The police use all sorts of information to fulfil their tasks. Whereas collection and interpretation of information traditionally could only be done by humans, the emergence of ‘Big Data’ creates new opportunities and dilemmas. On the one hand, large amounts of data can be used to train algorithms. This allows them to ‘predict’ offenses such as bicycle theft, burglary, or even serious crimes such as murder and terrorist attacks. On the other hand, highly relevant questions on purpose, effectiveness, and legitimacy of the application of machine learning/‘artificial intelligence’ drown all too often in the ocean of Big Data. This is particularly problematic if such systems are used in the public sector in democracies, where the rule of law applies, and where accountability, as well as the possibility for judicial review, are guaranteed. In this article, we explore the role transparency could play in reconciling these opportunities and dilemmas. While some propose making the systems and data they use themselves transparent, we submit that an open and broad discussion on purpose and objectives should be held during the design process. This might be a more effective way of embedding ethical and legal principles in the technology, and of ensuring legitimacy during application.

Predictive tools as instruments for understanding and responding to risky behaviour as early as possible are increasingly becoming a normal feature in local and state agencies. A risk that arises from the implementation of these predictive tools is the problem of dirty data. The input of incorrect or illegally obtained information (‘dirty data’) can influence the quality of the predictions used by local and state agencies, such as the police. The article focuses on the risks of dirty data in predictive policing by the Dutch Police. It describes the possibilities to prevent dirty data from being used in predictive policing tools, such as the Criminality Anticipation System (CAS). It concludes by emphasizing the importance of transparency for any serious solution looking to eliminate the use of dirty data in predictive policing.

Complexity theory dares to adopt a critical-constructive attitude to the practice and science of public administration. From the worldview of complex systems, it raises questions about the machine thinking that has influenced public administration strongly and persistently. Many contemporary attempts by governments to simplify societal issues to knowable, solvable and controllable problems – for example the approach to transforming Utrecht Central Station and dealing with multi-dimensional problems in families – can be traced back to machine thinking. Complexity theory points to the ineffectiveness and undesirability of simplifications and considers the complexity of government and society a quality that should be increased rather than reduced. Complexity theory not only keeps the administrative mind sharp on simplification reflexes, but also offers the option to make policy by increasing, rather than reducing complexity.

A pragmatic criticaster or a critical pragmatist is considered a schizophrenic in daily life: it seems impossible to be solution oriented and critical at the same time. You are either an optimist or a pessimist. This schism also seems to run between public administration and political scientists. Public administration is focused on (positive) problem solving, whereas political scientists – especially in a tradition of critical theory – examine the exertion of power. This essay proposes a combination of the two extremes: a critical-pragmatist approach for public administration.
In this approach, critical political theory goes hand in hand with pragmatist reconstruction and design. This design is impossible without normative and procedural principles, for example ideas about sustainability, justice and democracy. This is illustrated with an example for designing just governance arrangements in the Dutch regional energy strategies. The article shows that public administration that is relevant, reflective and democratic builds on a critical-pragmatist approach.

Naar aanleiding van 25 jaar Vereniging voor Beleidsonderzoek staat dit artikel stil bij de rol van beleidsonderzoek. Het belang daarvan wordt nogal eens onderschat – zowel door beleidsmakers als onderzoekers zelf. Vanuit een wat breder perspectief bezien blijkt het voor de huidige samenleving – getypeerd als ‘een pragmacratie’ – echter een onmisbare functie te vervullen. Beleid en praktijk zijn vaak indirect gebaseerd op wetenschappelijke concepten, onderzoeksresultaten en toekomstverkenningen. Vooral de sociale wetenschappen maken zichtbaar wat mogelijk is, en beleidsonderzoek doet dat dan ook nog eens op een tijdige, oplossingsgerichte manier. Daarbij zijn er verschillende manieren om impact te hebben, waarbij de beleidsonderzoeker moet vasthouden aan zijn onafhankelijkheid en controleerbaarheid.
Dit artikel is een uitwerking van de lezing van Hans Boutellier op het VBO-congres op 7 november 2019 en is gebaseerd op het gelijknamige hoofdstuk uit Het seculiere experiment: Over westerse waarden in radicale tijden (herziene versie, 2019). Zie ook het essay van Peter van Hoesel, Beleidsonderzoek in de periode 1970-1995, Beleidsonderzoek Online februari 2020.

