The Dutch municipality of Leiden used to be a rather ‘politically troublesome’ municipality, but after the formulation of a short coalition agreement during the 2010 to 2014 term of office, for the first time in a long while, no alderman was sent away. So, could short coalition agreements help to diminish the number of political conflicts, so that aldermen can remain in office for a longer period? In the first place, the answer to this question is important from a societal point of view because in the Netherlands an increasing number of aldermen are sent away. In the second place, it is important from an academic point of view because there is a lack of studies into local coalition agreements. In the third place, it is important because the analysis of the length of coalition agreements and the number of conflicts in almost all Dutch municipalities in the period 2010 to 2014 offers a good opportunity to test the contradictory expectations on the relationship between coalition agreements and political conflicts in Dutch municipalities at a national level. From the analysis, the authors conclude that there is a relationship between a high number of coalition parties and a large municipality, on the one hand, and longer coalition agreements, on the other hand. The length of the coalition agreements is not necessarily related to the number of conflicts measured by the number of aldermen sent away for political reasons. It is clear that the higher the number of coalition parties, the more conflicts there are likely to be, which is not an inviting prospect considering the ongoing fragmentation of municipal councils.

Polling is being done a great deal in the Netherlands, especially during election campaigns when market researchers sometimes present new polls every day. The national government also takes polls that are often larger and more complicated than the quick and small polls conducted by market research agencies. They are often called surveys, and they gather information on the state of affairs in society. That information can become the basis for new policies. Local governments also take polls, although on a smaller scale than national government. Dutch municipalities have a tradition of organizing omnibus surveys in which (as the name indicates) several subjects can be addressed. Nowadays many ‘omnibus surveys have been replaced by ‘citizen panels’. One thing all these polls and surveys have in common is that they are based on random samples of the population and statements are made about the population as a whole based on these samples. Such generalizations are only possible if the sample is drawn using by random sampling methods. This article describes good and bad polling. This is illustrated using a unique example: the research into the opinion of the inhabitants of Alphen aan den Rijn, a Dutch municipality, on Sunday shopping. At the same time, and using the same questionnaire, three different polls were carried out. This example makes clear that the wrong sample can lead to incorrect conclusions and maybe to incorrect policy decisions.

The research programme Urban Regions in the Delta (URD) wielded an approach worthy of emulation. Create ‘vital’ project consortia, crosslink the research project with on-going planning and policy making processes, give senior scientists a major role and engage expert process managers. These are four key success factors for knowledge co-creation in the field of area development, according to the programme (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; URD, 2010-2014 http://urd.verdus.nl). Within URD scientists and practitioners were cooperating from the very beginning. The scientific insight and innovations generated are considered not very visible in traditional scientific publications, but the knowledge that was developed provides considerable added value to society.

Planning research is increasingly focused on bridging the gap between practice and academia. However, this requires much effort and is not as commonplace as it seems. To ensure success, innovative research approaches, practitioners and academics are required. The experiential learning cycle of Kolb and Fry (1974) offers a research framework for the authors to reflect on their practice-oriented research on Cost Benefit Analysis processes (CBA) and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) respectively. Both research projects are compared using the learning cycle. The cycle was completed in the CBA project but only partially resolved in the TOD project. Reflecting on their experiences with applying the learning cycle, the authors conclude on the possibilities and limitations of this application and offer insight into how the interaction between theory and practice can occur.

In this interview Jeroen Slot (head of Research & Statistics, Municipality of Amsterdam) and Kees van Paridon (former chief science officer, municipality of Rotterdam) share their ideas and reflect on their extensive experience with linking scientific knowledge and local policy making. They discuss the divergence between established institutions and emergent knowledge needs and the problematic entwinement of scientific knowledge and policy development. Conditions are proposed for the design of intermediaries between the academic and governmental sectors.

This article shows the relevance of Burawoy’s analytical categories on the division of scientific labour to analyse the interactions between science and practice. It argues that social scientists need to combine the roles of expert witness, social engineer and storyteller in order to develop a productive relationship with policy makers. It also emphasises the relevance of a permanent dialogue between social scientists and policy makers. However, the analysis disagrees with Burawoy’s view that knowledge is based on a consensus between scientists and their publics (consensual knowledge). Burawoy underestimates the risk of a politicisation of science inherent to a close relationship with various ‘publics’. The arguments presented in this article are based on the reception of a research project on labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe. This was a hybrid research project in which different actors participated: the Erasmus University, nine Dutch municipalities, the national government and a Dutch knowledge center on urban issues.

Forty years ago, Dutch Public Administration started as an independent academic discipline. The founding fathers considered empirical application and multidisciplinarity the most important characteristics of public administration. This article assesses the current state of the discipline in the Netherlands. The assessment is the result of a series of five debates throughout the country, focussing on different elements of the Public Administration discipline: education, academic research, consultancy and policy advice. In brief, the article argues that the discipline has reached maturity in these forty years. It has become an accepted academic discipline, on the verge of a mono-discipline. The Netherlands is considered as one of the leading countries in public administration research. However, these successes also create a gap between public administration as a successful academic discipline and its roots as a multi-disciplinary, applied science. Renewing the balance between these two will be the main challenge for the decades to come.

