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.

Since Pim Fortuyn, discontent has become a central issue in public and political debates in the Netherlands. The government tries to ban out all risks and polarisation between citizens, because it fears this will have a destabilising impact on society. However, these measures do not seem to decrease discontent. In this article, we analyse why discontent so persistently keeps dominating debates. We argue that it is prominently and continuously expressed due to the position of opinion polls and the interaction between politicians, journalists and citizens and due to the platform that social media offer. But meanwhile, means to convert discontent into constructive, collective action are diminishing. As a result we continuously gather superficial information about people’s discontent. In order not to hinder constructive debates with this kind of information, as happens in current political discussions, different and more detailed information about the public opinion is needed. Politicians and researchers should make a more clear distinction between discontent itself and the incapacity of citizens to deal with it. Moreover, a revitalisation of the role of civil organisations is important to channel discontent.

More than twelve years after the appearance of the report of the Dutch Committee on the Future of Government Communication (‘Commissie Toekomst Overheidscommunicatie’) communication as the responsibility of the government is an important issue of debate and a discipline that is alive and kicking. We may even conclude that communication – in the terminology of this report – has conquered a place in the heart of policy. A lot is still unclear about the communicative function of government. On the normative question ‘why should the government communicate’ diverging answers are possible. However, the question is hardly discussed in practice and in science. For this reason the positioning of government communication as a separate discipline is also unclear. Reflection on the elementary values behind the discipline can reveal themes that have been invisible so far. The article investigates which values and motives are attached in theory and in practice to communication as a governmental function. For this reason a content analysis has been carried out of a number of volumes of five Dutch magazines (practical and scientific). The authors conclude that for professionals communication mainly is an instrument to support policy goals. The possibility to make a purposeful contribution with government communication to democratic values hardly is brought about, not so much in Communication Science as in Public Administration.

The traditional authority of mayors and aldermen is readily challenged. Formal positions do no longer constitute authority. For that reason, new political repertoires are being sought after and are being developed by local political-executive leaders. This article analyses and compares the sources of authority for mayors and aldermen: how can they develop, maintain, and strengthen their authority? It develops an innovative typology of sources of authority. A distinction is made between institutional, positional, and personal sources of authority. The model is applied to the mayors and aldermen in relation to relevant socio-political developments that affect the two offices. It is found that the authority of mayors rests on institutional sources of authority more so than that of aldermen. For the latter, positional and personal sources of authority are more important. At the same time, personal sources of authority have become very important for mayors as well as aldermen. The results call upon mayors and aldermen’s skills and competences to develop personal authority through persuasion.

Over the past decade, policy attention for ‘active citizenship’ and ‘bottom up’ citizen initiatives has strongly increased. Nowadays, governments tend to approach citizens more and more as practical ‘doers’: as active citizens that can initiate projects in the public domain – for instance to increase the livability of their neighborhood. The dominant policy perspective on what is called the ‘democracy of action’ is one of a small government (to make room for a ‘big society’) that is not directive but supportive to active citizens.
In this article, we first argue that in practice we observe two ‘silent ideologies’ that suppress this policy perspective of the democracy of action. We call these the silent ideologies of ‘professional centralism’ and of ‘instrumental support’; we claim that in practice these ideologies enable the dominance of professionals over citizen initiatives (and nót that of the citizens). Second we state that the policy perspective of the democracy of action itself contains a silent ideology: it assumes a highly depoliticized form of citizenship. In the short term, this may be convenient for administrators and policy makers but in the long run this can lead to a less democracy because the voices of critical citizens are not heard.

