In this essay, the author is looking for pioneering local administrators in the Netherlands who dared to push existing boundaries. However, the story starts in Great Britain where progressive liberals under the label ‘municipal socialism’ proceeded to provide public utilities through municipal governments rather than private enterprises. Their example was adopted by the so-called ‘radicals’ in Amsterdam led by Wim Treub. ‘Aldermen socialism’ with Floor Wibaut in Amsterdam as its most important representative, took it a step further. Their aim for a welfare municipality anticipated the later welfare state. After the Second World War we also saw some strong local administrators who in their own way strived for changes in their municipalities. After 1970 the phenomenon of ‘urban renewal’ led to a new flourishing of ‘aldermen socialism’ in the Netherlands with Jan Schaefer (in Amsterdam) as its most appealing figurehead. Since 2000, we have been in a new era of dualism, citizen participation and devolution that has produced new 'boundary pushers', which generated interest abroad (see the book on mayors by Benjamin Barber). At the end of the article, the author takes a look into the future. Current global problems also confront municipalities and they require local administrators with a good mix of political leadership, new civic leadership, inspiring commissioning and good stewardship. This essay is written for the ‘Across boundaries’ annual conference of the VNG (the Association of Netherlands Municipalities founded in 1912) held in Maastricht (in the far south of the Netherlands) in 2018.

The reform of the Dutch welfare state is an ongoing process, that jumpstarted in the early 1980s. We chart demographic trends and prospects for economic growth up to year 2025. Our search for options to strenghten the economic base of the welfare state leads on to a discussion of tax-benefit measures to increase labour participation and to incentivise part-timeworkers to accept fulltime jobs. We conclude that, all in all, by 2025 the number of workers in de Dutch economy will not differ significantly from the current size of the labour force, whereas the scope to improve labour productivity seems to be limited. Given these limits to the prospects for future economic growth – even with the standard pension age at 67 years, planned to be in force as from 2021 –, our economy will have to support at least half a million more pensioners and an as yet unknown additional number of elderly unemployed and disabled. It follows, that further reforms of the social security system of the Netherlands can be expected, as public sector outlays claim currently already half of national output.

The key question of this study is whether policies adopted elsewhere in Europe might be useful in helping to increase the labour force participation of women and of older workers in the Netherlands, and thus improve the financial basis for social security arrangements. We examined the effectiveness of national policy measures over and above that of the individual-level determinants that are traditionally examined in economic and sociological studies. The data on labour force participation are from the European Social Survey, and information on public policy arrangements comes from the MULTILINKS database. Regarding the labour force participation of women, findings show the importance of distinguishing financial measures and care services. Women generally work fewer hours per week in countries with generous financial support for families (tax benefits, child support), and more hours in countries with generous parental leaves. Regarding the participation of older workers, findings show the importance of distinguishing the minimum pension level (negative association with the likelihood of having a job) and pension as a proportion of earned wage (no association with having a job). A novelty of the present study is its ability to demonstrate the impact of national arrangements at the level of individual participation behaviour.

Reflection and Debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

Regional or local identities are an important factor to take into account in administrative rearrangement processes, as Evert Meijers rightly argues. But if one does so, it’s very important to analyse how public authorities deal with such identities and identifications. In The Netherlands many instances can be found were at least one public authority becomes activistic and tries to mobilize the public against rearrangement plans. This very often happens throughout processes of municipal amalgamation. Activistic public authorities can bring historically formed and often still cultivated local identities into play as being threatened by the plans. By doing so, citizens can identify with the ‘we’ of the local community against ‘them’ of another community. Another antithesis can develop in how the plans are being framed: ‘we’ who will suffer because of ‘their’ bad plans. Finally, the political performance of proponents may be critiqued, thus evoking identifications with ‘we’ who are treated undemocratically against ‘them’ who are unreliable. This appeal to identities and identifications by activistic public authorities provides powerful impediments for successful administrative rearrangement. Prevention of such activism thus seems to be a very important requirement.

Regional or local identities are an important factor to take into account in administrative rearrangement processes.

Reflection and Debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

Reflection and Debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.