Given the increasing importance of local administration and its range of tasks, it is important to know whether municipal councils are succeeding in properly controlling the administration. That is one of the main tasks that has been entrusted to the municipal council when dualism was introduced in the Netherlands in 2002. Council members are aware of the importance of the monitoring task, but little is known about the way in which they perform this task. Research in ten Dutch municipalities into the use of the available set of tools for framing and monitoring shows that municipal councils make little or no use of some of the instruments, in particular with regard to information gathering and the support of the council. Good information provision to the council sometimes appears to be subordinated to the political importance of the coalition. And everywhere councillors are struggling with the set of programmes for programme budgeting and accounting introduced during the dualisation process: it offers insufficient possibilities for framing and checking. In the absence of a clear assessment framework, it is not possible to determine whether this detracts from the effectiveness of control and framework. What good or effective control is and what its purpose is are also apparently not a topic for discussion in the local arena. This article shows (a) that council members can make more and better use of available framework and control instruments and the possibilities for supporting the council; b) the instrument of the programme budget (and the program account) does not seem to live up to the expectations of the dualisation process; c) mayors, as chairmen of the council, do not always feel responsible for the proper provision of information for the council and, in a broader sense, for better positioning of the council as a framework-setting and controlling body. More leadership is required here.

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.

The 20th Accountability Day of the Netherlands House of Representatives is a fitting occasion to investigate whether Dutch Members of Parliament use performance information (PI). Performance information used by managers and politicians is a basic assumption for managing and guiding Performance-based Budgeting. Ironically, based on a literature review on performance use, we know that politicians and especially parliamentarians do not use performance information for decision making or scrutiny. This is specifically so when PI reports are long. Using the framework of accountability of Bovens (2007) and using content analysis of the questions, motions and debates of the Standing Committees on the annual reports, this article shows that MPs use performance information in all phases (informing, debating, sanctions). Contradicting earlier research on parliamentarians, we found that they use annual reports and reports of the Court of Audit as their main sources in the debates. This article shows that the use of PI in parliament is steadily rising. The growing importance of performance information for accountability is further illustrated by the strengthening of the accountability forum.

Celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage in 2019 is an excellent reason to reinvigorate the debate on the position of women in politics and public administration in the Netherlands. In this essay, we look at trends and figures, as well as discuss the measures that Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Kajsa Ollongren puts forward in her recent letter to Parliament: (1) inclusive selection and selection procedures; (2) actively inviting and recruiting candidates; and (3) good equipment for political office. We try to inform the debate about the position of women in politics with new insights and knowledge from academic research.

This article reflects on the proposed measures of the Dutch Government to increase the number of women in the Dutch public administration. Based on the lessons learned from the practice of the public sector, this study concludes that there is still much work to be done with regard to female participation in the Netherlands, but when it comes to the ethnic minorities, the situation is alarming. Politicians directly elected by the citizen, such as MPs and councillors, do see a representation of the ethnic diversity of society. Where the citizen has no direct influence, such as the king’s commissioners, mayors, and aldermen, the percentages are zero or slightly higher than zero. It is argued that mechanisms such as selection procedures are hindering gender and ethnic diversity at the top of the public organizations. It is, therefore, suggested that introducing quota could bring more diversity in public administration.

The man-woman ratio in municipality councils in the Netherlands varies tremendously. Why does local politics attract women in some municipalities but not in other? The author attempts to answer this question by conducting interviews with municipality clerks and female council members of municipalities where the man-women ratio is even and municipalities where men are in the overwhelming majority. Additionally, the author conducts seven in depth interviews with former local and regional politicians about their motives to quit. Based on the interviews the author concludes that the political culture varies locally, making feel women more or less welcome. Sexist comments were mentioned several times, more often coming from respondents who worked in councils where men were in the majority. Finally, the balance between work, local politics and family life was often mentioned as a major hurdle for young parents (both men and women) for becoming or staying politically active. The author suggests to explore ways to change the political culture, to combat sexism and to find ways to reduce the workload in order to create more equal access to the local political arena.

In 2019, throughout The Netherlands, 100 years of women’s suffrage was celebrated. This celebration is historically incorrect: the voting law from 1919, broadly seen as the law that gave all Dutch women the right to vote, was a discriminatory law. It excluded many women – mostly those living in the former colonized parts of the Kingdom of The Netherlands – for decades after the laws implementation. This article shares a more complete history of women’s suffrage in The Netherlands, through the history of the voting law in the entire Kingdom of The Netherlands. The article gives insight into how this historical political exclusion still contributes to a lack of representation of many women in The Netherlands.

