The first report (2013) by the Association of Netherlands Municipalities think tank deals with the question of how local governments can improve their own performance regarding the current trend of social initiatives in which citizens organize themselves to tackle problems in their neighborhoods. Kleistra and Walraven discuss the method, content and findings of the report. They question the widely used citizen perspective that is adopted by the think tank as a starting point for further research on the topic; its uncritical stance with regard to the highly debated issue of citizen participation; the limited research effort that underpins its overall findings and conclusions; and in particular its unequivocal call for large scale municipal experimenting and improvising without further elaborating on the key question of ‘how to proceed’ for the benefit of municipal policymakers. This brings them to the conclusion that the report itself generates highly relevant questions, but that these questions should be addressed more effectively than has so far been the case, by connecting in-depth empirical research on municipal performance with regard to citizens initiatives to the large body of scientific knowledge on citizen participation.

The opening article introduces the topic of this special issue: civil servants. Changes in the context, role and legal status of civil servants in the Netherlands fuel the debate on the civil servant as a professional in academic and policy circles. This special issue reports on this debate, with contributions from legal, sociological, public administration and more applied perspectives.

The Netherlands enjoys a long-standing reputation in the field of road safety. Following the ‘Sustainable Road Safety’ program of the 1990s, the infrastructural layout considerably reduces the risk of accidents while at the same time many measures are in place to improve road user behavior. In recent years, however, there have been several developments that may affect the success of the approach. In addition to an ageing population, urbanization, and the rise of new technologies, there is a combination of decentralization, policy integration, and budgetary restraints.
This contribution presents the philosophy behind the sustainable road safety program and describes its key elements. It discusses policy and societal developments, and the continuing need to improve road safety, especially at a decentralized level. The article argues in favor of a continued systematic approach towards safer road traffic, also in periods of decentralization and limited budgets. It presents a concrete perspective of the role of policy analysis and policy evaluation to develop a proactive approach to road safety under the new conditions. In this, evidence-based interventions, an active use of safety performance indicators, and a focus on success are key elements.

A profession can be defined as a group of workers with shared knowledge, skills and quality standards. To maintain its professional status, the professional community needs to be relatively autonomous. However, while performing their tasks, many pressures jeopardize the professional worker’s autonomous position. Here, the professional community can make a difference.
Subordination to the political principal characterizes the position of the civil servant. What margin of professional independence do political leaders allow their civil servants? Recent academic empirical reports in the Netherlands show conflicting outcomes.
This essay describes how civil servants from a Dutch ministry deal with their professional standards and argues that, in the process of professionalization, more clarity is required with regard to how autonomy and independence for civil servants are safeguarded. This is especially relevant in a contemporary context where new ways to account for the professional behavior of civil servants need to be sought.

The article aims to compare the current legal status of codes of conduct (if any) in five different EU-countries. Its starting point is the recent legal initiative in the Netherlands to abolish the existing status for officials and to replace it with contracts of employment. The parliamentary initiators indicate ethical elements as crucial for the employment relation in the public sector. Does this imply that a code of conduct has to be established?
The article first focuses on the historical evolution of codes of conduct in different EU-Member States. Within the UK, integrity has always been considered a key stone of the civil service. However, it took until the nineties until a code of conduct was set out. The spread out of the importance of integrity for civil servants has spread out later in continental Europe. The impact of the theory of New Public Management, through the OECD, was therefore crucial. Consequently, Belgium and Germany developed codes of conduct while France and the Netherlands paid more attention to weight of ethical behavior in the public sector.
Currently, it stays beyond any doubt that the codes of conduct in the UK have got a binding legal value. This value has not yet been achieved by the Belgian and the German codes. The article defends the point of view that a binding code in the Netherlands can be a useful tool.

In line with international and national legislation, the Netherlands offers certain services, including a temporary residence permit, to third country nationals who have fallen prey to human traffickers. Over the years, concerns have been often expressed about the perceived misuse of this regulation by foreigners who aim at legalising their stay. Based on interviews and file analysis the present article seeks to provide insight into to what extent it is possible to measure this misuse and the policy implications of the findings. In addition, the authors take into account non-use of the programme. The article confirms existing worries about misuse, provides indicators for misuse, but also concludes that at the level of individual cases practitioners cannot discern misuse from rightful use. At the same time, there are also groups that fall outside the reach of the programme. The article concludes with some policy recommendations on the basis of the findings.

