The impact of residualisation on social work has so far hardly been explored. Based on existing literature and recently started empirical research in Amsterdam we analyze several consequences. Residualisation refers to the process whereby urban social housing is strictly allocated to the lowest income groups. What does this concentration of disadvantaged households mean for the role of social workers? Firstly, for community workers residualisation mostly implies a renewed role as instigators of residents’ participation in urban renewal trajectories for social mix. Furthermore community activities are increasingly used to offer safe havens for new and old groups of residents and also to prevent expensive treatments for several residential groups. For social workers focusing on individual support or casework residualisation results in an increasingly complex caseload. Residualisation does not imply extra formation for social work, but rather extra attention for the effortful coproduction of welfare between formal and informal actors. Within this playing field, we distinguish link work as vital for both formal and informal social work. Link work is about establishing vertical and horizontal connections between different worlds, across sectoral, professional or trust gaps. We expect that in areas of residualisation successful urban social work is dependent on strong linking skills.

According to the outgoing European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, the European Union (EU) has made more progress in tackling tax avoidance and evasion in the last five years than in the twenty years before that. This article argues that although several targeted measures have indeed been adopted, such as automatic exchange of tax rulings and limitations on interest deductions, this has not led to a structural change in EU corporate tax policies, nor in underlying power relations. The article discusses the politics of a number of recent policy developments related to tax avoidance and evasion by transnational corporations. It argues that the adoption of targeted measures, and the simultaneous stalling of more comprehensive approaches – in terms of tax transparency or a common consolidated corporate tax base – can be explained by recent tax controversies, international politics, and the dynamics within and between EU institutions. Particular attention is paid to the role of the European Parliament that is formally limited, but still houses progressive forces that have continuously pushed for a clampdown on tax avoidance. Finally, the article pleads for more transparent EU decision-making, specifically concerning discussions with and within the Council, in order to improve the democratic legitimacy of EU corporate tax policies and processes.

Citizens are being activated to organize activities in asylum centres in both the Netherlands and Belgium. That way, asylum centres are expected to become better integrated in the local context of a municipality or neighbourhood. This ideal of citizenship does not stand on its own. The policy object to integrate asylum centres in the local context has parallels with broader societal and academic discussions about citizen participation and active citizenship. The object, however, is now the asylum seeker. In this article we research how voluntary work in two asylum centres takes shape and how policy could support voluntary activities better. A comparative interpretive policy analysis of two asylum centres in Amsterdam and Brussel shows how voluntary work is stimulated by policy, how these policies are implemented locally, and how they are experienced in daily practices of volunteers and professionals. The cases reveal stark differences, but exactly those contrasts lead to important lessons. We show that because of this policy, the asylum centre is often functioning as a community centre, that integration can be strengthened by volunteers, but we are also critical when voluntary activities are driven by an ideal picture of the ‘good asylum seeker’. There is a risk that the societal responsibility for integrating and engaging asylum seekers in the local context is pushed on the shoulders of unpaid volunteers and that activities are exclusively for one group. That is why we conclude that professional support and financial resources are crucial to implement the policy ideal of active citizenship in asylum centers.

To address a range of interconnected food-related challenges, Dutch policymakers have invested in the development of integrated food policy in recent years. This article discusses this development in two parts. The first part contains a detailed description of the main events and lines of thinking that characterized the food policy process. From this description it becomes clear that food policy has been gradually developing towards a separate institutionalized policy domain. In the second part, this development is analysed from a policy integration perspective. This analysis shows that although considerable steps towards strengthened policy integration have been made, the Dutch ‘Food agenda’ does not yet proceed beyond symbolic levels. This particularly shows in the absence of concrete policy goals and in a policy instrument mix that has not been adjusted to strengthen consistency and effectiveness. In addition, the involvement of relevant ministries gradually decreased after the initial stages. The article concludes that the food policy process has arrived at a critical juncture: the next steps of the new government will prove decisive for whether food policy integration intentions will advance beyond the drawing board. Political and administrative leadership are identified as key conditions for such further steps to occur.