The involvement of citizens in discussions about policy arrangements has been growing in the past decades. These forums of decision-making often provoke criticism because of a so-called ‘lack of representativeness’. Often a small group of active citizens takes the lead and decides which problems have to be dealt with. Some active residents primarily focus on improving the neighbourhood, regardless of whether their activities have everyone’s consent. This raises many questions related their representativeness. Do these participants form an adequate cross-section of the population? Are they speaking on behalf of others? Maybe passive citizens feel fine with the opinions of active citizens and agree that a small group of citizens is taking the lead. In this paper these active citizens are viewed as ‘trustees’: informal representatives who take responsibility to look after the neighbourhood’s interests, expecting that passive residents would support their efforts. The paper has two central questions: First, which ideas do active participants have about representation and representativeness? Second, in what respects can active citizens be characterized as ‘trustees’? In the theoretical part we contend that the notion ‘trustee’ may function as a theoretical framework to understand present-day citizen participation. In local policy networks many informal representatives express views and interests that are recognizable for many citizens. They are trusted, as long as their activities can be checked. The second part of the paper focuses on three projects of citizen decision-making within local safety policies (The Dutch cities Amsterdam, Deventer and Rotterdam). Within these projects, participants prioritize what kinds of activities and interventions police officers and other frontline workers should carry out. A main finding is that many active citizens function as contact persons who are continuously available for other residents. They do not wish to speak ‘on behalf’ of others but they are bestowed – often reluctantly – with the role of representative, as they demonstratively express neighborhood interests (‘clean, intact and safe’). Their reputation seems to be decisive.

Over the last decades an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions between Dutch healthcare organizations has taken place (up scaling). More recently there is a rise in the numbers of new small-scale healthcare organizations and small-scale care facilities (down scaling in the numbers). The wide variety of scales, each with its pros, cons and (historical) contexts, makes the existence of one optimal scale an illusion. Our research question is: when, and on the basis of which values, is scale of healthcare organizations legitimate? We answer this question by analyzing 650 newspaper articles from fourteen national newspapers. By using theory about legitimacy and values, we argue that five values underlie the public discussion on scale: governance, the human size, quality of care, market power and efficiency. We conclude that achieving legitimate scale involves dealing with those five values, which are not always commensurable and sometimes conflicting. With this article we contribute to the scientific debate about scale and values. We also give recommendations to policy makers and executives that can be used to improve the legitimacy of scale decisions.

The recent scholarly debate on policies and discourses with regard to citizenship in the Netherlands point to a moralization or culturalization of citizenship. This article aims to contribute to this debate by zooming into the current contents of citizenship education. We make a comparative analysis of the contents of textbooks for citizenship education that are used for civic integration courses for migrants and for primary and secondary school students in the Netherlands. Our findings show that citizenship has indeed gained a moral content in both contexts but that the difference lies in the norms that are stressed and how they are conveyed to the target population of future citizens. Whereas civic integration books for migrants emphasize the importance of learning local procedures and habits in order to belong to the Dutch national community, primary and secondary school books underscore the importance of dealing with cultural diversity in the multicultural society.

In recent decades, professionals in the public sector have been faced with increasingly detailed demands concerning accountability and performance. It is often argued that this increased accountability and its bureaucratic pressures limit professionals’ discretionary space and autonomy. However, this critique is hardly based on empirical research on the experiences and perceptions of professionals themselves. In this article we present an investigation into these perceptions and experiences with accountability in one particular brand of the public sector, namely youth care.
Our research indicates that professionals in youth care are hardly interested in greater autonomy or discretion. They rather want clarity, security and options for learning. Moreover, we found ‘bureaucratic attachment’: attachment to bureaucratic procedures particularly as a reaction to increased fears to be sued when something goes wrong with clients. In the recurrent arguments for reduction of bureaucracy, this other face of bureaucracy is often disregarded.
Regarding working conditions however, the professionals we interviewed do want more discretion. Especially concerning occupation of beds, as the requirement for permanent occupation is viewed to augment risk. We therefore argue for better backing of professionals in youth, for a more precise battle against unnecessary bureaucracy, and for professionalization in order to handle more discretion.

Currently the Dutch government funds dozens of social interventions designed to tackle polarization and radicalization issues. It is still unknown whether the assumptions underlying these interventions are valid. This article puts the theories of change of such interventions to the test. Underlying causal assumptions of four dominant Dutch social policies were confronted with scientific evidence: (1) the system-based approach, (2) peer mediation, (3) intergroup contact and (4) self-esteem enhancement. System-based approaches – comparable to multi-systemic therapy (MST) – seem effective in reducing extremist behaviour in radical youth, but do not necessarily lead to an ideological change. In peer mediation, the causal link between the deployment of young people and the positive outcomes of such methods remains unclear. Peer mediation is also more likely to contribute in conflicts that have not yet escalated. Intergroup contact reduces prejudices about other groups, but has a limited effect. There is also no evidence for a long term effect and positive outcomes of intergroup contact do not automatically apply to adolescents. Finally, it is questionable that enhancing the self-esteem of (moslim) youth makes them more resilient against radical tendencies. In the same vein, the scientific evidence is ambiguous about whether increasing self-esteem results in social desirable behaviour or improved social relations.