The focus of the diversity policy in the Dutch public sector has moved during the past decennia. In the eighties offering equal chances for the different target groups was the central policy goal, after the millennium this became the effective and efficient management of a diverse work force in order to arrive at a better performing public sector, also called the business case of diversity. This article investigates the question how far the Dutch cabinet has influenced the diversity policy of public organizations. The answer to the question is that there was limited influence from the Dutch cabinet on the arguments for diversity of public organizations, but there was greater influence on the diversity interventions, especially in three sectors: central government, municipalities and police. This influence on interventions of other (‘fellow’) governments is caused by the strong steering of the cabinet. The interventions undertaken therefore reflect to a more limited extent the business case of diversity and remain stuck in the old target group policy. However, public organizations with a longer history in diversity policy, that operate closer to society and see the necessity for diversity, are more inclined to embrace the business case and start interventions that are related to this new approach.

Dutch Ministries differ in the manner in which they design and manage their steering relations with independent governing bodies. Based on six cases at four Dutch ministries the authors show these differences. They use two theoretical models (the principal-agent approach and the principal-steward approach) to clarify the kind of relationship. Ministries not only differ in their approach, they also differ in how far they have advanced in the development of their steering relations with independent governing bodies. Because there is no coordination or exchange of knowledge between ministries, ministries that are ‘lagging behind’ cannot learn from the experiences of ministries that have more experience. The authors do not propose one form of central coordination or one model, but they do propose more exchange of knowledge within and between Dutch ministries.

According to the policy makers of the Dutch police the more complex society for years requires a police organization that can operate as a network player, or even network director, in ever increasing local safety networks to fulfil the police functions of criminal investigation and maintenance of public order in an effective manner. This claim hardly seems to validated by empirical evidence. Validation is important because research shows that a lot of time is spent on the police network function within community based policing. The question is if this time is spent in an effective manner. Therefore this article addresses the question of the revenues of the police network function within community based policing for the core tasks maintenance of political order and criminal investigation. Based on a policy analysis, interviews and five weeks of participatory research in one police force in the Netherlands, the authors conclude that the policy of the police is only to ‘take’ out and not ‘give’ to local safety networks, although according to the practice and the network literature networkers from the police should give to be able to achieve results. Because the police network function does contribute to the quality of life and the social safety in the community, the authors believe that the community is best served by police officers that have a broad network function.

While the Netherlands has been a globally leading country in the area of agrofood for the latter half of the 20th century, its chances to maintain that position will co-depend on its capacity to develop its primary sector into more sustainable directions. This is no trivial task. For a long time, strong institutional arrangements provided guidance to practices of governance, consumption, production and innovation in line with a productivist paradigm. Although these arrangements have been significantly destabilized, and novel ones are emerging, a mature institutional landscape, tailored to a more sustainable development, has not yet fleshed out.
This article asks the question how innovative practices deal with this ambiguous and dynamic institutional context. It does so through investigating how, over about a decade, two sets of practices to promote more sustainable development (in the fields of livestock systems and greenhouse horticulture), draw on (remains of) incumbent arrangements, and novel institutional elements to provide normative guidance and mobilize resources (money; knowledge; legitimacy). Theoretically, it thus contributes to (1) understanding the emergence of novel modes of governance in an institutional void, (2) taking into account and extending it to a dynamic context, the paradox of embedded agency.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the news coverage on the euro crisis in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) and the Netherlands. The aim of the research was to identify how newspapers in the Low Countries have portrayed the roots of the crisis, the main victims, and those held responsible to solve the crisis, and ways to do so. This study also analyzed the differences across geographical contexts and types of newspapers. Furthermore, it examined how the coverage changed as the crisis continued. Research findings include that Flemish newspapers more often reported about the causes of the crisis, whereas the Dutch newspapers published more articles discussing the responses to it. Furthermore, financial newspapers provided more news stories searching for a solution, while popular newspapers usually published short, factual descriptions.

Integraal gezondheidsbeleid (IGB) kent in de lokale praktijk diverse verschijningsvormen en kenmerken waardoor het lastig is dit beleid te monitoren en evalueren. In een kennissynthese van Nederlandse kernpublicaties over IGB is gekeken wat op basis van ervaringen in de IGB-praktijk tot nu toe gezegd kan worden over monitoring en evaluatie. Bij deze practice-based verkenning naar IGB-kenmerken en bijbehorende praktische instrumenten is een indeling in drie categorieën gebruikt: context, processen en impact. Voorbeelden van relevante kenmerken zijn: type IGB en setting (context), verbinden beleid en activiteiten (proces), samenwerking sectoren (proces), draagvlak en verankering in organisatie (proces), en effecten op gezondheid of determinanten (impact). Op basis van de huidige IGB-praktijk lijkt het vooral haalbaar kennis te genereren over context en procesmaten, en minder over impactmaten. Uiteindelijk is een set kenmerken die meetbaar zijn met gevalideerde instrumenten wenselijk om grip te krijgen op de voortgang van IGB. Meer theoretische onderbouwing is dan wel noodzakelijk.