Given the scientific and social importance attached to productive interactions between science and policy practices, there is a striking lack of insight into current knowledge practices and the dilemmas they lead to. Our special issue can’t solve this deficiency but it can provide an impetus for opening up current knowledge practices, reflect on the role of science in them and instigate a more systematic exchange of methods. A warning is given for the reification of boundary work and Gabrielle Bammers’ Implementation and Integration Sciences is introduced as framework for the analyses.

A transition to a bio based economy requires social and technological innovations. Transition management theory holds that these innovations take place in niches that can bring about structural change in society, politics and the economy in a stepwise manner. However, these innovations are always subjected to systemic barriers, such as regulations and institutional structures, that need to be overcome. This was also the case in a consortium of government, industry and eco-toxicologists that collaboratively developed innovative water monitoring tools. In this contribution the authors investigate how systemic barriers can be made productive in a science-society dialogue by creating reflexivity and learning. They conducted a frame analysis of interviews and policy documents to unravel systemic barriers to innovation – in the form of discursive boundary work: the routinized demarcations of practices. Second, they experimented with a science-society dialogue to reflect on these routinized demarcations and develop alternatives to overcome these boundaries. The research demonstrates that reflective conversations occurred and that participants developed a boundary concept of ‘living water’ that enhanced their innovative collaboration and technology.

Co-production is regarded as a way to actively involve vulnerable citizens with public service delivery. However, there are several critical aspects that may lead to the unexpected exclusion of this group by public organizations, which have been insufficiently addressed hitherto. On the basis of a dissertation research, these critical aspects are analyzed for three phases of co-production. In the first phase, self-selection and organizational selection may lead to the exclusion of vulnerable citizens. In the second phase, a lack of commitment of the user and organizational support increase the chance of early discontinuation of co-production by vulnerable citizens. Finally, in the evaluation phase, it is likely that disadvantaged citizens attribute potential success of co-production to themselves and do not reward the public service provider for this. This has the possible consequence that there is no recognition for the added value of co-production, which may lead to less co-production that involves vulnerable citizens in the future.

On a regular basis, the funding of football stadiums is an issue for large cities. Since football clubs appeal to the municipality for financial support, this is a public matter. Why should a municipality invest in a private project, such as a football stadium? What are the opportunities and risks? What is the public value of a stadium for the city? Based on literature reviews and case studies in Eindhoven and Amsterdam, this article examines what government involvement in stadium projects means, and what the outcomes of this involvement are. The cases show that stadiums may have social and economic spin-off effects on their surroundings, but one cannot take that for granted. Careful processes and elaborate strategies are needed for public investment in stadiums to really add value to the city. Based on the analyses, an assessment framework is presented for the benefit of new stadium project initiatives.

When scientific values like objectivity, validity and reliability are inadequate for designing research that enables society’s capacity for dealing with unstructured problems, which values or criteria should we use for designing adequate knowledge practices? Based on the articles in this special issue we answer this question by analysing the methods researchers have used for selecting stakeholders, knowledges, synthesis, context and outcome in new knowledge practices. Although a common language for comparison and documentation is lacking, the analysis provides recommendations for better designing interaction between scientific and other practices. The most important message however is that we need a designated platform for exchanging and evaluating experiences and discussing methods and the outcomes they yield.

In de praktijk is het niet altijd haalbaar om effectonderzoek uit te voeren met behulp van een experimentele trial. Het N=1 design is een alternatieve opzet voor effectonderzoek bij interventies met kleine aantallen. Centraal bij de N=1 aanpak staat dat bij een kleine groep deelnemers via verschillende observanten op meerdere tijdstippen informatie wordt verzameld over de ontwikkeling van deelnemers. Daarbij kan zowel gebruik worden gemaakt van kwantitatieve als kwalitatieve onderzoeksmethoden. Dit artikel beschrijft de toepassing van het N=1 design in een onderzoek naar de doeltreffendheid van de justitiële gedragsinterventie Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC). Deze interventie is ontwikkeld voor jeugdigen tussen de 12 en 18 jaar met ernstig antisociaal gedrag. In het onderzoek is de ontwikkeling van acht MTFC-deelnemers in kaart gebracht via vragenlijstonderzoek en interviews. Naast de toepassingsmogelijkheden worden in dit artikel tevens de beperkingen en risico’s van het N=1 design beschreven.

The discussion on how to resolve mass disputes stemming from faulty financial products among banks, insurance companies and other stakeholders in the Netherlands ended in deadlock. While diligent action is considered imperative, parties shy away from discussing options for settling damages suffered by consumers for fear of triggering mass claims themselves. To contribute to a new framework for resolving mass disputes, a responsive evaluation was conducted between 2011 and 2015. In such evaluation, the way stakeholders make sense of the situation serves as an organizing principle in knowledge production. This article discusses the methodical challenges implied in adapting the methodological guidelines for such inquiry to fit the ill-structured, controversial and complex legal issue and its highly politicized context. Because of a careful handling of confidentiality in the inquiry and a focused selection of participants on the basis of their proximity to the issue, the evaluation resulted in insight in options for resolving mass disputes that are supported by various parties. Furthermore, the evaluation itself served, it is argued, as a vehicle to overcome the deadlock by sensitizing stakeholders to the fact that they all aspire similar practical objectives and all acknowledge the need for cooperation on the issue.