In the Netherlands good citizenship has become a topic of increased importance on the government agenda since the murder of Pim Fortuyn. The author assesses the effectiveness of the Dutch citizenship policies within the context of the broader policy framework of the so-called participatory society (participatiesamenleving) or do-democracy (doe-democratie). The evaluative analysis consists of two parts. In the first part the changing ideas concerning good citizenship are identified as well as the normative assumptions that are at the basis of Dutch citizenship policies. In the second part, the potential of current policies, and in particular the ideas that gave rise to creating a new social contract between government and society are assessed. To this end some key aspects of the new contract thinking of the Dutch government are contrasted with the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The findings show that the current strive for tangible agreements on citizen behavior and civic duties is at odds with the main principles of classic contract theory. This leads to the conclusion that the new contractualism that is at the basis of the Dutch citizen policies should rather be seen as a threat to a stable society than as a building block for good citizenship.

Since the 1970s social integration of the police has been considered as a key element of the Dutch police. It can be understood as a strategy to realise police legitimacy. This article adresses the question whether the Dutch police still strive for police legitimacy via social integration. The article is based on a series of interviews with present and former strategic leaders of the Dutch police. The study shows how asking about police legitimacy and social integration of the police leads to more fundamental considerations about the role of the police in democratic society and about democratic values and the rule of law (‘Rechtsstaat’). The article concludes that police leaders emphasize the importance of civic liberties (freedom of speech, right to demonstrate) and equal rights. Police leaders consider the role of the police to reinforce and protect these values. In their opinion, this requires the police to be deeply rooted in society.

Civil servants at the Dutch authorities increasingly make use of behavioural insights in the policy process. These insights are primarily put on the agenda at the level of the national government in the Netherlands. However, they also seem to be particularly useful at the local level. After all, behaviour-conscious policy focuses on behavioural change through the redesign of the direct environments of citizens, and local authorities have a clear view and control over these environments. In the light of this potential, this article explores the current rise and institutionalization of behavioural expertise in local government. The work practices of local behavioural experts are examined on the basis of three dimensions of local government: positioning, practices and politics. The findings show that local behavioural experts are still in an experimental and start-up phase, but at the same time are already working with a wealth of behavioural assignments. In doing so, they deal tactically with scarce resources, resistance and abrasive institutional logics. The article shows that behavioural insights and designs are also promising in local government, that a local administrative landscape of behavioural expertise is already being developed; and that making meters in the field of behavioural expertise calls for several forms of coordination.

Decades of neoliberalism have placed emphasis on individualism, self-responsibility, and self-interest. As a result solidarity, and charity are losing ground and inter-subjective suspicion enters society. With a dominant focus on the economic life, happiness can be found in working and consuming, which has led to a morbid focus on performance. As a consequence self-exploitation, stress, fear of failure and auto-aggression undermines self-love. Competing individuals, with whom man cannot identify himself, see the other as someone who also has to take care of himself; empathy for the stranger is far to seek. Problematic because in the participatory society people need to care for themselves, and others, which calls for public love. Economic actions of man should be perceived as a social activity that presupposes love. A supplier must show empathy towards its customer before a decent product can be created. A prerequisite for empathy and cooperation is equality. However with scarcity as the engine of hyper-capitalism market thinking inequality between people increases. It seems that men should embrace the ‘difference’ of others. The acceptance of ‘the strange’ could start with a heterogeneous student population during education, and a variety of inhabitants in neighbourhoods. Furthermore a more relaxed working climate with the focus on cooperation instead of competition could contribute to the return of empathy and self-love.