The Dutch government aims at a participatory society, for example by striving for a larger amount of self-responsibility in providing social care, since the introduction of the Societal Support Law (in Dutch called ‘Wet maatschappelijke ondersteuning’ or in short Wmo). Does public opinion in the Netherlands reflect this change of mentality? This article investigates (a) how far public opinion on responsibility for social care for the elderly has changed between 2003 and 2010, (b) which factors explain why some people put most responsibility on the government and others on the family and (c) which factors explain intra-individual changes of attitude. This research has used survey data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (2003, 2006/07, 2010). A shift in public opinion appears to have taken place in line with government policy: less responsibility for the government and more for the family. However, a majority of the Dutch population still puts most responsibility on the government. Attitudes appear to be connected with normative motives rather than with utilitarian motives. Intra-individual changes in attitudes in the direction of less government responsibility are mainly explained by normative factors and not by factors related to self-interest.

While the belief in a socially engineered society has been renounced to a large extent, in cities actors continue to struggle with the question how their plans can be steered on goal achievement. This article addresses a steering philosophy that is based on an emergent adaptive urban development process. This means that urban strategies adapt during the process by connecting to initiatives from the market and civil society. The central question of this article is how specific projects are ‘made’ in accordance with the intentions of the actors involved and how these projects are connected to larger policy stories for the city. In this article perspectives are explored that have replaced the old thinking in terms of ‘social engineering’. On the basis of two case studies in the Netherlands (Brainport Eindhoven and Mainport Rotterdam) an emergent adaptive strategy is explored as a perspective for action. This perspective is not only about ‘social engineering’, but also about ‘social connecting’. An emergent adaptive strategy is not designed on the drawing table, but it emerges during the practice of project development out of an attitude that is conscious of the environment, connective and reflective.

This article describes, on the basis of a broad empirical research, the development of the office of mayor since 2002 (the year of the introduction of a dualist local system in the Netherlands) and the present state of the office. It shows a fundamental change in the office during the last decade and how the already existing hybrid nature of the office has continued to grow since 2002. The article describes the effects of this hybridization and identifies, on the basis of this description, eight power lines and vulnerabilities of the office of mayor. The authors relativize a number of issues that are frequently problematized in relation to the office of mayor, but they also point to new concerns amongst mayors. According to the mayors for example the presidency of the council and the presidency of the board of mayor and aldermen can be combined quite easily in practice. Mayors however, and with good reason, are concerned about the vulnerability of their authority and the sustainability of their neutral position ‘above the parties’, their most important source of authority. For this reason a reorientation of the office of mayor in the Netherlands is needed. This reorientation should start with an answer to the question which roles the mayor has to play in Dutch local government.

Na het aantreden van Rutte II heeft de bestuurlijke opschaling van gemeenten en provincies twintig maanden lang op de agenda gestaan. Zoals bekend hebben de plannen van het kabinet de eindstreep niet gehaald. Vooral bij de meest betrokken provincies bestond er kritiek op het ontbreken van een visie en onderbouwing. In dit artikel wordt onderzocht in hoeverre een netwerkanalyse van het verplaatsingsgedrag daarin zou kunnen voorzien. Voor een volgende ronde, die zich mogelijk al snel weer aandient. De uitkomsten van verschillende algoritmes voor netwerkanalyse worden vergeleken. Het begrip daily urban system, gekoppeld aan welvaartstheoretische inzichten (Tordoir), dient als inhoudelijke leidraad. Netwerkanalyse blijkt zakelijke argumenten op te leveren die behulpzaam kunnen zijn bij het trekken van (nieuwe) bestuurlijke grenzen, ook al zullen deze om verschillende redenen nooit alleenzaligmakend zijn.

Studies of second-order elections using aggregate data have predominantly focused on examining the extent to which European parliament elections and regional elections are dominated by the national, first-order arena, and paid scarce attention to the analysis of municipal elections. In addition the study of second-order elections is dominated by looking at the impact of first-order factors whilst ignoring the impact of arena-specific factors. This article addresses these shortcomings by analyzing the impact of national and local factors on the performance of national parties in the Dutch municipal elections of 2010. Our analysis shows that there are significant effects of local factors. Most parties lose votes when having been in local government and in some cases as well when having in addition lost an alderman as a result of a political crisis. Parties also lose vote share as a result of the entrance of new national and local parties in a local election, with the effect of new national entrants being larger than that of new local entrants. Our analysis corroborates earlier findings that point to a dominance of national factors, while at the same time showing that it is vital to include local, arena specific factors in order to get to a better estimation of the second-orderness of non-national elections. We discuss our results with respect to the recurring debate about the nationalisation of the Dutch municipal elections.