This article shows how top officials in ten European countries evaluate changes in the public sector based on a number of dimensions, such as quality, cost-efficiency, ethics, effectiveness and the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer. Senior public officials in the Netherlands are compared to their counterparts from 9 other European countries. The study is based on the large-scale academic COCOPS Top Executive Survey, and answers from 3,173 top public sector officials were used.
Results show that senior public officials in the Netherlands are very positive about changes in cost-efficiency and service quality in the public sector. Yet they are concerned about the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer and public trust in government. At the same time, senior public officials in the Netherlands appear to be among the most positive all nationalities about recent changes in how the public sector operates. Only with regard to changes in the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer are senior Dutch public officials considerably less optimistic.

In co-production processes, citizens and professionals both contribute to the provision of public services and try to enhance the quality of the services they produce. Although government offers several opportunities for co-production, not all citizens decide to actually take part. Current insights in citizens’ individual motivations offered by the co-production literature are limited. In this article, we integrate insights from different streams of literature to build a theoretical model that explains citizens’ motivations to co-produce. We test the model using empirical data of Dutch neighborhood watches.

In this contribution we analyze the content of the Veerman Commission’s report that in 2007/2008 advised the Dutch government on the necessity of measures to protect the coast against future rising waters and other climatological and environmental changes and challenges. We conclude that the content of the report is in itself an expression of the ongoing social and governmental debate and process that tries to create a sense of urgency since there is no real immediate crisis to facilitate changes. Thus the report is not only the result of the work of the commission (though its firm statements on the necessity of measures were clearly heard), but at the same time the reflection of an ongoing debate which also creates a new challenge for stakeholders in the water domain. The organizational recommendations of the commission to place the protection against rising waters as far away from day to day politics as possible have all been put into action, which is a noteworthy result. Still, it is the ongoing process between stakeholders that will determine the actual measures to be taken by the government water related bodies.

The 2008 Dutch Parliamentary Enquiry Commission on Innovations in Education researched policy making for three innovations in Dutch secondary education. These innovations have been implemented in the 1990’s, but form a continuous cause of public concern. The commission concluded that policy making fell short on many points; government had neglected its duty to provide educational quality. The commission formulated several conditions to improve policy making. This article analyses the line of reasoning of the Commission and its effect. By looking back it tried to understand the policy results at the time of the enquiry. The highly politicized context in which the enquiry took place and the political aims of the research have probably contributed to the Commission’s choice for this approach. However, such an approach does not explain the political-administrative context of the policy process and the behaviour of the policy makers involved. In recent years, policy attention for educational quality has grown, but the conditions formulated by the Commission have not been applied due to policy dynamics and time pressure.

Dutch local government is more and more regarded as a ‘first government’. Vision documents of the association of municipalities and national policy plans stress the importance of local government for improving public governance. This ‘new localism’ builds upon two conflicting perspectives to local government: the modernization model and the political community model. As a result, local governments are becoming overloaded by many new and conflicting demands. A debate about how both perspectives to the ‘first government’ can be balanced, is therefore needed.

This article is a critical review of four books: Bok, 2010 (‘The politics of happiness’); Van Campen, Bergsma, Boelhouwer, Boerefijn, & Bolier, 2012 (‘Sturen op geluk’); Diener, Lucas, Schimmack, & Helliwell, 2009 (‘Well-being for public policy’); Ott, 2012 (‘An eye on happiness’). Based on these works, we conclude that the quality of government is highly correlated with the happiness of citizens. In countries with high levels of freedom (economic, democracy, press), low levels of corruption and good public services, people appear to be the happiest. In this way governments can be seen as ‘happiness machines’. However, precise causal relationships need to be further clarified; which policies do improve happiness and which don’t? In this context, education is an important area in which government plays a role; people should leave school with the right set of competencies to be able to adequately cope with life. Governments cannot solve everybody’s unhappiness, though, but are important for creating the right circumstances.

Public regulators and inspectorates are increasingly involved in self-regulatory initiatives. This contribution is about co-regulation, which are co-ordination efforts among public regulators and self-regulating institutions. In co-regulation arrangements typical regulation and oversight activities, such as standard setting, information gathering and sanctioning become subjects of co-ordination between public and private actors. Co-regulation arrangements are typically network efforts. At the same time ‘regulation’ has a hierarchical connotation. This paradox shows in interpretations of ‘governance’ and ‘the move from government to governance’, the latter being a popular phrase qualifying a change of the government’s role in society. Main question in this paper is what the changing role of government in society means for the assessment of co-regulation. Based on literature two implicit, but opposing interpretations of ‘governance’ and the change are described. This implicitness may cause unsound assessments of co-regulation, either too tough or too lenient. In this contribution the normative implications of both interpretations are made explicit for co-regulation. The argument is illustrated by the case of co-regulation in the Dutch coach travel industry.

Our research question is: how do Dutch municipalities practice their local steering role within climate mitigation policy? Policy documents of twelve municipalities have been analysed and corresponding policymakers have been interviewed. Our research illustrates that the Dutch government is struggling with the changing relations with society and the growing dependency on it for reaching policy targets. According to literature, the governmental steering role of process management is expected to be more effective in situations of high dependency. However, the policy strategies of municipalities meet characteristics of project management. Meanwhile, the project targets are not controllably formulated and rely solely on actions of other local parties. The ministry has assigned municipalities to use this project management style, to implement the projects in a top-down manner, and to find partners after the implementation phase. Municipal policymakers indicate that they are facing problems afterwards, because the ‘partners’ have interests that do not correspond with the projects as formulated by the municipalities. It is more effective to negotiate with the other parties. This is necessary in order to formulate collective policy targets that meet the interests of all of the participating parties in accordance with the theory of network governance and process management.

