In several regions in the Netherlands there are declining population numbers. In those regions, administrators, companies and societal organisations often start regional collaborations in order to anticipate population decline and maintain a good quality of life. This is a logical step, but in practice the collaborating partners face challenges. For this article we analysed over a period of eight years the dynamics of cooperation in the Hoeksche Waard, a region in the province of South Holland that is dealing with a decrease in the number of inhabitants. On the basis of the regime model (Stone 1989), and by conducting qualitative research, in this exploratory study we discerned a paradox of regional cooperation in this ‘shrinking’ region: a decline of population numbers is the reason to initiate informal cooperation in networks, but the complexity of the regional agenda leads to the desire for formalisation of the collaborations in formal decision making structures. This formalisation, in its turn, leads to less commitment from the parties and makes cooperation and achieving results difficult, which increases the need for informalisation.

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.

For a long time, the three governance structures market, hierarchy, and community were regarded as separate entities. The market is based on the price mechanism, the authority mechanism is the basis of the hierarchy, and trust relations characterize the community. As the knowledge economy evolves, there is a shift in thinking about how these governance structures are related. Creating and sharing knowledge are key features of the knowledge economy. However, this knowledge is partly tacit and sharing knowledge is particularly useful among diverse organizations, which are two barriers for sharing of knowledge among organizations.
A new stream of literature suggests that the ability of organizations to combine the three governance structures contributes to their capacity to share knowledge with other organizations. Based on this literature, this article shows what kinds of organizational forms are possible. Besides that, it offer empirical example of the conditions under which these organizational forms evolve as well as how they contribute to organizational innovation.

Since the late eighties, Mexico has experienced profound economic modernisation and political democratisation. However, the corresponding administrative reforms have lagged: professionalisation of the public sector, improvement of public service delivery and development of modern management principles are plagued by a lack of coherence, implementation, and continuity. This can be traced back to several historically rooted and structural characteristics of Mexican public administration, which reproduce vicious circles of low trust and dysfunction. For example, (1) the extreme spoils system maintains a culture of distrust towards civil servants; (2) Mexico’s weak state capacity is a consequence of a lack of collective action, but also further undermines citizens’ trust in government; (3) strong labour unions are a response to poor labour rights, but also uphold a system of capture and confrontation; and (4) corruption is inevitable if cooperation depends on personal loyalties.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch government public private partnerships (PPP) using DBFMO contracts has become the default option for realizing complex public infrastructures. DBFMO contracts imply the integrated outsourcing of the design (D), building (B), financing (F), the maintenance (M), and also often the exploitation (O) of projects to private actors. The general idea is that by bundling public and private resources, the increasing complexity of today’s public infrastructure projects can be tackled more easily. However, reality is contumacious. As a consequence of several problems related to DBFMO collaborations, the Dutch highway and water management agency Rijkswaterstaat and several private actors recently put forward a new market vision. This vision is a call to reinvent the dominant collaboration practice between public and private actors: relational aspects should be central. In managing projects, more attention should be given to the quality of relations, attitudes, openness and trust. Recent research confirms that the success of DBFMO projects is not only contingent on contractual aspects but also, and maybe even more importantly, on relational aspects. Smart governance involves a shift from the current dominant financial economic-oriented contractual approach to PPP towards a more sociologically inspired relational form of governance.

E-democracy incorporates digital tools, the internet and social media to enhance democracy. There are many of these tools available to improve governmental responsiveness, transparency, and accountability, but also to support the inclusiveness, representativeness and influence of citizens’ participation. Examples are online petitions, apps for neighborhood watches, wikiplanning and social media monitoring. Web 3.0, which is more interactive and less location specific, enables governments to take a more personalized approach. It also allows for participation across administrative and geographical boundaries. In this symposium two contributions address the question of the influence of e-democracy on the democratization of governmental decision-making, information and service delivery, and of citizens’ participation.

Various Dutch municipalities hire municipal law enforcement officers from private security companies. This process of outsourcing sometimes meets political resistance, because safety and security are central tasks of government that should not be carried out by commercial parties. At the same time, little is known about the actual pros and cons of private law enforcement officers in relation to their public colleagues. From the literature we expect differences in cost, flexibility, local knowledge, professional autonomy, job satisfaction and cooperation with the police. Our empirical research shows that these differences are smaller than initially assumed. Private law enforcement officers work longer hours under more or less the same working conditions (salary) as public law enforcement officers. Their turnover rate is also higher compared to public law enforcement officers, because of their lower career expectations. Overhead costs, including the costs of outsourcing processes, remain unknown.

