The lessons learned from the financial crisis are not necessarily limited to the financial sector. Both the financial sector and the public sector have to deal with perverse effects. The effects can be related to a reduction of complexity and plurality through introducing (oversimplified and one dimensional) models and financial incentives. However, in doing this, complexity and plurality are often lost: the neglect of multiple interests, goal replacement and too much focus on short term results. As a consequence perverse effects arise.
Public sectors and organizations face internal and external pressure to act as they do. At the level of organizations or groups this may involve groupthink; at institutional level uniformity is promoted by the dynamics of isomorphism. This article is a critique on simplification and a plea for the (re)introduction of plurality. More specifically, we stress the importance of individual moral responsibility as a resource for and a way to preserve plurality. Not because that is the only option, but because it is an option that we believe deserves more attention. Other options such as changing regulations and changing the structure of supervision are already broadly discussed. We want to draw attention to the individual as parts of multiple organizations and systems. Individuals are therefore a natural carrier of multiplicity and plurality. Taking moral responsibility serious is not an easy task, but a meaningful step towards awareness of perverse effects due to reduction of complexity and plurality.

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.

De facto autonomy, the actual potential of regulatory agencies to go about their daily work, is often conceived to be more important to explain regulatory capacity than its formal autonomy and responsibilities. In this article we investigate whether external context factors, such as the financial and economic crisis have an impact on de facto autonomy. More specifically, we investigate whether the de facto autonomy varies after the crisis and distinctively so for specific subsets of employees within regulatory agencies. According to literature, mid-level managers of agencies are key to de facto autonomy and building a secure reputation for the agency in question. We test these external and internal effects on de facto autonomy with a survey among employees of the Dutch Financial Market Authority (N = 248). The findings show that the perceived influence of stakeholders is relatively constant, but that it is more dynamic for European stakeholders. Both middle managers and employees working at strategic and policy departments of the agency conceive the impact of European stakeholders as increasing in nature. The findings have important implications for our studies of de facto autonomy of regulatory agencies as well as reform potential after major institutional crises.

Over the last decade educational regulation has changed dramatically. Attempts to develop more cost-efficient regulation and to reduce the regulatory burden paralleled an increased focus on student achievement and sanctioning of failing schools. Additionally, the Inspectorate of Education holds school boards (instead of school principals) accountable for the quality development of their schools. Also, a change in legislation now requires schools to establish an internal supervisory board and improve their accountability to stakeholders.

These changes greatly impact the role of the Dutch Education Inspectorate as they are placed in a polycentric, instead of a monocentric, steering context. This article discusses the new position and role of the Dutch Education Inspectorate and evaluates the extent to which the educational sector and the Inspectorate of Education meet the requirements of such a polycentric context.

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 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.

The private security sector is rapidly growing and their operations more and more comprise policing and public order maintenance, tasks which to date have been government’s primary responsibility. Some fear this development because the private sector is characterized by market values as profitability and efficiency instead of public sector values such as lawfulness and impartiality, putting the quality of public safety at risk. In this article the professional values, norms and motivations of police officers and private security employees in the Netherlands are compared on the basis of a standardized survey. The main conclusion is that there are large differences in how both groups perceive each other, however the underlying professional morale is actually more similar than different.

This article examines the impact of multi-level governance (MLG) on the democratic input into European Union (EU) trade policy under the Lisbon Treaty. Focusing on two recently concluded EU trade agreements, i.e. the multi-party agreement with Colombia and Peru and the association agreement with Central America, the article traces several dangers and risks that MLG entails for democratic accountability and participation, which are closely tied to the strong output-oriented nature of MLG and its emphasis on technical effi ciency. These dangers of MLG – the article argues – are not accidental, but are fi rmly rooted within an underlying hegemonic social-economic trend, characterised by an intentional (neo-liberal dominated) attempt to de-politise, and even de-democratise, European political policy-making.