In Dutch semi-public sectors of education, healthcare, and housing there is a tendency towards governance based inspection. The attention of inspectorates shifts from inspection on minimum quality standards to inspection on governance based quality improvement. The aim of this special issue is to learn more about the opportunities and risks of governance based inspection. The survey and sector articles show that governance based inspection (1) puts the responsibility of governors to stimulate quality on the agenda, (2) makes governors more aware of the quality targets they want to achieve within their organisations, and (3) has a deregulating effect. However, the risks are (1) reregulation via sector norms, (2) a lack of reality checks, and (3) a narrow focus on governors instead of the quality of public services. Consequently, inspectors have to learn new skills and competences. All in all, governance based inspection can complement but not replace other ways of inspection.

Debates about the quality of local democracy are not new. This was also the case 100 years ago. In 1918 the ground-breaking dissertation of Adriaan Buriks on democratic municipal government was published in the Netherlands. In his dissertation Buriks proposed a radical democratic reform of Dutch municipal government by adopting the new system of ‘commission government’ from the US. That is a system of city government in which (almost) all city authority functions are concentrated in a small commission. The commission is organized in such a way that each member of the commission is the head of a city government department, every member is chosen by the population of the whole city and the exercise of authority is controlled by the whole population. The essay describes the remarkable life of this social revolutionary and municipal law expert. It goes on to discusses the dissertation through an introduction on the central issue of democratic municipal government, a description of the government systems of the US before and after the American Revolution of 1787, a description of the new system of ‘commission government’ and his proposal to adopt the new system in the Netherlands. The essay is closed by the author’s reflection on how the dissertation was received and its impact.