Professionals often have problems with governmental policies they have to implement. This can lead to diminished legitimacy and lower policy performance. The goal of this article is to identify the main reasons why professionals resist implementing new policies. An interdisciplinary approach is taken. From public administration literature, I use the policy alienation model, which consists of five dimensions: strategic, tactical and operational powerlessness, societal meaninglessness and client meaninglessness. These are possible reasons why professionals resist public policies (‘resistance to change’, a concept drawn from change management literature). I test these assumptions using a survey among 1,317 healthcare professionals. The results show that when professionals experience that a policy is meaningless for society or for their own clients, they show strong resistance. A lack of perceived influence is much less important in explaining resistance, although this is partly dependent on the particular profession someone belong to. The policy alienation model can help policy makers and managers to develop policies which are accepted by professionals. The article ends with practical recommendations for policy makers, managers and professionals.

The Netherlands is engaged in reforming several of its public service provision sectors by limiting their hybrid (mixed public/private) character. This special issue deals with these reforms. We have a closer look at the systems of transport, education and housing, and also discuss reforms of the Dutch nation state. Each article poses three basic questions: why has the sector evolved as it has? Why is change seen as necessary? And how does this process take place? By doing so, we draw general lessons on how the Netherlands deals with system change and public management reform.

This article shows how top officials in ten European countries evaluate changes in the public sector based on a number of dimensions, such as quality, cost-efficiency, ethics, effectiveness and the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer. Senior public officials in the Netherlands are compared to their counterparts from 9 other European countries. The study is based on the large-scale academic COCOPS Top Executive Survey, and answers from 3,173 top public sector officials were used.
Results show that senior public officials in the Netherlands are very positive about changes in cost-efficiency and service quality in the public sector. Yet they are concerned about the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer and public trust in government. At the same time, senior public officials in the Netherlands appear to be among the most positive all nationalities about recent changes in how the public sector operates. Only with regard to changes in the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer are senior Dutch public officials considerably less optimistic.

‘Big Society’ has been one of those inspirational concepts that have recently swept through the public administration literature. With their appeal for a ‘Big Society’, the British Tories contrasted their policy program with Labours’ traditional ‘Big Government’ program. Upon closer inspection, however, it is revealed that the underlying analysis is not new at all, but reflects a specific analysis that can be traced back to Wilson’s famous essay on the study of public administration in 1887. Stripped from its details, the never-ending story claims that public administration now struggles with overwhelming complexity, which makes traditional bureaucratic methods obsolete and calls for innovative, new approaches. The fact that this story has remained fairly constant for over 125 years is cause for some concern. The article traces the historical genesis of this never-ending story and lands on a plea for more sophisticated attention for administrative history, more critical scrutiny of new ideas and more serious study of the nature and effects of complexity.

New means of communication, especially social media, dramatically alter the relationship between citizens and government. The internet is a platform for political discourse now in which citizens not only interact with governments but often play a leading role. This demands of government to learn how to act in a more responsive fashion. In this issue, we focus on the practical effects of web 2.0 for various governmental organizations and draw up a research agenda.

De erosie van de klassieke dichotomie tussen publiek en privaat heeft tot het ontstaan van een groot aantal hybride organisaties eleid. Deze combineren de culturen van staat en markt. De meningen over deze ontwikkeling zijn verdeeld. Het Nederlandse debat over hybride organisaties is gepolariseerd. Aan de ene kant van het spectrum wordt vooral aandacht gevraagd voor de negatieve neveneffecten van hybriditeit. Maar er is ook een benadering die nadruk legt op het ontstaan van synergie door hybriditeit. Beide benaderingen zijn vooral normatief gekleurd en nog weinig systematisch empirisch onderbouwd. In dit artikel ligt de nadruk op de culturele hybriditeit.