, many scholars seem to use the term without much further qualification. This paper explores the controversy and looks for ways to proceed beyond it. Drawing on a recent wave of international scholarship, it outlines an ideational approach to neoliberalism. After tracing the origins of the term neoliberalism, it closes with a preliminary example of an ideational analysis of Dutch neoliberalism.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

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.

In 2008 a global economic crisis broke out. Now we can look back at the crisis as a clearly ordered sequence of events. But at the time these events were experienced as unexpected, unordered and unpredictable: a shock situation. How did municipalities respond to this shock situation, to this economic crisis? This article describes how two Dutch municipalities, together with their societal partners, made sense of the economic crisis. This concerns the question of how they interpreted the crisis themselves, but also which actions ensued. From a constructivist position, the article considers how the two municipalities together with their partners made sense of the situation and this enabled them to implement measures that could mitigate the consequences of the crisis for their communities. Based on epistemological and methodological assumptions discourse analysis, the author investigates the role of language in this process of sense-making. This approach offers municipalities insight in the role of stories in policymaking and in determining new practical solutions. The article closes with some guidance on how this perspective can help to people and institutions to cope with comparable situations, specifically in the cooperation between municipalities and other organizations.

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.

The Dutch Municipal Personal Records Database is an IT-innovation that enables the use of the civil registry by hundreds of (semi-)public organisations. Literature review and a case study show how this ‘basis registration’ creates a deep tension between system and lifeworld: citizens who do not fit the system’s criteria lose their access to the major part of public services. The instrumental rationality of the system simplifies the use of addresses for service delivery to one single definition, turns the consequences of address mutations into a black box, and reduces the discretionary space of street-level bureaucrats to handle with social complexities and unintended consequences of the system. This type of IT-innovations can, therefore, come to resemble a ‘digital cage’: a highly disciplining system that hinges on hardware and software design instead of Weberian rules and procedures.

In this article I argue that the commonplace interpretation of neoliberalism in the Netherlands is mistaken. According to this interpretation the term ‘neoliberalism’ refers to a series of policies, including privatisation and deregulation, that were implemented in the Netherlands in the 1980’s in imitation of Thatcher and Reagan. I argue that it is not this series of policies but the justification underpinning them that is of a neoliberal nature. To support this claim I offer a brief genealogical history of neoliberal thought, which developed in the interwar period, by explicitly distinguishing itself from both 19th-century classical liberalism and contemporary modern liberalism. On the basis of this historical account I assert that neoliberalism adopts the foundational principles of classical and modern liberalism, but that it prescribes different formal principles of rational government. I conclude that this diction makes it possible to write a critical history of neoliberalism.