In this paper we study the institutional impact of the Dutch senior executive service (Dutch: Algemene Bestuursdienst, hereafter: ABD) on the craft of senior civil servants in Dutch government. Our study rests upon a thorough evaluation conducted in 2020. For this study, we interviewed 51 (former) cabinet ministers, members of parliament, senior civil servants, HR experts and ‘outsiders’. We structure our paper in three parts. First, we discuss the founding principles and motives for the institutional renewal that became the ABD. Second, we discuss the ABD’s practice. Third, we signal and interpret the outcomes of the ABD so far. This results in five critical observations. We conclude the ABD has become an institutional fact. Nonetheless, the ABD could have done more to transcend the focus on individual appointments and development of collective craftmanship, and to visibly shape and protect such craftmanship.

Employability is often framed as a win-win situation for both organizations and employees. It is therefore no surprise that governments’ management development policies usually heavily invest in the employability of public managers. Whether this approach has potential downsides for both parties has been overlooked so far. The aim of this article is to present a critical view on employability of public managers. We illustrate the added value as well as risks of employability investments by using recent Dutch data on senior civil servants. Our findings indicate that employability has benefits but that it can become ‘too much of a good thing’ leading to risks as organizational amnesia and loss of managerial credibility.

Research integrity has received increased attention, in the literature as well as in policy. A host of initiatives is supporting its promotion. However, misconduct will not cease to exist and needs to be reported, by whistleblowers. It takes a lot of courage to blow the whistle as it can have an enormous impact on the whistleblower’s career and personal well-being – and that of colleagues and researchers associated with the perpetrator. Therefore, it is important to be cognisant of the stressful process that accompanies the act of whistleblowing, to provide clear and accessible procedures to report misconduct, and to support whistleblowers throughout the process. Furthermore, it is essential that appropriate whistleblower protection measures are in place and enforced. Based on the current review of the literature, we provide some recommendations for policy and argue that an obligation to report scientific misconduct would currently do more harm than good.

Coproductie is niet meer weg te denken uit de Nederlandse bestuurspraktijk. Hierbij ligt de focus vooral op de lokale bestuurslaag, waar coproductie makkelijker te implementeren zou zijn. Toch bestaan er wel degelijk coproductie-initiatieven op regionaal en nationaal niveau. De lokale, regionale en nationale overheid vervullen echter staatsrechtelijk en institutioneel gezien andere functies en voeren andere taken uit. Daarnaast verschilt de (gepercipieerde) afstand tussen burger en overheid tussen de bestuurslagen, evenals het abstractieniveau van de onderwerpen die op de betreffende bestuurslaag worden behandeld. Bestaand onderzoek richt zich echter nauwelijks op de vraag of coproductie hiermee wel op dezelfde wijze wordt vormgegeven op de verschillende bestuurslagen. Dit exploratieve onderzoek verkent deze verschillen door het bestuderen van zes coproductie-initiatieven op het gebied van duurzaamheid en ruimtelijke ordening en pleit voor meer onderzoek naar coproductie op regionaal en nationaal niveau.

From 1964 (until 1990 globally) political science would become the dominant approach within the (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands. This position took over from the legal approach. During this period, the concepts of politics, policy and decision-making were central to research and theory formation. In the period since 1990, we have seen a broader perspective emerging on institutions, management and governance in which Public Administration will increasingly profile itself as an independent discipline. This essay harks back to the importance of the legal approach for (local) administrative sciences from the time of the man who is regarded in the Netherlands as the founder of the discipline of Public Administration: Gerrit van Poelje. More specifically, the author addresses the question of the relationship between Public Administration and legal science in the more than one hundred years of (local) administrative science. After Gerrit van Poelje (his dissertation from 1914 is an important milestone in that history), the author discusses eleven other key persons who have made their own contribution to that history at various universities based on their legal expertise (in the broad senseHe concludes the essay with a brief discussion of the relevance of law and legal science for the future of public administration (the field) and Public Administration (the discipline).

Local policy freedom is often equated with the formal policy freedom of municipalities and thus with the formal boundaries that determine the local playing field. In this article, we question this approach. It is not clear to what extent formal policy freedom is a good measure for the ‘real’ policy freedom of municipalities, and thus for the policy freedom that municipalities use in policy implementation. Does more formal policy freedom necessarily lead to more used policy freedom? Moreover, not every municipality uses formal policy freedom in the same way. To indicate variance in policy discretion used, reference is often made to official capacity, scale and political changes. However, it is unclear to what extent these variables have an impact on local policy freedom. The authors investigate the link between formal and used policy freedom, official capacity, scale and political change on the basis of Flemish policy reform. Based on an analysis of financial data, they conclude that more formal policy freedom can be an incentive for more used policy freedom, but also that the explanatory power of administrative capacity, scale and political change is limited. In both research and policy, we need more attention for the value of social interaction, soft skills and networking.

