Whereas the six Dutch islands in the Caribbean all have a (very) limited population size, analyses of political problems on the islands rarely seem to take the variable of state size into account. The available academic literature demonstrates that the population size of states has a strong influence on the quality of democratic governance, although scholars disagree on the question whether smallness is an asset or an obstacle to democratic development. After a discussion of this theoretical literature, the present article proceeds with a presentation of field research in three small island states (St. Kitts and Nevis, Seychelles, and Palau) in which the political consequences of a limited population size are analyzed. This analysis reveals that a number of size-related effects can be observed in all three examined island states, among which a tendency to personalistic competition, strong polarization between parties and politicians, particularistic relationships between voters and their representatives, and a dominant position of the political executive vis-à-vis other institutions. A subsequent analysis of the contemporary political situation on the Dutch Caribbean islands shows that the observed problems also play a role on these islands, which indicates that smallness is perhaps of greater significance than is now often supposed.

A public interest implies that government intervention is needed in order to enhance societal welfare. After the character of the public interest has been determined from the theoretical perspective of public economics, the government has the responsibility to safeguard the public interest at lowest societal costs. This article discusses the supportive role of intermediaries (or ‘middlemen’), using prescriptions from transaction management. A discussion of three case studies shows how in public private partnerships the knowledge of such intermediaries can be used in order to safeguard the public interest in an efficient manner.

‘Green gas’ is a sustainable alternative to natural gas. It is produced by converting biomass into biogas, which can consequently be upgraded to natural gas standards. Expectations about green gas are high. According to the long term vision of Netbeheer Nederland, the representative association of gas grid operators, green gas will entail 50 percent of the domestic gas mixture by 2050. In line with this vision national government has adopted a green gas innovation support program. Production of green gas takes place in rural areas with abundant supply of organic production resources, especially manure. It is in demonstration projects that green gas niche development is to be proven. In this paper the central question is how green gas demonstration projects manifest at the local level. By conducting a stakeholder analysis, we take a ‘bottom-up’ research approach, which helps us to identify organizational and institutional barriers key local stakeholders have in relation to green gas demonstration projects. We judge this necessary to further understanding in green gas niche development. The results of the analysis are used to advice policymakers about design and use of policy instruments which can help to solve these barriers.

The credit crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has fundamentally challenged much financial regulation and the political institutions that produced it. Measured against the criticisms that have been brought forth against previous financial governance, the extent of governments’ overall reform ambitions has been disappointing. Starting from this observation, this article asks: what explains governments’ reform choices, and thus also their limited ambitions? To explore this question, this article focuses on the positions that four governments central to global financial regulation (the USA, the UK, Germany and France) have taken in advance of the G20 meetings in 2009 across four key issue areas: accounting standards, derivatives trading, credit ratings agencies and banking rules. It evaluates both the overlap between positions across domains and governments as well as the differences between them. Such variation, we argue, provides key clues to the overall drivers behind reforms – as well as their limits. The overall picture that emerges can be summarized as follows: governments have been staunch defenders of their national firms’ competitive interests in regulatory reforms. That has not necessarily meant that they followed industry preferences across the board. It has been the relative impact, compared to foreign competitors, that counted in reform positions, not the absolute impact. These differences of opinion have played out within the context and the limits of the overall debates about thinkable policy alternatives. In spite of fundamental criticisms of pre-crisis regulatory orthodoxy, convincing and coherent alternatives have been forthcoming slowly at best. This has made reform proposals less radical than criticisms, seen on their own, might suggest.

This paper reports on a qualitative interview study into the prioritization and interpretation of public values government elites in the Netherlands, comparing value preferences between political and administrative elites. Based on 65 in-depth interviews with MPs, ministers and senior civil servants, statements on four public values (responsiveness, expertise, lawfulness, transparency) that have been deducted through a substantive literature review, are coded and categorized. Overall, political and administrative value preferences in the Netherlands turn out to be more similar than they are different. However, mutual perceptions emphasize differences and contrasts. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are offered and hypotheses are formulated for future studies.

In public debate on immigrants' political ties with their country of origin, two assumptions prevail. The first assumption is that many immigrants engage in transnational political activities. The second is that forms of transnational citizenship are an impediment for the development of local citizenship. However, so far little research has been done on the importance of, and the relationship between, local and transnational citizenship. In this article, we focus on local and transnational forms of active citizenship, here understood as the total of political practices and processes of identification. Our study, conducted among middle-class immigrants in Rotterdam, indicates that the importance of active transnational citizenship should not be overstated. Among these middle-class immigrants, political practices are primarily focused on the local level; political practices directed to the home country appear to be quite rare. If we look at processes of identification, we see that a majority of the middle-class immigrants have a strong urban identity. Many of them combine this local identification with feelings of belonging with people in their home country. These local and transnational identifications seem to reinforce, rather than impede, each other.

