In the Netherlands there is an ongoing discussion on the preferred or even necessary scale of government. Basic assumption in this decades-long discussion is that the mere seize of government affects the functioning and quality of government. This article questions that specific assumption, by applying two criteria; government performance and democratic legitimacy. It is concluded that the supposed relationship between seize and quality hardly exists, theoretically nor empirically. Recent government proposals for further up-scaling are being critically assessed. Main conclusion is that thinking in terms of scale and seize is no longer feasible in a modern network society.

Before 2010, the Netherlands Antilles were an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This structure was often cited as a barrier to effective governance and led to calls for the ablishment of the Netherlands Antilles. This article examines whether this step has led to good governance in the case of the new country of Curaçao. The author comes to the conclusion that political culture has a bigger effect on good governance than institutional arrangements.

In this contribution we introduce the principles of proper administration and the principles of good administration as public values and the definitions of these terms including the concept of good governance. Two main developments in relation to these principles are described here. The first line is from unwritten principles (developed by the judiciary) to written principles of proper administration by which there is in addition to the classical legal protection function, the instrumental function of these principles that has become more important. The second line is from the starting point of the principles of good administration - which can be found more in the legislation and the (policy)regulation but in a fragmentary way - to the application. This application is checked by the National Ombudsman, the Court of Audit and - more recent - also the European judiciary are working with these principles. For guaranteeing the public values there is - from the concept of good governance - now a need for integration of these principles of good administration in the Netherlands General Administrative Law Act and in the case law of the Netherlands judiciary.

Good governance is a contested concept in public administration theory and practice. This concluding article builds on the presented contributions as well as on additional research. First, we summarize the diversity, leading to a sketch of two basic approaches towards good governance (organizational and value oriented). Additionally questions concerning the normativity, the pluralism of values and the object of good governance (process or policy) are addressed. Second, attention is paid to strategies to cope with values in governance, acknowledging the tensions between those values. Basic strategies aim at ‘choosing’ between values, ‘accommodating’ (in time, project, context) and ‘connecting’ values (through institutions or hybridization).

A surprising difference between the Netherlands and Flanders is that a Flemish minister may appoint more than 20 advisors, while Dutch ministers can appoint only one or two ‘political assistants’. However, this difference was hardly studied before, although it is a relevant and actual theme. This article analyzes the differences in role and position of Flemish ministerial advisors and Dutch political assistants. We show that there exist large differences between both types of advisors and we discuss the reasons for and consequences of this difference. The institutional context in which both actors work determines a lot their role. Differences in political culture and administrative organization in particular seem to be important explanatory factors.

Whilst embedding democratic innovations that increase and deepen citizen participation in decision making now is a common policy of governments in many countries, and theorists in democratic theory also tend to emphasize how good citizen participation is to democracy, the empirical evaluation of democratic innovations is still a rather unexplored area of research.

This article evaluates two types of democratic innovations, participatory governance and deliberative forums in the Netherlands and a large number of other Western countries. The findings show, for both types of innovation, that citizen participation contributes to the quality of democracy in several ways. The analysis also makes it clear that different designs produce different democratic effects, which also reflects tensions between democratic values; participatory governance projects are better at giving citizens influence, whereas deliberative forums appear to be better at promoting the exchange of arguments. Also, whereas cases of participatory governance are more open than deliberative forums, representation is higher for the deliberative type of cases. As a consequence politicians and policy makers can have a major impact on democracy; by choosing for a specific design of citizen participation they may encourage certain aspects of democracy more than others.