In recent years few political ambitions enjoyed so much political support as the striving to let the welfare state become more of a ‘participation society’. This ‘participation society’ should be a society with self-reliant citizens; before turning to the state for support, citizens should first of all look at their own capacities, and only in the last case ask the state for help. The premise is promising: collective well-being. However, the fundamental assumptions behind this notion do raise questions. This article argues that the notion for citizens to be self-reliant easily builds on questionable assumptions; these assumptions on the one hand raise hope for collective well-being, but on the other hand easily catalyze citizens’ contemporary uncertainties. It indeed is desirable to restate the relation between state and citizens, but the contemporary focus on citizens’ self-reliance should watch for building on unstable foundations to easily.

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.

Over eenzelfde beleid circuleren meerdere waarheden. Hoe valt dit te begrijpen? We gaan op verkenning rond ‘frame’ en ‘framing’ als veelgebruikte concepten in beleidsonderzoek. Na scherpstelling leert ons literatuuroverzicht dat een beleidskader idealiter gemarkeerd wordt als stabiel (naar basiselementen van structuur) maar in de praktijk geldt als inherent volatiel (naar voorkomen en effect). Iteratieve en vaak interactieve processen van framing kunnen dit verklaren zoals we aantonen met een case rond de Lokale Integrale VeiligheidsCellen (LIVC’s) in Brussel. Die case illustreert ook dat overheidsactoren zelf framen én met wisselend succes. Dat succes is te wijten aan factoren op individueel en institutioneel niveau en is cruciaal om vandaag te doorgronden. Want weten hoe een (on)waarheid over beleid te maken, is een eerste stap om framing (mogelijk) te kraken of meer te hanteren als tool om diverse frames, en dus finaal ook burgers, beter aan elkaar te haken. De voorbeelden van beleid en onderzoek in deze bijdrage zijn gekozen rond ‘wicked issues’ op diverse niveaus en terreinen van overheidsoptreden in België en elders.

Central concern of this article is tracing back how the making-responsible of citizens takes shape within Dutch speeches from the throne, government statements and reports of the Dutch Social and Cultural Research Institute (SCP) ever since the 1960s. The Dutch participation society, a term much discussed ever since mentioned in the 2013 speech of the throne, is often associated with a withdrawing government and a coming to end of the welfare state. At the same time, according to several authors, the notion of a withdrawing government that operates within a network of multiple equal actors has brought along the need for a widening of the government’s repertoire of action. This has been characterized as making-responsible citizens on conditions of the state. It has raised doubts about true government-withdrawal and authors have related it to the dominance of neo-liberal thinking ever since the 1990s. Applying an analysis framework derived from discourse analysis, it is made tangible in this article how within political discourse beginnings of the making-responsible of citizens can be traced to the 1960s, more than thirty years earlier than expected. It is argued that this longer history makes a plea for encouraging the political dimension of citizenship all the more important.

In the 1990’s, the Dutch social democrats were trailblazers of what became known internationally as the politics of the Third Way, a new middle course between social democracy and neoliberalism. From the start, the Dutch Third Way distinguished itself from its Anglo-Saxon counterparts by its implicit character. The Dutch social democrat party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) never fully embraced the Third Way and has sought to downplay the idea of a break with traditional social democratic thinking, combining Third Way practice with more classical social democratic rhetoric. The resulting political ambiguity, this paper argues, is at the centre of the present identity crisis of the social democrat party. Even though Third Way ideology has at times been declared dead, the range of attitudes, strategies and policy proposals that were introduced under its banner, still play a vital and prominent role in Dutch politics. While in the UK and the US, communitarianism was from the very beginning a defining feature of the Third Way, in the Netherlands this only came to the fore in 2012 under the leadership of Samsom and Asscher, and in the plea for a participation society under the Rutte II government. Leading us to conclude that the reports of the Third Way’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Every now and then the question whether or not civil servants are allowed to wear religious and ideological signs divides the minds of the people, and leads to societal and political controversy. In this article we examine this controversy by contrasting two different conceptions of neutrality, an inclusive and an exclusive account. We illustrate why the former is to be preferred and hence that a neutral government should not necessarily ask its servants to abstract from religious and cultural expressions. This however does not imply that all kinds of expressions should be allowed. In order to prevent a slippery slope, we formulate a number of formal criteria that can help to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff: (1) the interpretation of neutrality in relation to a minimum and objective review; (2) the proportionality criterion; (3) the functionality criterion; and (4) the criterion of contact with the public.

