The Dutch public sector wants to become more diverse and inclusive, which seems necessary for the legitimacy and confidence of the government. This explorative study took place within two Dutch national government departments and shows how scientific insights into diversity and inclusion are reflected in government practice. Four results can be derived from this study: (1) The sense of urgency around diversity and inclusion has a stimulating effect, but the embedding of the theme into both departments deserves attention. (2) There is a wealth of perspectives and interventions, but hardly any attention to the connection with society. (3) The themes of leadership and inclusion should be higher on the agenda. (4) Psychological security determines an inclusive culture.
Important conclusions and recommendations are:

• Formulate a clear vision of diversity and inclusion, and involve the entire organisation in the approach.

• Strengthen an inclusive culture, and invest in inclusive leadership.

• Promote diversity at the top of the organisation.

Notably, the influx of diversity in the workforce is still the priority of many public organisations. However, the flow and retention of these employees needs more attention. There lies an important task for executives. These conclusions and recommendations form a basis for organisations that want to move forward with policies and interventions on diversity and inclusion.

Dutch municipalities and provinces have been obliged to have an audit office or audit office function for about 20 years. How does the audit office work nowadays and what contribution does it make to decentralized administration? That is the question at the center of this article. To this end, the authors list the available knowledge about audit offices or committees and present the results of their own analysis of 982 audit reports from 234 audit offices or committees from 308 Dutch municipalities. The audit office or committee has been institutionalized in the vast majority of municipalities and in all provinces. Council members are increasingly less likely to (also) be members of this board and the output has increased slightly from approximately one to an average of one and a half surveys per year. Where initially mainly business management-oriented subjects were examined, some broadening to more policy-related themes has taken place. Municipal councilors are quite satisfied with their audit office or committee. At the same time, the actual social effects of policy are rarely measured in audit institutions. Moreover, council members make little use of audit reports in controlling the municipal board, and audit offices or committees also add little to their framework-setting role. Little is known about the extent to which the research of the audit offices makes a more objective contribution to the administration and strengthening of the functioning of the municipal council, which is also a theme for future research.

In the more than 15 years that decentralized audit offices have existed in the Netherlands, little attention has been paid to the research methods they use. This article focuses on how the research methods used by decentralized audit offices have developed and to what extent they use new technology. New technology has changed a lot in 15 years, which offers new possibilities for research, but also raises new questions. Based on an empirical analysis of audit reports, it can be concluded that decentralized audit offices adopt a standard approach to document and file analysis and interviews, with only limited application of innovative technology. On the basis of a theoretical exploration of the relevant literature and a simple qualitative analysis of research by the Netherlands Court of Audit and the Rathenau Institute, a framework has been developed in which the opportunities and risks of the application of new technology in decentralized audit office research are described. This can provide a handle for future application. Decentralized audit offices can use this for (more) reflection on their research methods and innovation, in order to develop to maturity while remaining young.

The impact of audit office reports has received little attention in the scientific literature. In this article, various forms of impact have been distinguished with the help of Public Administration literature and factors that promote the use of evaluations have been distinguished. This theoretical framework was subsequently used for empirical research into the effect of audit office research. The extent to which the recommendations have had an impact was investigated in 20 Dutch municipalities with the aid of impact reports from audit institutions. Out of 176 publications, 94% of the 1216 recommendations were adopted by the city council. This means that the procedural impact is high. Of the 731 recommendations that could be checked at 17 municipalities, the local audit offices report that 58% had been fully implemented, 19% partially and 15% not or not tackled differently. The three categories of success factors from the scientific literature were visible in the practice of the audit offices. This applies most strongly to impact factors related to evaluation quality, in particular the factors related to communications standards, clear recommendations, timeliness and relevance to the decision maker. As far as research and decision-making factors are concerned, the commitment of the organization and the political climate are the most important factors for audit institutions. Finally, the involvement of stakeholders promotes the impact as a catalyst. The article concludes with practical lessons for promoting the processing of audit reports.