In order to facilitate the creation of a regulated market, Diagnostic Treatment Combinations (DBC’s in Dutch) have been introduced in Dutch mental health care in 2008. DBC’s are developed to distinguish and price the ‘products’ of health care, in order to make comparison and competition between health care providers possible. In this qualitative study we analyzed mental health care professionals experiences with the DBC-system. We focused on two questions: (1) what does the DBC-system and the related introduction of marketization of mental health care mean for professionals? and (2) how do professionals cope with the DBC-system in their daily practices? We found that the logics of the market and bureaucracy, both incorporated in the DBC-system, often conflicted with the values and ethics of mental health care professionals. Mental health professionals experience deterioration of professionalism and quality of care. They were coping with conflicting values by non-compliance with rules and pragmatic use of the DBC-system. It is argued that the efforts of professionals to protect the quality of their work might actually lead to invisibility of the problems they encounter, which reinforces the policy they criticize.

For many years now, citizenship has been a hot topic in Dutch politics. The activation and participation of citizens has been part and parcel of many policy initiatives. In this fashion, the current cabinet of Prime Minister Rutte has stressed the virtues of a ‘big society’ and a ‘small government’. We call this the new civility: a citizenship philosophy in which an ethico-economic claim of self-sufficiency is accompanied by a strong anticipation of policy conformity. Notably, the democratic legitimation of the new civility has been reversed. Now it is government which demands civic accountability, not the other way around. Responsible citizenship, not responsible government is at its heart. Furthermore, the new civility is based on a reversal of the Mandevillean idea of private vices and public benefits. We illustrate its ambiguous strands by a case study of a citizen’s initiative project in the city of Dordrecht. We conclude by showing how the tension between the values of civil self-sufficiency and policy conformity ironically can turn out in a-political conception of citizenship.

In the Netherlands it is widely acknowledged that neighbourhood oriented citizen’s initiatives often require some professional support. Little is known, however, about the various types of support that professionals may provide. Moreover, Dutch policies usually tend to take an instrumental stance towards citizen initiatives, focussing on their possible contribution to governmental goals. In this contribution we make an effort to develop a typology of different types and roles of professional support. Four basic types of professional support are derived from two axis. The first axis distinguishes between an instrumental approach and a more personal approach, the second between professional support focussing on the initiative/the initiator or on the broader institutional and civil society context. From our empirical findings we conclude that a vital context for citizen initiatives may be produced through the combination of an instrumental and personal approach. The latter comprises efforts of empowerment attuned to both the specific personal needs and capacities of citizens and the typical neighbourhood context. A combined approach may reduce the risk of ‘crowding out citizenship’ that exists when citizen’s initiatives become an instrument in a government’s policy.

The central question in this article is whether the relationship between the current citizen’s initiatives and government in the Netherlands shows similarities to the relationship between their predecessors (usually denoted as ‘private initiatives’) and government in the past, and more specifically in the time of pillarization. In the article it is claimed that in the time of pillarization – the period between around 1900 and 1970, when Dutch society was characterized by vertical social divisions along denominational (religious) and ideological lines – private initiatives and Dutch government developed a peculiar symbiotic relationship. In this period, on the one hand the pillarized private initiatives, as a matter of course, expected a large degree of autonomy but at the same time all sorts of support from Dutch government when administering various public tasks. On the other hand, Dutch government took for granted that the pillarized private initiatives highly contributed to the initiation and administration of these public tasks. Since the disintegration of the pillars in 1970s Dutch government has been searching for new ways to relate to the old and new private initiatives, and vice versa. Yet in this search both government and private initiatives still seem driven by the old ‘reflexes’ of pillarization.

