This article analyzes the inquiry into the financial problems at a large educational conglomerate, Amarantis, in the Netherlands. The article is solely based on the text of the report. From a learning point of view, assuming that inquiries should contribute to learning from the past to improve the present and future, there are three weaknesses in the approach followed by the commission. The first is that the commission looks at the principles for governing the organization to explain its fall. However, the principles adopted match very well with professional organizations and are used successfully in other professional organizations. The question why these principles were unsuccessful in the case of Amarantis has not been addressed in the report. Second, the report strongly focuses on the role of the top management of the organization and ignores the middle management, a critical layer in managing professional organisations. And third, by looking back the commission creates a bias of hindsight, ignoring the question of how the managers could have identified upcoming problems at that time.

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.

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 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.

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.