In the light of the broader debate on the mediatization of politics, this study wants to better understand how the media perceptions and media behaviour of politicians are related to their appearances in the news. We opt for an innovative actor-centred approach to actually measure the views and actions of individual politicians. We combine surveys conducted with 142 Belgian representatives with data on politicians’ external communication behaviour and on their appearances in television news, newspapers and news websites. The results show that media behaviour is not so much related to beliefs of media importance. We do find a significant positive relationship between strategic media behaviour and media attention suggesting that politicians who put in more effort appear more often in various news media. However, this positive relationship depends on the specific form of strategic communication and the political position of the legislator. Our study adds to the mediatization literature by showing how and when politicians are successful in obtaining media attention.

This article assesses the size and diversity of Belgium’s interest group population by triangulating four data sources. Combining various sources allows us to describe which societal interests get mobilised, which interest organisations become politically active and who gains access to the policy process and obtains news media attention. Unique about the project is the systematic data collection, enabling us to compare interest representation at the national, Flemish and Francophone-Walloon government levels. We find that: (1) the national government level remains an important venue for interest groups, despite the continuous transfer of competences to the subnational and European levels, (2) neo-corporatist mobilisation patterns are a persistent feature of interest representation, despite substantial interest group diversity and (3) interest mobilisation substantially varies across government levels and political-administrative arenas.

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

Healthcare is often dominated by the curative domain. Yet, for a new way of improving of and accounting for quality of care, we have to shift our focus to the care for people with disabilities. Since long, quality of care is translated into performance indicators and standards. This reductive way of measuring quality was pursued for the entire healthcare sector. Where this might fit in with hospital care, it was experienced as constraining in care for the disabled. In this sector it was seen as a poor representation of the plurality of healthcare provision. A number of ‘quality rebels’ aimed to create a more suitable and rich Quality Framework for the sector, with attention for objective, subjective and intersubjective dimensions of care. In this article, we analyze the way in which the sector has realized this aim, and we show how this rebellious sector succeeded in transforming the idea of accountability for quality of care, by emphasizing on the reflection and learning processes that take place at all levels of the sector, and beyond. A new approach which requires a continuous cycle of disrupting, creating, and maintaining institutionalized patterns of thinking and doing. It requires ‘rebel learning’.

The recent decentralization of many healthcare and welfare responsibilities from the national to the municipal level in the Netherlands was aimed at reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and giving discretion to the professional. However, this is not (yet) fully achieved. Therefore, calls have been made for more purpose-driven organizations. Pro-social rule breaking, which refers to acts of rule breaking motivated by the benefits that this creates for citizens, might be a way to make organizations more focused on their organizational purpose. Since little is known about the antecedents of pro-social rule breaking, this article looks at the possible effects of red tape and supportive leadership on pro-social rule breaking behavior of professionals. Based on a quantitative large-n study of professionals in the social domain, the results show that red tape significantly affects pro-social rule breaking. Stimulating leadership does not affect pro-social rule breaking behavior, which may be caused by the fact that intended leader support is not be perceived that way by the professional. The article concludes with a discussion on the desirability of rule breaking in a public sector context, followed by practical implications and further avenues for researchers.

Bureaucracy and ‘red tape’ are seen as a main annoyance in healthcare practice. ‘Rules’ like guidelines and performance indicators would withdraw professionals from their real work, that is, helping patients. However, rules may also improve quality of care if they foster high quality practices. In this research, we explore how healthcare rebels deal with rules in their everyday work: how rebels ignore, engender and bend rules to build new environments for doing good care. Drawing on ethnographic research in three hospitals in the Netherlands (2017-2018), we reveal how rebels build and care for clinical microsystems containing their own clinical unit and related contexts (e.g. pharmaceutical suppliers, ICT companies, primary care) to evoke alternative and situated practices of good care delivery – i.e. focusing on quality of life and person-centred care. Rebels enact mechanisms of decoupling and recoupling to disconnect rules that embark on good care in specific patient situations, and build new routines that foster good care. However, such caring practices are hard to generalize as they often occur ‘under the radar’ and hence remain hardly noticed to the outside world. We argue that through revising accounting processes, and paying more attention to narratives of good care, more convenient quality systems could be found.