In citizens’ initiatives (CI’s) citizens themselves take action to solve problems in their community. Many Dutch municipalities have adopted policies to facilitate CI’s. This raises a number of issues. For example who are involved in such initiatives? And, which problems are likely to be addressed? Such questions are pertinent, because for other forms of civic participation research has demonstrated that privileged social groups are overrepresented. We have compared groups of citizens who are actively involved in CI’s with less active citizens. It is demonstrated that in keeping with previous findings privileged social groups (e.g. high income and well educated people) are overrepresented amongst the more active citizens. This is true for both individual and collective neighbourhood initiatives. However, we did not find an overrepresentation of males amongst the activists. In answering the second question, we have looked at the concerns and worries of the citizens. There is no evidence of systematic differences in the problem definitions of more and less active citizens. This mitigates problem of the social selectivity in civic participation: if citizens agree about the issues to be addressed, who cares about who does the job, provided that someone is willing to do it?

In recent years the Dutch welfare state has invested substantial sums of money in activation of citizen’s initiatives in deprived neighbourhoods. As a policy concept citizen’s initiatives refers to enhancements by citizens to the quality of life in their neighbourhood. Is this activation policy productive or counterproductive for citizen participation? This question is answered by analyzing the representativeness of the activated citizens, the nature of their initiatives, the type of relations they develop with institutions, and whether they develop more competences due to their initiative(s). Our findings indicate that the activated citizens are more often female, below 50, lower educated, and 40 percent is migrant, which makes them more representative than the participation elite (male, 50+, white, and higher educated). They form a new vanguard that activates many participants through initiatives that focus on connecting people and on social problems such as anonymity, isolation and nuisance. Many contacts with professionals contribute for them to a partnership relation geared toward cooperation instead of consumerism or dissatisfaction. Also these citizens develop democratic, bureaucratic and social competences as well as social reflexivity and empathy for other citizens and institutions. We conclude that activation of citizen’s initiatives has positive effects on citizen participation.

The historical transformations of Dutch citizenship are assessed in this article in light of two aspects. One concerns the dimensions and layers of citizenship; the other pertains to the relative stress laid on either formal or moral citizenship. We illustrate how citizenship was broadened from civic to political, social and cultural rights. Then we discuss the recent moralization of citizenship in the context of Dutch debates on immigrant integration. We illustrate how the relative stress on moral citizenship therein pertains to a virtual disenfranchisement of non-native Dutch citizens.

Contemporary western democracies, such the United States, Great Britain, and The Netherlands have become diploma democracies. They are ruled by the well educated, whereas the least educated, even though they still comprise about half of the population, have virtually vanished from most political arenas. Of course, the well educated have always been more politically active than the less educated, but in the past decades this gap has widened substantially. Well-educated citizens are more inclined to vote, to write letters to the editor, or to visit consultative or deliberative meetings than citizens with a low level of education; and most, if not all, members of parliament, all the political officials, and almost all of the political advocates and lobbyists, have college or graduate degrees. The paper substantiates the rise of diploma democracy in The Netherlands, discusses what is problematic about such an educational meritocracy in the context of democracy, and looks at what could be done to mitigate or remedy some of its negative effects.

Demand-steering policies in healthcare are understandable but problematic answers to the desire for democratization that dates from the seventies of the former century. Prominent critics such as Achterhuis and Illich were very critical of the undemocratic character of health care. Yet their romantic idea of society excused them from the need to articulate democratic alternatives. The empty space that they left was filled by the concept of demand-steering. Demand-steering, however, rather than strengthening democratic practices, merely undermines them, by preferring exit above voice, by putting up new bureaucratic barriers between clients and professionals and by undermining the quality of the relationship between clients and professionals.

Doing more justice to the democratic impulse is possible and desirable. A new step towards this aim is being taken by a fourth logic of steering, (next to the familiar logics of the market, bureaucracy and professionalism) that centers on improving the dialogue between clients and professionals. The one variant, democratic professionalism, starts from the position of the professional and aims at intensifying democratic control, while the other variant, collaboration, starts from the client and aims at providing him with more influence and responsibility for the health care process. This fourth logic however can only provide a new impulse to democratization when the vague notion of the dialogue is elaborated more thoroughly.