From 1964 until roughly 1990, political science would become the dominant approach within the (local) administrative sciences in the Netherlands. This central position was taken over from the legal approach. Important impulses from political science for Public Administration came only from the second-generation political scientists: Gijs Kuypers at the Free University Amsterdam, Hans Daudt at the University of Amsterdam and Hans Daalder at the University of Leiden. In their footsteps, a political scientist emerged who, through his contribution to several universities (the Free University, the University of Nijmegen and the University of Twente), had a great deal of influence on the further development of Dutch Public Administration: Andries Hoogerwerf. Two other approaches emerged from political science that were important for the development of modern public administration in the Netherlands, namely policy science and the new political economy (public choice). In this essay the author outlines the input of the main figures from political science, policy science and public choice until 1990 in various stages that are most relevant to Public Administration. These stages take us to various cities and universities in the Netherlands. In addition, we see important cross-fertilization between the institutions through the transfer of people from one university to another. After 1990 however, Public Administration would increasingly profile itself as an independent inter-discipline.

The vast majority of Dutch municipalities organize part of their activities on a smaller scale than those of the municipality as such: it is called intra-municipal organization. In this article an inventory is made of the existing knowledge about the effects of various forms of intra-municipal organization in the Netherlands. On the basis of recent research, this knowledge is supplemented and it is also made clear which forms of intra-municipal organization are currently used. An analysis is also made of what legal leeway Dutch municipalities have in this regard. A new and richer typology of intra-municipal organization is also being developed. Finally, the authors place the results of the research reported here in a broader perspective. In particular, they reflect on two presuppositions under many forms of intra-municipal organization, namely that activities are location specific and democracy must necessarily be of the ‘representative’ type. Its relevance for practitioners is that the article provides insight into the legal leeway for intra-municipal organization and into the design of intra-municipal organization. It also contains a reflection on the design of the intra-municipal organization.

In many Dutch municipalities, a ‘local external (in)formateur’ is deployed after the municipal elections. Local (in)formateurs guide the process of coalition formation. They investigate which political parties and political groups want to work together and try to bring them closer together. They can also play a role in the board formation, such as selecting alderman candidates and allocating portfolios. External (in)formateurs come ‘from outside’. They do not have an official political or official position in the municipality where they do their work at the time of their deployment as informateur. In 2014, forty percent of the municipalities made use of such an external (information) officer. However, we still know relatively little about the work of these local external informateurs, their background and results. The authors try to fill that gap on the basis of a literature study, interviews with stakeholders and a survey among 115 local external informateurs. They also consider the added value of local external (in)formateurs for local democracy. The work of local external (in)formal formateurs can contribute to a stable and well-functioning municipal executive. Nonetheless, they tend to have a rather one-sided socio-demographic profile and the desired party political experience and involvement with the municipality can be at odds with the desired independence and objectivity.

Despite the enduring importance of Lijphart’s work for understanding democracy in Belgium, the consociational model has come under increasing threat. Owing to deep political crises, decreasing levels of trust in elites, increasing levels of ethnic outbidding and rising demands for democratic reform, it seems as if Lijphart’s model is under siege. Even though the consociational solution proved to be very capable of transforming conflict into cooperation in Belgian politics in the past, the question we raise in this article is whether and to what extent the ‘politics of accommodation’ is still applicable to Belgian democracy. Based on an in-depth analysis of the four institutional (grand coalition, proportionality, mutual veto rights and segmental autonomy) and one cultural (public passivity) criteria, we argue that consociational democracy’s very nature and institutional set-up has largely hollowed out its potential for future conflict management.

Preference votes constitute one of the key features of (open and flexible) PR-list electoral systems. In this article, we give an extensive overview of studies conducted on preference voting in Belgium and the Netherlands. After elaborating on the definition and delineation of preference voting, we scrutinize studies about which voters cast preference votes (demand side) and about which candidates obtain preference votes (supply side). For each of these aspects, both theoretical approaches and empirical results are discussed and compared. At the same time, we also pay attention to methodological issues in these kinds of studies. As such, this research overview reads as an ideal introduction to this topic which has repercussions on many other subfields of political science.