Left-libertarianism is a marginal theory in the debate on social justice. In this article, I argue that this peripheral status is a mistake. The two basic principles of left-libertarianism, the full self-ownership principle and an egalitarian interpretation of the worldownership principle, are sufficiently attractive and sound for the theory to be taken seriously. I introduce the two principles, explain their attractiveness and argue for their plausibility by contrasting them to the right-libertarian theory of Robert Nozick and the liberal egalitarian theory of John Rawls. I conclude that left-libertarianism has some considerable advantages over both those theories.

Feasibility considerations are important for political theories. An infeasible theory may contain valuable ideals, but is not suited to reality. Utilizing a precise and complete conceptualization of feasibility is essential to considering the feasibility of theories. An existing definition of feasibility is presented here. It is argued that this conception of feasibility is incomplete. The impact of parts of a theory as well as the feasibility of the parts of a theory themselves should be considered as well – something that has not been addressed in the literature thus far. A new feasibility framework is developed, in which the impact of parts of a theory, the feasibility of the parts of a theory as well as the feasibility of the preferred outcome of a theory have a place. Thus, the notion of feasibility is conceptualized in a more complete way.

The Dutch voters have little interest in local politics and are not aware of the political activities that take place behind the screens of the local elections. However, compared to the many people with little interest in local elections, there is a small group of people, the local politicians, that is very much involved in it. The central research question in this article is: How do the local (political) processes and activities related to the municipal elections of 2014, from the campaign to the coalition negotiations, look like and develop? The question is answered by systematically looking at the local election programmes, the local candidates, the local election campaign, the electoral results and coalition formation, and the role of non-local actors. The conclusion is presented in five images of the local/municipal elections: the local election as a quest for attention, the local election as a search for differences, the local election as the national election’s little brother, the local election as an interference in coalition negotiations, and the local election as a spectacle provided by local enthusiasts.

Under the influence of international law, procedural rights for crime victims have been enormously expanded in the Netherlands in the last decades. Legislators often assume that such rights may have a therapeutic impact on those who use them. This paper discusses the course and nature of psychological problems which may arise in the aftermath of crime victimization to nuance this assumption. The author argues that participation in criminal justice procedures is most likely to have a positive impact on crime victims’ emotional well-being during the first weeks post victimization. Positive experiences with the criminal justice system during this phase may prevent some victims from developing significant mental health problems, because the course of this period determines whether one returns to pre-victimization levels of psychological functioning or not. Victims who still suffer psychologically from the effects of the crime afterwards will only benefit from professional mental health interventions. The author substantiates his argumentation with findings from a recent systematic literature review.

In this article, based on a case study regarding the merger of boroughs within the municipality of Amsterdam, different perspectives are brought together to provide an overall analysis leading to insight into the change in the organizational culture. A particular research methodology is used to shed light on three elements of organizational culture: mindset (values), arena (group) and behavior. Through periodical measurements the effects of interventions and the progress in culture change is followed. It is argued that measurement instruments to explore the shifts in thinking and action are useful but limited. Policy makers and organizational actors from all hierarchical levels are shown to be influenced and disciplined by the actual existing change discourse to various degrees. Every organization nowadays must prove to the market that it is capable of change. Stories about organizational flexibility are embedded in more macro-stories of the changes in economic life. This article provides insight into the complexity of organizational discourse and the philosophical and sociological richness that it embodies. Therefore anthropological concepts are used which make the case more understandable in terms of rules and procedures that construct and legitimate the way we see things and talk about them.