The debate on the territorial structure and scale of local and regional government is hardly supported by geographical theory and evidence. In this article, a geographical logic for collective action and the spatial structure of government is unfolded, based on the foundations of Welfare Theory. This logic accounts for the tension between inherently bordered area governance and borderless social and economic networks. Spatial scaling of area government thus involves complex trade-offs. The case is made for area government at the scale of daily urban systems, functional-spatial complexes that are typical for our advanced network society. The article concludes with a discussion of consequences for the spatial organisation of local and regional government.

This concluding article provides several suggestions on how municipalities can perform best in their role as ‘first governments’ and how they can deal with the tensions that this position produces.

Political and policy decisions are often presented as neutral choices. Yet, seemingly neutral and widely accepted views are ideologically embedded in a vision on how society should look and what role citizens have to play. These ideologies, we argue, remain silent. In this special issue, we discuss the value and risks of silent ideologies. While silent ideologies may be functional in some cases, there are also risks. The various contributions show that there is a risk of criticism, new ideas and innovative solutions being removed from the political debate. Also, silent ideologies may conceal conflicting interests of citizens and the state, which may exclude the ‘irresponsible’ citizen from the public domain. We argue that public officials and civil servants should take up a role in addressing silent ideologies and their workings.

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.

This article analyzes the political discourse of alliance or partnership thinking. The metaphore of a partnership suggests a government which stands alongside civilians embodying a humble and service-based policy-making. We claim that this metaphore is in fact a justification for an interventionist claim towards those who not subscribe to the pact. The ideal of partnership is based on the political mimesis, a political conception which denies the principled distinction between state and society. The identification of a popular and political will is the legitimation of partnership thinking. It creates a problematic distinction between those who are supposed responsible and those who are not. To oppose governmental policy making leads to a high political price: either you’re with us, or against us.

In this article we aim to provide an insight in one of the specifics of the dynamic relationship between government and society; the delegation of public tasks to (civil) society. The concept ‘Big Society’ in the United Kingdom generated immense expectations in this respect. By making use of an explorative case study, we examine the origins, visions and best practices in successively the UK, Australia and Scandinavia in order to generate a better understanding of this dynamical relationship. The major insights following from this analysis relate to the economic and cultural background, the political reality and rhetoric, as well as to concrete practices to understand what civil society has to offer in the delegation of public tasks. Finally, as a first step towards theory development, we formulate five concrete lessons for the delegation of public tasks to the civil society.

This article discusses the realization of public value through social entrepreneurship. It shows practices that can at present be seen in the Dutch society and answers the question: what is the relation between social entrepreneurship and the realization of value in the public domain? We conclude that public value is at the same time the result of the efforts of a social entrepreneur (person) in the beginning of his endeavors, the presupposition for social entrepreneurship (activity) in the phase of growth and the good that is preserved by the social enterprise (organization) by the time it has matured. In realizing public value social entrepreneurs come into contact with government. For government this encounter has quite an awkward nature since government has at the same time both a say (it is responsible for policy) and no say (it is not responsible for individual social entrepreneurial initiatives) regarding the realization of value in the public domain through social entrepreneurship.

This article explores the intellectual, political and pragmatic origins of the concept Big Society. The authors argue that although the concept has become intertwined with the political ideas of UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron, the concept has also become firmly rooted in society and is thus likely to survive the political life of Cameron. Also outside the UK, the concept has acquired political attention. The authors explore the meaning of Big Society for the Netherlands. Thus far, the concept has reached the political agenda, but time will tell how the concept succeeds to sustain.

‘Big Society’ has been one of those inspirational concepts that have recently swept through the public administration literature. With their appeal for a ‘Big Society’, the British Tories contrasted their policy program with Labours’ traditional ‘Big Government’ program. Upon closer inspection, however, it is revealed that the underlying analysis is not new at all, but reflects a specific analysis that can be traced back to Wilson’s famous essay on the study of public administration in 1887. Stripped from its details, the never-ending story claims that public administration now struggles with overwhelming complexity, which makes traditional bureaucratic methods obsolete and calls for innovative, new approaches. The fact that this story has remained fairly constant for over 125 years is cause for some concern. The article traces the historical genesis of this never-ending story and lands on a plea for more sophisticated attention for administrative history, more critical scrutiny of new ideas and more serious study of the nature and effects of complexity.

The report Confidence in Citizens by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy dominantly supports increased room for citizen participation. Based on many examples, the report shows how society benefits from the many citizens’ initiatives and how government interference can hamper or even obstruct these initiatives, which do not fit the logic of civil servants. The report gives four, rather general suggestions of how policy makers could respond to these citizens’ initiatives. The generic character of these recommendations can be ascribed to a weak problem analysis and a biased understanding of how government actions negatively interfere with citizens’ initiatives. The Council could have asked more critical questions with regards to citizens initiatives and how they should respond to the logic of government.

Amidst the turbulence of recent crises, governments’ capacity to govern and to deliver public value is under serious pressure. Public institutions are working hard to come up with new and improved schemes for dealing with complex and wicked policy issues that have emerged or just wont go away. But government alone cannot solve most of these issues. Governments already attempted to make ‘better, smarter policy’ in the hopes of raising performance. They also invested heavily in ‘participation’ of citizens, by inviting them to ‘co-create’ policy or ‘join-up’ with government agencies. However, this image of collaboration is one-sided. Besides the efforts initiated by governments themselves, there is a wide array of emerging activities. In these practices, it is not the government that takes action, but society takes ‘public matters’ into its own hands. Just as in many other countries, in The Netherlands groups of citizens have started to organize certain services, tasks or activities that used to be provided by the central or decentralized governmental institutions by themselves (and in most cases, for themselves). This article conceptualizes these emerging practices and analyses how they affect the world of policy making and what they may mean for public administration research.