Theory about participation has long moved beyond merely informing citizens, arguing for more influential and effective instruments. Nevertheless, ‘inspraak’ remains widely implemented in Dutch practice, with mixed results. This article argues that the deliberative quality of the instrument is closely related to the performance of power. Dramaturgical concepts are employed to analyze resistance against the siting of a homeless facility in an Amsterdam neighborhood. One particular evening sets the stage for escalation, which ultimately frustrates the policy process. The analysis shows how the performance of the meeting invokes specific kinds of resistance. A different performance of ‘informing’ could potentially improve the quality of the public sphere.

This article analyses the transformations of the Dutch civil service over the last 15 years, during which numerous cutbacks and reorganizations took place. While existing research predominantly focused on changes in the total number of civil servants, we examine how the distribution of civil servants changed in terms of rank, gender and age. We theorize four methods for shrinking the government apparatus, and for each method, we identify the possible consequences for the composition of the central civil service in terms of hierarchical make-up and of age. Our results indicate that the total number of civil servants only slightly decreased, but the decrease affected differentially the various ranks of the civil service. While at the lower ranks the number of civil servants decreased strongly, at the upper ranks the number actually increased slightly. The number of women in the civil service increased, also in the higher echelons. Regarding the age distribution, we found considerable changes, with the modal age shifting upwards with up to ten years. Altogether, the civil service has become slightly smaller, more gender-balanced, and significantly more senior (both in terms of ranks and age). The results of this study show that it is important for researchers and practitioners to look beyond the trends in the total number of civil servants and explore the deeper changes within the civil service.

Over the last three years, various G1000s have been organized in Dutch municipalities. These citizen summits share a number of characteristics: random selection of participants, an open agenda, dialogue and inclusion of the entire ‘system’ (inhabitants, politicians, civil servants). The G1000s aim to renew local democracy and to change the relations between citizens and governments. Both of these objectives affect the role of local councilors and this paper discusses their opinions and attitude towards a G1000. It shows that councilors regard the G1000 as complementary to representative democracy and that they want be involved both in the organization of a G1000 in their municipality and the follow-up in local decision-making. On the one hand, this may lead to a better coupling between citizen initiatives and formal policy making. On the other hand, this entails the risk that a G1000 becomes institutionalized and loses its distinctive characteristics that make it a new form of democracy.

This article is about how education administrators value complex issues or dilemmas they are confronted with in their governance practices, and which strategies they adopt to cope with them. Professional governance of school organisations was introduced gradually over the past fifteen years, and at the same time governance in education has gained in complexity and raises considerable risks, requiring more time, knowledge and expertise of education administrators. We draw on the theoretical perspective of coping to investigate the potential of education administrators to deal with the complexity, impediments and social and regulatory pressure in their daily practice. Our study consists of a comparative case study of six education administrators in secondary education. Their agency has been researched qualitatively with the help of the hierarchical model of coping strategies of Skinner and colleagues. The results show that the issues and dilemmas education administrators find most complex are about educational innovation and numbers of students enrolled. Education administrators value these issues or dilemmas hardly as threatening, and they adopt various proactive coping strategies to deal with them, such as information seeking or bargaining.

This paper will show how citizens’ summits in the Netherlands cope with diversity of participants and the impact of this on those initiatives. This provides insight in why diversity is hard to reach and what can be done to improve it. Presently, dissatisfaction about the Dutch democratic system is widespread. Solutions are being sought to strengthen Dutch participatory democracy. For this objective, citizens’ summits develop different kind of initiatives. However, citizens participating in these summits are a homogeneous group, namely mainly white, middle aged and highly educated. Mechanisms of exclusion, selection of candidates, homogeneous composition of the organization, and a dominating intellectual/rational way of debating are playing a role here. Citizens with different backgrounds need to be included in these initiatives to obtain a better representation of society’s voices. This notion has been strengthened by theory, which shows that diversity enables more creativity and innovation.

While international research gives increasing attention to geographical factors in education, this perspective is lacking in Dutch research and policy. That a geographical perspective is badly needed, is demonstrated on the basis of the proposed policy to promote new schools in the Netherlands. Current housing policies for Dutch schools are described, pointing at disputes between municipalities and school boards who hold shared responsibilities. Next, foreign housing policies for new schools are studied, that is for friskolor in Sweden, free schools in England and charter schools in Texas (USA). Experiences abroad not only testify that very different choices can be made, but indicate that housing policies may in the long run have a substantial impact on segregation and educational inequality. It is also shown that new schools are mainly located in urban areas. It is argued that in addition to costs for new schools, friction costs for existing schools need to be considered. In all, a geographical perspective on education is needed, so as to prevent increasing segregation and social inequality as well as wasting public financial resources.