This article analyses the visual communication of the Flemish populist right-wing party Vlaams Blok/Vlaams Belang, and investigates whether or not the party uses a specific populist communication style in its campaign posters, whether or not its visual style evolves over time and how the party distinguishes itself from other (right-wing) parties in its use of images. To do this, the image use will be compared with the CVP/CD&V and the Volksunie/N-VA. This use of images will be investigated by analysing election posters from 1991 to 2018. The analysis shows that there is indeed a ‘populist visual style’. These items consist mainly of (negative) metaphors, false dilemmas, caricatures and the use of so-called ‘agonic’ visual techniques.

The theoretical assumptions of deliberative democracy are increasingly embraced by policymakers investing in local practices, while the empirical verifications are often not on an equal footing. One such assertion concerns the stimulus of social learning among participants of civic democratic deliberation. Through the use of pre-test/post-test panel data, it is tested whether participation in mini-publics stimulates the cognitive and attitudinal indicators of social learning. The main contribution of this work lies in the choice of matching this quasi-experimental set-up with a natural design. This study explores social learning across deliberation through which local policymakers invite their citizens to participate in actual policymaking. This analysis on the District of Antwerp’s participatory budgeting demonstrates stronger social learning in real-world policymaking. These results inform a richer theory on the impacts of deliberation, as well as better use of limited resources for local (participatory) policymaking.

Q-methodologie is een nog relatief onbekende onderzoeksmethode, met veel potentieel voor beleidsonderzoek en -analyse. De benaderingen, doelen en onderzoeksvragen in verschillende toepassingen lopen uiteen, maar vertonen ook duidelijke overeenkomsten. In dit artikel beschrijven we de belangrijkste theoretische en analytische bouwstenen van de methode, en een praktijkgericht 10-stappenplan waarmee men snel zelf aan de slag kan met Q-methodologie. Op basis van een aantal toepassingen van Q-methodologie in Nederland en Vlaanderen laat dit artikel op inzichtelijke wijze zien wat Q-methodologie toevoegt aan de toolbox van beleidsonderzoekers. Naast de theoretische achtergrond van de methode biedt deze bijdrage een praktisch stappenplan voor het gebruik van de methode in de praktijk.

This article presents a normative framework for good local governance in the digital society. We build on the five principles of Frank Hendriks (laid down in an article in Urban Affairs Review in 2014): participation, effectiveness, learning ability, procedural justice and accountability. An analysis of these five principles leads to the refinement of these principles for the digital society. The overarching points are that attention is needed for the possibility of human contact, that avoiding discrimination must be central, that higher demands are made with regard to speed of action, that the principles increasingly apply to networks of organizations, and that the principles increasingly apply to the design of systems. This overview thus provides concrete tools for organizations that want to reflect with citizens and stakeholders on the extent to which they are able to achieve good local governance in the digital society.

The Dutch central government has a long history in its search to meaningfully present policy effects. One of the instruments that was developed to this end is the Policy Conclusion (beleidsconclusie). This part of the annual report, which has been mandatory since 2013, should provide a judgement for every policy article on its results in the year 2017. To what extent has the Policy Conclusion been successful in its aims? And how do various governmental departments give substance to it? For this article, all policy conclusions that were composed for the most recent reporting year were examined. Among others, our analysis shows that departments differ greatly in their interpretation of what the Policy Conclusion should include, such as the usage of sources and the way in which intended results are (re)addressed. In addition, it was found in the Policy Conclusions that a tendency exists to put a strong focus on positive outcomes.

On 29 May, the highest court in the Netherlands, the Council of State, ruled that the government’s Nitrogen Emissions Program (PAS) did not comply with the European Habitats Directive. The PAS arranged permit applications for economic activities that caused extra nitrogen oxide emissions. According to the Council of State, the PAS proved to be insufficiently capable of protecting the ‘natural characteristics’ of Natura2000-protected areas against damage caused by nitrogen depositions. The ruling has led to a situation in which all pending license applications in construction and agriculture have been rejected or put on hold. This political ‘nitrogen crisis’ that resulted from this ruling has been characterized by major disagreements between the government coalition parties, large farmers’ protests, and a faltering coordination between the central government and provinces. This essay analyzes the root causes of the nitrogen crisis and presents some ideas about how to overcome the current deadlock. I argue that the PAS debacle symbolizes a failing, reactive agricultural and nature policy. More than ever, strong leadership and a clear future perspective for the Dutch food system are needed.