Societal challenges are increasingly requiring cooperation and solutions on a regional scale. The recently formed metropolitan regions around Amsterdam, Rotterdam-The Hague and Eindhoven are examples. This essay serves as the introduction to a symposium on regionalization and the substantive and institutional questions that regionalization raises. It deals with the growing differences between regions and the call for a differentiated response. It also discusses the drivers for regional cooperation and the constraints of focusing on administrative structures. The essay exposes a number of tensions regarding the external profiling of regions, the benefits of regional cooperation, and the pursuit of broad societal goals. At the same time, it puts forward suggestions for follow-up research.

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?

Infrastructure and adjacent areas represent extensive social value. However, infrastructure and areas are still often developed sectoral and independent. In the Netherlands, national spatial policies strive for combining infrastructure and area as one integrated approach as this is expected to result in more spatial quality. Taking this perspective, this article discusses trendy concepts in current Dutch planning, such as: adaptive planning, public and private cooperation and challenge-oriented approaches (‘opgave-gericht werken’ which focuses less on realising a project but more on the current and future issues and challenges in an area). This article argues that these concepts are closely related. Adaptive planning defines the rules of the game and the playing field, within which cooperation may develop. Cooperation is a means for creating spatial quality in interaction within this playing field. After all, generated quality can be considered as a contribution to the specific objectives and interest of the various partners. A challenge-oriented approach is the process for generating spatial quality from synergies in combined infrastructure and spatial development. This article aims to explore the relationships between adaptive planning, public and private cooperation and challenge-oriented approaches and to provide starting points for further research and discussion.

Since the euro crisis the EU has seen a deepening of integration with a new framework for economic and budgetary coordination. With the new framework reforms in pension or housing market are coordinated at the European level. This comprehensive set of rules and monitoring mechanisms has revived the debate on Europe’s democratic deficit. This article describes how the European Parliament (EP) tries to fill the democratic void in economic governance. The EP’s formal role is limited, but by using mostly informal mechanisms the EP is setting in motion an incremental process towards further control. This development should be seen in light of a political battle on the interpretation of the new rules, which has accordingly become increasingly politicized. The Dutch have always wanted a European economic policy on the basis of technocracy and rules, but at the same time Europe’s political union draws ever closer.

Big data can be seen as vital fuel for the innovation of diverse processes in both companies and in government policies and practices. In this short article we describe local efforts in the region around the Dutch city of Alkmaar in which the (local) government, (local) companies and a nearby university (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) work together on data-related challenges in a typical triple-helix structure. The municipality of Alkmaar gathers activities in a physical location to stimulate interaction and cooperation among (potential) partners, and it engages in the formation of new governance structures to increase both the intensity and the regional spread of the activities around data. All this raises many new and interesting issues and challenges for public administration researchers and practitioners.

There is a growing interest for cooperatives in housing. Recently a new housing law was signed that stimulates the rise and creation of citizen cooperatives in this sector. It is argued that in this way people, especially in the low- and middle-income category, get more opportunities to influence their own living situation. Some housing cooperatives have existed for years, but recently we have seen the rise of dozens of cooperatives. The knowledge network Platform31 has initiated an experimental program to facilitate the implementation of cooperatives in housing in the Netherlands. An important condition is that the cooperatives need to develop a strong business case. Cooperation with established housing corporations in the sector is also of vital importance. Moreover, a helping hand from municipalities is needed and some local governments have already developed policies and undertaken actions. Yet there are still bottlenecks in policy and law that needs to be solved. A paradigm shift is needed to make cooperatives in housing feasible.

Worldwide, cities are becoming increasingly important in global networks. The rise of cities and urban regions is widely described in academic literature. Cities are becoming essential players in networks on three scales: on an international scale as a hub in global networks, on a regional scale in partnerships as a consequence of the necessity of upscaling and on a local scale, in cooperation with citizens. This article addresses what this rise of the city, operating in complex networks on different scales, means for the position and tasks of the mayor, as a representative of the city. The article describes the modern challenges for the mayoral function and role in an emerging network society and addresses the growing importance of strong personal and transactional leadership while operating in networks both inside and outside the municipality.

Government employs Public-Private Partnerships as a remedial strategy directed at compensating for failures that typically occur in pure market arrangements, networks or pure hierarchical government settings. It is then possible to engage in Public-Private Partnerships corresponding with the three basic forms of social organization: market, network and government. The distinction between: (1) market-PPP, (2) network-PPP and (3) public authority-PPP is elaborated.