The article provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the Night Time Economy and how the Collective Pub Ban is applied in three Dutch cities: Utrecht, Amersfoort and Den Bosch. The Collective Pub Ban is a measure taken in the Netherlands in an effort to make pubs, bars and clubs co-responsible for maintaining security. Depending on the severity of the conduct, an offender can be denied of entry to these venues for five years. During this period, the offender is not allowed to enter the particular pub or any of the other pubs, bars and clubs that participate in this measure. On the basis of 84 interviews, we show how these venues fill out their new responsibilities with respect to the Collective Pub Ban-measure. Also, we answer the question what this new measure means for the quality of the public space.

The traditional authority of mayors and aldermen is readily challenged. Formal positions do no longer constitute authority. For that reason, new political repertoires are being sought after and are being developed by local political-executive leaders. This article analyses and compares the sources of authority for mayors and aldermen: how can they develop, maintain, and strengthen their authority? It develops an innovative typology of sources of authority. A distinction is made between institutional, positional, and personal sources of authority. The model is applied to the mayors and aldermen in relation to relevant socio-political developments that affect the two offices. It is found that the authority of mayors rests on institutional sources of authority more so than that of aldermen. For the latter, positional and personal sources of authority are more important. At the same time, personal sources of authority have become very important for mayors as well as aldermen. The results call upon mayors and aldermen’s skills and competences to develop personal authority through persuasion.

The involvement of citizens in discussions about policy arrangements has been growing in the past decades. These forums of decision-making often provoke criticism because of a so-called ‘lack of representativeness’. Often a small group of active citizens takes the lead and decides which problems have to be dealt with. Some active residents primarily focus on improving the neighbourhood, regardless of whether their activities have everyone’s consent. This raises many questions related their representativeness. Do these participants form an adequate cross-section of the population? Are they speaking on behalf of others? Maybe passive citizens feel fine with the opinions of active citizens and agree that a small group of citizens is taking the lead. In this paper these active citizens are viewed as ‘trustees’: informal representatives who take responsibility to look after the neighbourhood’s interests, expecting that passive residents would support their efforts. The paper has two central questions: First, which ideas do active participants have about representation and representativeness? Second, in what respects can active citizens be characterized as ‘trustees’? In the theoretical part we contend that the notion ‘trustee’ may function as a theoretical framework to understand present-day citizen participation. In local policy networks many informal representatives express views and interests that are recognizable for many citizens. They are trusted, as long as their activities can be checked. The second part of the paper focuses on three projects of citizen decision-making within local safety policies (The Dutch cities Amsterdam, Deventer and Rotterdam). Within these projects, participants prioritize what kinds of activities and interventions police officers and other frontline workers should carry out. A main finding is that many active citizens function as contact persons who are continuously available for other residents. They do not wish to speak ‘on behalf’ of others but they are bestowed – often reluctantly – with the role of representative, as they demonstratively express neighborhood interests (‘clean, intact and safe’). Their reputation seems to be decisive.

In recent years the Netherlands have seen an upsurge of housing enclaves. The enclaves are often built as courtyards, castles, estates or apartment complexes. The growing number of people living in housing enclaves indicates a demand for this kind of living areas. However, the motivations behind the increasing popularity of housing enclaves are unclear. Is this a reflection of a long standing tradition of people staying in their own social group, seeking for belonging and sociability? Or does it fit in a global trend of searching for security in gated communities? This paper presents empirical research in the Netherlands that addresses peoples’ motives for living in housing enclaves, as well as the role of the local government in relation to housing enclaves. The research shows that residents of housing enclaves seek a pleasant living environment in the first place, while security is a less important motive. The study gives reason for planners and developers outside the US not to assume that fear of crime and a wish for security are the main reasons for moving to housing enclaves. Further, the study shows that housing enclaves are not completely privatized areas. Local government still has an important role to play.