Professional services such as educational services, are increasingly managed and optimized in order to improve performances. Performances of students, teachers and school (boards) are measured and evaluated. Increasingly, rules and systems focus on outputs and control. Consequently, the ‘freedom’ of professionals such as teachers is reduced, or is perceived and felt to be reduced. There have been growing debates on the problematic effects of performance pressures. Often, public professionals are seen as ‘defenseless victims’ of systems and pressures – they are ‘professionals under pressure’. In this paper, we introduce a more positive way of understanding professionals and professional action in changing contexts. We see professionals such as teachers as ‘active agents’ who can develop and regain control over their own situation. Professionals can deliver quality, in spite of bureaucratic burdens and managerial intrusions. We call this ability professional capability: ‘the ability to proactively deal with work-related expectations, tasks and burdens in dynamic stakeholder environments’. This paper combines research on public administration, organizational sociology and occupational psychology, to generate a more productive understanding of proactive coping of professionals in public domains. We define and operationalize professional capacity, we explore sources and effects, and we develop hypotheses for further research.

In this article we explore how and under what circumstances present-past comparisons can be used to find solutions to current social issues. We argue that meaningful comparisons can not only be made between countries or groups within countries, rather, comparisons between current and past societies too can enrich our thinking about pressing social problems. We search for the conditions under which such comparisons are possible without undermining the professional skills, epistemological and methodological insights of the various disciplines. Learning from the past calls for an in-depth study of present problems and the historical (role) model alike, with historians and social and political scientists cooperating in teams. We propose a five-step-method: (1) diagnosing the social issue, (2) tracing comparable historical practices that might offer solutions, (3) distilling these practices from their historical contexts, (4) massaging the ‘historical’ practices into the diagnosed present-day context through an imaginative exercise, and (5) implementing these solutions into everyday life through forms of experiment.

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.

De Nederlandse rijksoverheid maakt steeds meer gebruik van DBFM(O)-contracten om grootschalige bouw- en infraprojecten te ontwikkelen en te realiseren (DBFM(O) staat voor Design, Build, Finance, Maintain en eventueel Operate). De organisatie en inrichting van deze contracten en projecten zijn ‘als vanzelfsprekend’ gegroeid en gestandaardiseerd, veelal gebaseerd op de internationale praktijk en buitenlandse voorbeelden. Dit artikel zet uiteen hoe DBFM(O)-projecten georganiseerd en gestructureerd worden door publieke en private partijen. Uit internationaal onderzoek blijkt dat de resultaten wisselend zijn, maar de potentiële voordelen van DBFM(O) zijn groot. Deze potentie blijkt uit de eerste praktijkervaringen in Nederland, maar we kennen inmiddels ook de eerste negatieve gevolgen voor betrokken risicodragende partijen. We onderscheiden bij DBFM(O) zes ‘conventies’ met onderliggende spanningen waar praktijk en wetenschap, in de Nederlandse verhoudingen, kritisch op zullen moeten reflecteren.

The European Commission publishes bi-annual internal market scoreboards which show the member states’ performance in realizing internal market rules. Timely and correct transposition of internal market directives is a crucial part hereof. Member states are regarded as unitary actors. Consequently the Commission does not differentiate the performances of their constituent sub-national entities. This article constructs the internal market scoreboards for Flanders (2009-2013) and holds these against the Belgian performance. In order to frame the fluctuations in the Flemish performance per scoreboard, external and internal factors that help explain maltransposition are pretested in the Flemish case. Flanders struggles with transposition, transposing barely a fourth of the directives under its competence timely and correctly, with timeliness being most problematic. The factors that seem to be connected to this performance, however, are structural and cannot easily be influenced. Further research is needed to go from this exploration toward explaining maltransposition in Flanders.

This study on the role of media attention for the Dutch question hour answers these questions: to what extent is media attention a source of inspiration for oral parliamentary questions? What explains the newsworthiness of these questions? And what explains the extent of media coverage for the questions posed during the question hour? To address this, we present a content analysis of oral parliamentary questions and related press coverage in five recent years. Results show first that oral questions are usually based on media attention for a topic. Concerns about media influence should however be nuanced: it is not necessarily the coverage itself, but also regularly a political statement that is the actual source of a parliamentary question. The media are thus an important ‘channel’ for the interaction between politicians. Second, our analysis shows that oral questions do not receive media attention naturally. Several news values help to explain the amount of news coverage that questions receive. ‘Surfing the wave’ of news attention for a topic in the days previous to the question hour seems to be the best way to generate media attention.