It has been claimed by politicians as well as researchers that economic openness poses a threat to the welfare state. This article investigates whether there is such a threat. Based on the literature four different hypotheses are distinguished; economic openness is negatively, positively, curvilinear or not related to the welfare state. The first and the third hypothesis state that economic openness does threaten the welfare state, whereas the other two hypotheses argue that this is not the case. The empirical studies investigating the relationship between economic openness and the welfare state are systematically reviewed in this article. The analysis shows that economic openness does not threaten the welfare state.

The problem of climate change is high on the various political-administrative agendas, both national and international. At the same time the problem is full of uncertainties and controversies. Adaptation to climate change asks for adjustments in our spatial planning, but can also necessitate changes in the distribution of public and private responsibilities. A crucial question is how the legitimacy of adaptation measures can be organized in a context surrounded with uncertainties, controversies and conflicting interests. In this paper we introduce the central theme of this special issue and the various contributions.

Since the 1980s, there has been a rise of managers and executives in public domains. Especially in domains like education, this development was accompanied by sharp controversies and 'clashes' between managers and professionals, who would be 'alienated' from each other. The classic nature of professional and managerial loyalties would seem to strengthen this alienation. Professionals would primarily be loyal to their profession, whereas managerial loyalties would mainly focus on organisations. Although research has criticized the one-sidedness of professional loyalty, managerial loyalty has hardly been studied up till now. In this article, managerial loyalties are analyzed theoretically as well as empirically. The article rests upon a qualitative study among school leaders in Dutch secondary education. It shows that management reforms in education did not result in the adoption of a new, primary loyalty to organizations, management or performance by school leaders. Instead, long-standing relations, for example with teachers, remain meaningful, also because most school leaders have a professional background as teacher. Consequently, assumptions about managers who alienate from professionals, and managers who do not value their relationships with professionals must be criticized, at least in (secondary) education.

The growing interest in demand-based delivery is to be comprehended regarding the criticism on the traditional 'apply-based' delivery. Regarding the literature, the main stream notion on demand-based delivery contains the transfer of the tasks and duties from the intermediate professional to the client. Consequently, the (demanding) client is directly able to affect the provisions he is eligible to and to influence the acquirement of the services and goods.

The main issues are:

This article focuses on the new role of intermediate professionals. The intermediate professional can maintain a role in realising the demand-supply relationship between the client and the supplying professional; he can get the task to acquire and spread the required market information, but as well can get the responsibility to support the market participants using this information. In the same time, this responsibility can help to avoid the normative risks, especially the risk of inadequacy.

This new role must probably be regulated and in any case be monitored to prevent from the situation that the intermediate professional will take over the new responsibilities of the client. If this does not happen, the transfer to the demand-based delivery of public services will fail. On the other hand, if their will be no accessible client support by the new intermediate professional, the transfer to the demand-based delivery will tarnish the fundaments of the social system.

Traditionally, technological transitions in infrastructure bound sectors are matters for the private sector. History teaches us that as soon as technological transitions proved successful, government sooner or later got involved with the distribution. Most of this involvement, both in history and now, has taken the form of public regulation with the help of various formal legal instruments.

This article aims to answer three questions, namely (1) what ideational and materials drives can be distinguished in the government's involvement in these technological transitions, (2) through what legal instruments are these objectives expressed and how , and (3) what are the incentives of these formal legal instruments on innovative private entrepreneurs for their further technological pursuits. How were their behavioural options affected by the use of statutory acts, concessions, permits and/or licences? Incentives to private innovators are qualified as positive, neutral or negative. The research method chosen has been inspired by insights from legal sociology, public choice theory and strategic actor behaviour in qualitative simulation-games, but follows distinct methodological steps. Throughout the article a case study on the transition from telegraphy to telephony in The Netherlands will be used to illustrate the discussion.

In December 2004, the report of the Dutch Parliamentary Investigation Committee on Infrastructural Projects was published. This committee investigated the budgets overruns of two large rail projects currently under construction in the Netherlands: the Betuwe Line and the High Speed Line (HSL)-South. The committee also looked at how mistakes that were made in the earlier projects had been avoided in the construction of the Zuiderzee Line, a project currently under preparation. The report provides a look inside the struggle of the Dutch national government from the beginning of the 1990s in their public-private partnership (PPP) efforts. In this contribution, we provide an analysis of the motives, approach and results of privatisation of these three projects on the bases of the detailed empirical analysis provided by the Committee. We seek explanations of how privatisation with these three projects evolved and what lessons can be drawn. It appears that practices have so far been far from good and instead of committing to the obligation to apply PPP in every large infrastructural project, the government should first find out how PPP in such projects should actually be carried out.

