Reflection and debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

From 1964 (until around 1990), political science became the dominant approach within (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands. This position was taken over from the legal approach. In this period, the concepts of politics, policy and decision-making were central to research and theory. In the period up to 1990, we still see a predominantly administration-centric or government-centric perspective among these political scientists, although we already see incentives from different authors for a broader perspective (the politics, policy and decision-making concepts remain relevant however) that will continue in the period thereafter. This broader perspective (on institutions, management and governance) took shape in the period after 1990, in which Public Administration would increasingly profile itself as an independent (inter)discipline. This essay tells the story of the (local) administrative sciences in this period as envisaged by twelve high-profile professors. The story starts in 1990 in Leiden with the (gradual) transition from classical to institutional Public administration, as is revealed in the inaugural lecture by Theo Toonen. This is followed by eleven other administrative scientists, who are divided into four ‘generations’ of three professors for convenience. In conclusion, the author of this essay argues that there is mainly a need for what he calls a (self-)critical Public Administration.

Participatory research is increasingly being perceived as a democratic and transformative approach to social situations by both academics and policymakers. The article reflects on what it means to do participatory research, what it contributes to broader knowledge building, and why mess may not only need to be present in participatory research but encouraged. The purposes of participation and mess as nourishment for critical enquiry and more radical learning opportunities are considered and illuminated using case study material from the Family Based Positive Support Project.

In this article we discuss the role and position of different types of low income households in Dutch renewable energy transition processes using the concept of energy poverty. We explore which benefits and/or (dis)advantages (unintentionally) result from energy policies and regulations. And to what extent the distribution of these (dis)advantages benefit the position of different types of households. To this end we present an analytical perspective that enables us to evaluate renewable energy transition policies and governance on procedural and distributional aspects: paying attention to issues of recognition, equity and justice. The perspective draws on ideas in environmental justice literature and on ideas in social resilience literature. Combining these ideas in a new analytical framework proved to be useful in articulating some major policy challenges in relation to energy poverty in the Netherlands today.

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.

With her chair in urban development management, Ellen van Bueren investigates policy, governance and management issues. Cities, as economic and cultural centres in our society, are major consumers of resources. They not only contribute to problems such as climate change, but also experience the risks and consequences thereof. Technological solutions to these problems are difficult to implement. They require larger-scale system changes, or encounter resistance. Making cities sustainable not only requires technical solutions, but also institutional innovation. A socio-technical-ecological system approach to cities shows the coherence and complexity of issues. Issues play on multiple scales, are cross-sectoral, and require an interaction of citizens, companies, and governments. Moreover, the playing field between these groups of actors is changing rapidly, technological empowerment in particular has made the citizen a much more equal player alongside the government and business. Existing instruments and approaches are not sufficient to approach sustainability issues. To identify and address these issues, cooperation between science and society is necessary. Multi- and transdisciplinary learning environments enable researchers and students to identify issues, to answer questions and to try out solutions together with stakeholders. Such environments are indispensable for the development of sustainable cities.

Taking Lijphart’s work on consensus democracies as our point of departure, we signal a major shortcoming in Lijphart’s focus being almost exclusively on the political hardware of the state structure, leaving little attention for the administrative and bureaucratic characteristics of governance systems. We propose to expand the Lijphart’s model which overviews structural aspects of the executive and the state with seven additional features of the bureaucratic system. We argue that these features are critical for understanding the processes of policymaking and service delivery. Next, in order to better understand the functioning of the Netherlands and Belgium as consensus democracies, we provide a short analysis of the historical context and current characteristics of the political-administrative systems in both countries.

Lijphart (1999) argued that citizens tend to be more satisfied with democracy in consensual democracies than in majoritarian democracies and that the gap in democratic satisfaction between the winners and the losers of elections is smaller under consensualism. Twenty years on since then, this article takes stock of the literature on consensualism and political support. We find considerable ambiguity in the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence provided in this literature. Finally, we speculate on possible reasons for this ambiguity.

To address a range of interconnected food-related challenges, Dutch policymakers have invested in the development of integrated food policy in recent years. This article discusses this development in two parts. The first part contains a detailed description of the main events and lines of thinking that characterized the food policy process. From this description it becomes clear that food policy has been gradually developing towards a separate institutionalized policy domain. In the second part, this development is analysed from a policy integration perspective. This analysis shows that although considerable steps towards strengthened policy integration have been made, the Dutch ‘Food agenda’ does not yet proceed beyond symbolic levels. This particularly shows in the absence of concrete policy goals and in a policy instrument mix that has not been adjusted to strengthen consistency and effectiveness. In addition, the involvement of relevant ministries gradually decreased after the initial stages. The article concludes that the food policy process has arrived at a critical juncture: the next steps of the new government will prove decisive for whether food policy integration intentions will advance beyond the drawing board. Political and administrative leadership are identified as key conditions for such further steps to occur.

