Dutch local government is more and more regarded as a ‘first government’. Vision documents of the association of municipalities and national policy plans stress the importance of local government for improving public governance. This ‘new localism’ builds upon two conflicting perspectives to local government: the modernization model and the political community model. As a result, local governments are becoming overloaded by many new and conflicting demands. A debate about how both perspectives to the ‘first government’ can be balanced, is therefore needed.

Because of the blurring of the European internal borders, combating crime is demanding closer cross-border collaboration between police forces. For that reason, the Dutch police have expressed the objective that dealing with cases with an international component should be an integral part of the job for every police officer. This study focuses on the attitudes of Dutch police officers regarding cross-border policing, and seeks to determine which factors have the greatest effect on those attitudes. This attitude approach contrasts with more traditional, top-down approaches, by shifting the focus to micro dynamics on the individual level. The methods chosen for addressing this research objective consist of semi-structured interviews and observations. The results show that the current attitude of Dutch police officers is mainly determined by the extent to which they have had to deal with international issues in their daily work. Although strong organization-wide attitudes towards cross-border policing are not likely to arise, much could still be gained by facilitating cross-border experiences and making more coherent efforts at socialization.