At the start of the century, the organisational fields belonging to the public employment service and social security, which previously were strictly institutionally separated with their rules and norms, have been brought under one umbrella or network structure in the Netherlands. We discuss how within this structure adaptive and reflexive forms of governance enhance information feedback and simultaneous learning processes both at the top and in the execution level of social security. Based upon document study, interviews and a case study of a sectoral experiment on integral service provision, we illustrate which learning elements occurred in bridging the planning and control cycle of New Public Management at the top with the horizontal mutual adjustment between organisations at decentral level.

This article examines the differences and similarities in public policy of the Dutch and Belgian government in the policy field of socially responsible investing (SRI). In particular the authors discuss both the content and the consequences of the Dutch arrangement 'Groen beleggen' and the Belgian 'Kringloopfonds'. Our empirical evidence states that, although both public policies are very similar (a tax incentive for investors investing financial means in socially responsible funds), they had a different influence on the socially responsible investment market. The Dutch arrangement 'Groen beleggen' lead to more assets under management, more green private funds, more financed projects and a bigger influence on the market of socially responsible investment products. This is mainly caused by the nature of the funding: the choice for private funds in the Netherlands, instead of a public fund like in Belgium.

Decision-making in the Netherlands is generally characterised as (neo) corporatist. Whether stakeholders enjoy a similar level of access to, and influence on the formulation of the national position, which the Dutch government advocates in Brussels, remains however unclear. This article aims at providing a first tentative answer to this question by studying the formulation of the Dutch position on EU resolution 882/2004 concerning the official controls on compliance with feed and food law, animal health and animal welfare.

In-depth analysis of this case reveals that the development process of the Dutch stance on 882/2004 was largely devoid of stakeholder-input. As such, this process may be characterised as essentially etatist rather than corporatist. Moreover, it was established – as expected – that specialised lobby groups – those that could offer additional information and expertise to the dossier team responsible for 882/2004 – were able to exert more influence than general advocacy groups. Finally, the hypothesis that openness leads to more stakeholder-influence was not confirmed in this case. To the contrary, only during private bilateral discussion did a selection of business organizations manage to convince the dossier team of the benefits of limited border controls.

Governing the Netherlands seems to have become a form of governing by commission. Between 1995 and 2005 Dutch central government installed at least 364 commissions that we were able to identify. Cuts in this phenomenon are often called for by its opponents since commissions are often believed to be a strategic instrument for policymaker to cut democratic corners or slow down policy making processes. Dutch Parliament by motion has even asked government to keep from forming (so many) commissions. Still trends have not changed and new commissions are being formed almost every other week. Apparently there are compelling reasons for forming commissions. In this article we discuss how societal and public context lead to the installation of commissions. Furthermore we argue that installation of a commission can be clearly understood from the motives officials have with its formation. Hiring expertise (60%), independence of members (30%) and creating legitimacy (20%) are important factors regarding these motivations. Timing of commissions within election cycles is strategic: installation shortly after the new administration is effective, as is reporting back before the next elections. As long as politics remains politics calling for less commissions has mostly symbolic value.

This paper offers an introduction to the research theme of 'lobbyism'. Recent Scandinavian research shows that lobbyism is a modern mirror view of corporatism, which develops through changes in the structure of decision-making and implementation by interest groups and government. Three questions are put forward: (a) what is the empirical evidence for the phenomenon of lobbyism? (b) what potential contribution could the concept of lobbyism make to a better understanding of corporatism in the Netherlands? (c) what are, according to the theory of collective decision-making, the most important differences between influence strategies in corporatist negotiation structures, and those in lobby networks?

This article discusses the degree to which Dutch environmental policy exhibits a shift from corporatism to lobbyism. Based on a general analysis of environmental policy making in the Netherlands and two specific cases of environmental decision making, the author draws the conclusion that such a shift has not happened. At the level of policymaking it is rather the opposite: in the 1980s the Ministry of the Environment introduced a certain level of corporatism. This was possible because of a clear framework of environmental policy goals shaped by the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM), because the environmental movement began to see the Ministry as an ally and because business interests preferred self-regulation (one element of corporatism) to government regulations. In two concrete case of environmental decision-making that are discussed here, environmental goals are being discussed once more. During such discussion, it appears that Dutch ministries have close connection to 'their' target groups. For the coming years, environmental policy will 'Europeanize' further and Dutch economic interest groups, although being remarkably late in responding to this shift, will start to influence the Brussels policymaking game instead of the Dutch implementation game.