During a disaster or crisis, the response capacity of the government is put under extreme pressure. At the same time, citizens are often resilient in times of crisis and are increasingly capable of organizing themselves. Social media and online platforms have increased the possibilities for self-organization through improved connectivity. In practice, we see that governments struggle to deal with this form of self-organization, while it also offers a unique opportunity to increase the response capacity. The smart use of citizens’ initiatives offers opportunities and can increase the effectiveness of the government’s action. This article focuses on the following question: what role do online platforms play in smartly guiding the self-organization of citizens during crises and disasters? We answer the question on the basis of two examples: the role of online platforms in the aftermath of the earthquakes in Nepal in 2015, and the coordination of the reception of refugees during the crisis in the Netherlands in the winter of 2015-2016.

In a well-functioning democratic state under the rule of law, people’s representatives are not inappropriately forced to vote for or against a certain policy intention. Violent protest against a decision or proposal, like establishing an asylum center, however, can put a lot of pressure on politicians’ independent judgment. However, research into the effects of violence, threats and intimidation on democratic decision-making is scarce. Therefore the authors of this essay investigated the effects of violent protest against the establishment of asylum centers in three small municipalities in the Netherlands: Bernheze, Geldermalsen and Steenbergen. They conclude that the direct influence on democratic decision-making, however serious it is in itself, seems limited. But they do observe that violent protest damages the information exchange between citizens and politicians, and also disrupts the debate. Therefore, in policy and research, not only is attention needed for the resilience of individual politicians against violent protest, but also for the perverting effects of aggression and violence on the broader democratic decision-making process.

This article argues that the politics of participation, as it is currently implemented in Dutch society, departs from dubious policy assumptions. The main problems relate to a controversial idea of what societal resilience is about, which in turn is a side-effect of the neoliberal conception of man and society. In particular three policy assumptions seem contested, regarding respectively the self-governance norm, the required levels of trust, and the presence of a ‘loving culture’. While discussing these three topics, the article also introduces three contributions to this special issue, which will focus in more detail on the poverty of the assumptions underlying the participation paradigm.

Societal and technological developments (such as the digital and energy revolutions) move faster than existing institutions can keep up with. The developments may lead to a metaphorical institutional void, which brings questions about the nature of the void, the changing rules, practices and responsibilities, and about the strategies to deal with the void. The concept has been around for a while but (again) seems relevant to understand current socio-technological innovations and challenges, that also allow us to further conceptualise the institutional void. In this introduction to the issue, we discuss the concept of an institutional void and explore how it is used in various domains of study, including public administration. We argue for how the concept is relevant today and therein also introduce the topics that are discussed in this special issue.

Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly vulnerable. DDos attacks, phishing e-mails, ransomware, Russian hacker attacks on the head office of a political party are all part of our daily online businesses, for governments too. Governments play various roles here. They are internet users and rely on information on the internet. They are also suppliers of online information and in these roles they are connected to citizens, companies and other governmental organisations. Because of the role they play in society, the government possesses huge quantities of – often sensitive – information. They have the legal and moral obligation to be careful with this information and to secure it properly. Providing adequate security for information, however, is not an easy task for governments, especially because they usually do not operate in isolation. What factors threaten the security of government information and the systems involved? And who is accountable for the security of the information chains that are becoming complex as a consequence of cooperation between organisations?

In polycentric urban regions one can find different, mutually related cities without a clear centre. In these regions cities cooperate to attract inhabitants and employment, but at the same time they are each other’s competitors. The Randstad (Netherlands) and the Rhine-Ruhr area (Germany) both can be seen as polycentric regions. The authors explore to what extent these regions possess a common identity and common agenda and to what extent this promotes the sustainability and energy transition of these regions. In both regions identity appears to have grown especially at subregional level, by historically developed spatial-economic profiles of the different cities or suburban regions. In addition the cities in these regions more and more wish to distinguish themselves in the area of sustainability. Every city wants to be the smartest, greenest and healthiest, and to be at the forefront in energy transition and climate mitigation. In the Dutch Randstad this competitive drive especially seems to contribute to the realization of sustainability projects at the local level. And that is exactly why regional cooperation is important: to allocate resources as well as possible and to avoid transfer to others. This can be improved by the development of subregional or regional sustainability visions.

In the safety domain important developments are currently taking place concerning the way in which administrative and tactical operations are dealt with in crises. It is characteristic for the approach that cooperation in chains and networks is increasingly needed to arrive at a suitable approach. In this essay, the authors analyse two subdomains in two concrete cases on how cooperation between several parties takes shape and functions. For that purpose, they differentiate between acute and non-acute crises. In the subdomain ‘acute crises’, they have chosen the case of the Dutch town Moerdijk (the fire at the Chemie-Pack company in 2011). In the subdomain of non-acute crises, they focus on community safety partnerships (‘Veiligheidshuizen’), especially on the community safety partnership in the Dutch province of Friesland (‘Veiligheidshuis Friesland’). In both subdomains the establishment of a good basic cooperation and leadership structure appears to be of prime importance. From there it is necessary to respond in a flexible manner (to be able to execute custom-made work). Within that framework, the capacity may develop to arrange a well-structured and effective cooperation at the operational level (ad hoc in acute crises), to monitor progress properly and to carry out targeted interventions if the developments in the situation ask for these interventions. A good knowledge of each other’s frame of reference is necessary to make this work, so that a maximum level of integration in the approach is achieved.