This article describes the relationship between central government and municipalities and to what extent this relationship has an impact on local decision-making. The commonly used characterization of this relationship as a principal-agent relationship offers many leads but has some shortcomings. That is why this is compared with the stewardship theory, assuming a more equal and constructive cooperation. Both theories have been incorporated into a broader model on management styles, which creates a more nuanced description of the cooperation in public administration. The article focuses on the case of Rotterdam in 2015, at a time of political turmoil in the Netherlands about the shelter of people without residence permit. The analysis is carried out using a measuring instrument for policy freedom, as policy freedom is a good determinant for which management style is used. The research is conducted from a local perspective, with emphasis on the position of councilors. The national government sometimes profiles itself as a principal to them, but in practice council members resist and turn the relationship around, hereby holding the government accountable for its role and responsibility.

Both in a legal and in a practical sense, the tasks of executives in school boards are difficult to delineate. Consequently, credibility of boards and their members has become topical. What makes an executive board credible? How do executives become and remain credible? In this article we address these questions and present the results of our qualitative analysis of the way in which executives in primary education give meaning and substance to their efforts. Based on the empirical results, it appears that executives of the board are well aware of the need to be perceived credible. It also appears that they take this into account in their daily behavior and interactions.

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.

Het evalueren van maatschappelijke relevantie is niet altijd vanzelfsprekend voor financiers of onderzoekers. Dit lijkt vaak te abstract of verheven. Met name onderzoekers zijn gewend om de effectiviteit van een interventie op een bepaald doel of een bepaalde doelgroep te meten, maar breiden hun bevindingen niet uit naar hoe dit relevant kan zijn voor het veld. Aan de hand van een praktijkvoorbeeld, het ZonMw-onderzoeksprogramma Suïcidepreventie, wordt besproken hoe de maatschappelijke relevantie is geëvalueerd en welke uitdagingen dit met zich mee brengt. Zo is er geen eenduidige objectieve manier om maatschappelijke relevantie te evalueren. Ook waren de onderzoeksmethoden van de projecten binnen het onderzoeksprogramma erg verschillend. De aanbevelingen vanuit dit project kunnen toekomstige onderzoekers helpen om de maatschappelijke relevantie van hun onderzoek te evalueren. Verdere ontwikkeling en implementatie van gestandaardiseerde methoden of tools die de complexiteit binnen en tussen projecten vastleggen en maatschappelijke relevantie kunnen beoordelen, zijn nodig.

The increasing datafication of society brings both opportunities and ethical dilemmas for public organisations. The aim of this research (in Dutch municipalities) is to gain insight into how ethical leadership can support professionals in a public organisation with ethical dilemmas about data use. Based on literature on data and ethical leadership, the authors have developed a conceptual model that indicates how an ethical leader can provide intrinsic and extrinsic support. The model was tested on the basis of 16 vignette interviews with municipal public professionals who work on providing insight into and combating subversion with data. Their findings show that ethical leaders can intrinsically provide support by being trustworthy and independent, leading by example, communicating about ethics and data use, and empowering others. In addition, ethical leaders can provide extrinsic support with ethical tools, such as ethical codes on data use, an ethics committee and training.

Municipalities are in a new phase of development. This requires rethinking how citizens can be involved in these developments. Instead of asking citizens to respond to municipal project initiatives, one of the (new) ways is to let citizens have their say about where, what and how urban improvements can be made. In this essay, the authors discuss what they mean by ‘areas for improvement’ and discuss two experiments – in two of the oldest Dutch cities: Maastricht and Nijmegen – of citizen participation that are intended to address such areas. In their view, in this way ‘a new, but obviously not the only, way to Rome is created’ in terms of citizen participation.

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.

Promoting societal engagement with nature is an important policy ambition of Dutch nature policy. This article provides an overview of how the provinces together with stakeholders have shaped their policy to increase the societal engagement of citizens with nature in recent years. The goals and governance modes embedded in the policy programs were analyzed, and results and experiences of the various involved parties with the policy were reviewed. Based on a national review and in dept study of three cases, this article describes different regional approaches for increasing societal engagement. In addition it discusses the recent developments within this policy field.
The analysis shows that provinces pursue different goals with societal engagement. It is both a policy goal in itself – provinces would like to increase the number of citizens involved – as well as a means of achieving a broader range of other goals (welfare, health, quality of life, shared responsibility, funding, support for nature policy). Provinces use different governance modes; they act as responsive and increasingly networking government. They use various policy instruments; financial support for initiatives and intermediaries, network building and communication. Furthermore, the analysis shows that past experiences have shaped provinces’ governance mode and that these are adapted accordingly. A shift is noted from leaving the initiative with communities to more direct facilitation by the government. Also governing based on performance, linked to new public management, is on the rise, as there is increasing demand for accountability of provincial expenditure.

In the period 2018-2021 the municipality of Amsterdam conducted an experiment with beneficiaries of social assistance. Benefit recipients could voluntarily participate in the experiment. They were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions, viz. ‘extra attention’ (in which they received more frequent counseling and support), ‘self-direction’ (which offered the participants the freedom to make their own choices), and the ‘comparison group’ (the control group which received the customary treatment). Under all three conditions, participants who worked part-time could earn up to €200 a month on top of their social assistance benefit. A little over 800 participants (of the 5,000 in total) were followed closely by researchers of the Amsterdam University of Applied Science (HvA) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Although the participants who got ‘extra attention’ did not significantly flow out more frequently from the social assistance system than participants in the other two conditions, they did more often have a part-time job at the end of the experiment. There were no significant differences between the conditions with respect to participation in other non-paid activities, such as voluntary work and informal care. In-depth interviews with a selection of the participants showed, among other outcomes, that they considered the financial uncertainty as a main hindrance for doing (more) part-time work.