Regionalization is foregrounded among policymakers as a solution to the complex problems elderly care is facing, such as a pertinent staff shortage, a greying population and a lack of suitable accommodation. In this article, following a decentered approach, we analyze how field parties like nursing homes and policymakers in interaction give shape to regional collaborations within a market-oriented institutional healthcare context. Our findings show the emerging frictions, due to layered institutional arrangements and the proliferation of policy initiatives and partnerships. We find different responses of institutional actors to these frictions; actors holding off closer regional cooperation, actors creating urgency and commitment to organize care regionally, creating interstices in rules and regulations and building regional networks and care infrastructures. We argue that a focus on the iterative processes through which actors on different layers of the healthcare system give shape to policies adds a valuable perspective to the study of policy changes. We conclude that ‘layered work’ – mobilizing and working with and between different organizational and policy layers simultaneously – is required to develop appropriate (layered) ways to deal with complex problems.

This article describes and explains the development of the regional construct for the coordination of medical assistance in accidents and disasters, the emergency medical services in the region (GHOR), in the Netherlands in the period 1996 to 2020. The authors distinguish four stages of organisational development, which they analyse from a multi-actor perspective consisting of three elements: the impact of disasters and (negative) evaluations, the institutional context and the bureaucratic battle surrounding the GHOR. The GHOR was a solution for a perceived insufficiently coordinated functioning of all parties involved in medical assistance. The GHOR was positioned in a complex way. This made it predictable that the multidisciplinary GHOR process would gradually be integrated within the ‘nearby’ regular mono-disciplinary acute care process and the structures for it. This article gives policymakers involved in disaster and crisis management more insight into the history and development of the GHOR over the last two decades. This insight is important now that the added value of the GHOR has come under discussion, partly due to the doubts of the Evaluation Committee for the Security Regions Act, and decisions about its future have to be taken. For administrative scientists, this case study shows that public administration’s ability to foresee and break through known organisational development patterns is still inadequate.

Local political parties are clearly on the rise in the Netherlands in both the municipal council and the municipal board. Their average percentage of council seats increased from 25% in 1998 to 37% in 2018 and the percentage of councillors from 21% to 32%. This coincided with a greatly increased fragmentation. For example, the average number of political parties on the council rose from 6.5 in 1998 to 8.0 in 2018 and the number of parties providing one or more aldermen increased from 2.8 to 3.4 during this period. Fragmentation expressed in the number of effective parties shows a similar trend. If we use the Chapel Hill score, it appears that the average political colour of both the municipal council and the alderman part in the municipal board has shifted to the right. This is mainly because political parties are becoming increasingly right wing according to this index and not so much because there are more local votes for right-wing parties. Significant differences in the representative representation are also noted. The local parties as well as the Socialist Party (SP) are less successful than average in converting their seats on the council into councillor seats, while the three large traditional (and especially the CDA) and smaller Christian parties have succeeded above average in this.

Welke kennis is nodig om zicht te krijgen op de te verwachten effecten van beleid? Hiervoor moet worden ingeschat of een beleidsinterventie effectief zal zijn en binnen een bepaalde context zal uitwerken zoals beoogd. Twee typen kennisclaims zijn hierbij van belang, namelijk die over de verklarende mechanismes tussen interventie en uitkomst, en die over de ondersteunende factoren die voorwaardelijk zijn voor de uitkomst. Dit standpunt wordt geïllustreerd aan de hand van twee voorbeelden van beleidsinterventies in de praktijk: de inzet van kleinere schoolklassen en de publieke registratie van zedendelinquenten.

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.

Governments around the world responded at roughly the same time but in several different ways to the emerging threat of COVID-19 in early 2020. This article sets out the nature of the different strategies that emerged over the course of the pandemic, focussing on the policy tools deployed. Some of these efforts were successful in containing the coronavirus while others were not, in some cases due to poor initial choices and in others due to poor implementation of the chosen strategy. Although the initial understanding each government had of the nature of the disease was the same, different state capacities and different levels of preparedness and effective leadership can be seen to have resulted over time in the emergence of six distinct approaches to the pandemic which, once deployed, proved difficult, although not impossible, to change as the pandemic unfolded.

Since January 2020, European countries have implemented a wide range of restrictions to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet governments have also implemented democratic compensators in order to offset the negative impacts of restrictions. This article aims to account for the variation of their use between Belgium, the Netherlands and France. We analyse three drivers: the strength of counterpowers, the ruling parties’ ideological leanings and political support. Building on an original data set, our results distinguish between embedded and ad hoc compensators. We find that ad hoc compensators are championed mainly by counterpowers, but also by ideology of the ruling coalitions in Belgium and the Netherlands and used strategically to maintain political support in France. Evidence on the link between embedded compensators and counterpowers is more ambiguous.