This article examines the experiences of Dutch municipalities with the so called ‘basic job’. Basic jobs are primarily meant for individuals lacking realistic prospects on the mainstream labour market. These jobs should provide good work on a permanent basis. In both Groningen and Rotterdam, the basic job is used to improve the labour market perspectives of long-term job seekers. These are still relatively small interventions, which show that the basic job contributes to an improvement in the participants’ chances of work, their health and well-being. At the same time, it’s a costly experiment, in which the municipalities are net contributors and scalability only seems possible through the introduction of a national room for experimentation with accompanying monitor research and by adopting a broader perspective on economic growth. Only then, a more definitive judgment can be made about the viability of the basic job.

This study examines the quality of visitation in three government sectors in the Netherlands: academic education (training), urban policy (urban municipalities) and municipal authorities. The focus is mainly on the visitation of municipal authorities in the Dutch province Limburg. The assessment of the visitation quality of university study programmes and of major cities policy must yield hypotheses to determine the quality of the visitation of municipal authorities that have been visited. The object of study is therefore ‘visitation’, in particular ‘visitation quality’. The visitations of university studies were viewed from four quality perspectives, namely on the design quality, the process quality, the assessing and the concluding quality, and usability or utilisation. This is also the case with the visitation of the major cities’ policy and of the Limburg municipal authorities. The question is, of course, what the analysis of the quality of all the assessments in three sectors yields, with special attention to the assessment of municipal authorities. Is it clear after that analysis how this quality inspection should be carried out? The study provides a wealth of insights and shows the state of the administrative strength of the inspected Limburg municipal authorities. A publication of this study has been postponed for more than five years, because the author wanted to investigate whether the administrative strength measurements were used in the longer term.

In 2020 and 2021 there were many examples of manifestations and disturbances in the Netherlands in which social media played an important role. On a number of occasions, fights were fought in the physical world that originated in the online world, for example from the drill rap scene. The increase in victims of digital crime also became apparent. During this period, a number of Dutch mayors came to the media with a clear message that they wanted more options/powers to respond to this. Previous research has shown that mayors cannot use powers online, but they can maintain order in other ways. Students from NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences (in Leeuwarden) therefore conducted an exploratory study in the autumn of 2020, in collaboration with the Cybersafety research group, into the practical possibilities and (political) views with regard to administrative law options: a digital restraining order. In this contribution, attention is paid to the question of whether a digital version of the physical restraining order as a formal authority of mayors can contribute to the prevention of disturbances of public order that have their source in the online world.

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.

Since 1989, the parties participating in the Dutch elections have been obliged to opt for the legal form of an association with full legal capacity, if they wish to be stated on the ballot under their own name. What this has meant in practice for the structure of local party organisations is, however, unknown. For this reason, this article focuses on the question of how local parties are organised. How have the parties arranged their internal functioning and what human and financial resources do they have at their disposal? A second reason to take a closer look at the organisation of local parties lies in their increased electoral significance. Since 2010, as a collective category, they have managed to attract the largest percentage of voters, with 29% of the total number of votes in the 2018 municipal elections. This justifies the question of whether the social significance of local parties is now just as strong. How do local parties organise their members, sympathisers and volunteers. On the basis of this exploratory study into the organisation of local parties, it can be concluded that both the internal and the external facets of the party organisation are relatively highly developed. Where, according to the literature, national political parties place less emphasis on the external mobilisation function, we see that local parties perform better than the branches of national parties in terms of both the internal organisational function and the external mobilisation function.

In this study, the authors analyse the development of the 46 Dutch local parties that received at least ten per cent of the vote in the 2014 municipal elections as a new party. The aim is to determine which factors are most relevant to the successful entry and survival of this group of parties. To this end, they conduct interviews with leaders of these parties, but also, for comparison, with the leaders of parties who failed to win a seat. An important common feature of the most successful local parties is that they express dissatisfaction with local politics in an appealing way and offer voters perspective. They do this by putting people on the list who are known in the small communities and who are actively involved. The following factors are present in varying compositions among the parties that even exceeded their election victory four years later: unity in the party or at least no ‘hassle’ visible to society, visible and appealing to residents, having clearly achieved something and being able to transmit that to society. Most founders of the most successful newcomers were previously politically active for a local branch of a political party. It is also striking that three quarters of the most successful newcomers come from municipalities with a maximum of 40,000 inhabitants.

Recent events and media reporting have turned the spotlights on the role and behaviour of senior civil servants and their relationships with political office holders. In this article I ask how political-administrative interactions are perceived and enacted in the current Dutch core executive. I answer this research question by providing eight concise observations based on extensive qualitative fieldwork (300 hours) and dozens of interviews among top public servants and political executives. The observations fall into two heuristic categories: Institutional context and role and behaviour. Together, they provide an impressionistic picture how work of government elites takes shape, situated in the institutional context. These findings are particularly important as increasing media pressure and enhanced ‘publicness’ of public servants call for a stocktake of political-administrative relations and administrative behaviour. The findings have implications for both students and practitioners of public administration.

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.