In citizens’ initiatives (CI’s) citizens themselves take action to solve problems in their community. Many Dutch municipalities have adopted policies to facilitate CI’s. This raises a number of issues. For example who are involved in such initiatives? And, which problems are likely to be addressed? Such questions are pertinent, because for other forms of civic participation research has demonstrated that privileged social groups are overrepresented. We have compared groups of citizens who are actively involved in CI’s with less active citizens. It is demonstrated that in keeping with previous findings privileged social groups (e.g. high income and well educated people) are overrepresented amongst the more active citizens. This is true for both individual and collective neighbourhood initiatives. However, we did not find an overrepresentation of males amongst the activists. In answering the second question, we have looked at the concerns and worries of the citizens. There is no evidence of systematic differences in the problem definitions of more and less active citizens. This mitigates problem of the social selectivity in civic participation: if citizens agree about the issues to be addressed, who cares about who does the job, provided that someone is willing to do it?

Contemporary western democracies, such the United States, Great Britain, and The Netherlands have become diploma democracies. They are ruled by the well educated, whereas the least educated, even though they still comprise about half of the population, have virtually vanished from most political arenas. Of course, the well educated have always been more politically active than the less educated, but in the past decades this gap has widened substantially. Well-educated citizens are more inclined to vote, to write letters to the editor, or to visit consultative or deliberative meetings than citizens with a low level of education; and most, if not all, members of parliament, all the political officials, and almost all of the political advocates and lobbyists, have college or graduate degrees. The paper substantiates the rise of diploma democracy in The Netherlands, discusses what is problematic about such an educational meritocracy in the context of democracy, and looks at what could be done to mitigate or remedy some of its negative effects.

The problem of climate change is high on the various political-administrative agendas, both national and international. At the same time the problem is full of uncertainties and controversies. Adaptation to climate change asks for adjustments in our spatial planning, but can also necessitate changes in the distribution of public and private responsibilities. A crucial question is how the legitimacy of adaptation measures can be organized in a context surrounded with uncertainties, controversies and conflicting interests. In this paper we introduce the central theme of this special issue and the various contributions.

Demand-steering policies in healthcare are understandable but problematic answers to the desire for democratization that dates from the seventies of the former century. Prominent critics such as Achterhuis and Illich were very critical of the undemocratic character of health care. Yet their romantic idea of society excused them from the need to articulate democratic alternatives. The empty space that they left was filled by the concept of demand-steering. Demand-steering, however, rather than strengthening democratic practices, merely undermines them, by preferring exit above voice, by putting up new bureaucratic barriers between clients and professionals and by undermining the quality of the relationship between clients and professionals.

Doing more justice to the democratic impulse is possible and desirable. A new step towards this aim is being taken by a fourth logic of steering, (next to the familiar logics of the market, bureaucracy and professionalism) that centers on improving the dialogue between clients and professionals. The one variant, democratic professionalism, starts from the position of the professional and aims at intensifying democratic control, while the other variant, collaboration, starts from the client and aims at providing him with more influence and responsibility for the health care process. This fourth logic however can only provide a new impulse to democratization when the vague notion of the dialogue is elaborated more thoroughly.

Cities are in stage of transformation under the combined effect of enlargement of scale and the enlargement of scope of urban activities. The enlargement of scale is visible in the regionalization of urban development. Housing markets, labor markets and mobility patterns crystallize at regional level. However, the scaling up of urban life is not just an extension of the city as is experienced over more than a century. The simultaneous enlargement of scope makes the transformation more complex and dependant on external connections, both in the private and the public sector. The essay explores concepts that try to explain the nature of this new complexity. What is the meaning of 'urban space' and 'urban place' under the conditions of globalization? And what are the consequences for the guidance of collective action in the context of multi actor and multi level governance? The nature of urban change is illustrated in the case of the Randstad Holland, in particular the region of Amsterdam.

In the Netherlands, an ambitious policy goal of 1,000 MW of wind power capacity by the year 2000 had already been formulated in 1985 and remained the official basis for wind energy policy until 2000. The pace of realisation of wind turbines however did not keep up with this policy objective. An important reason is that it proves difficult to provide enough locations for wind turbines in spatial plans. Over the last 15 years two covenants have been concluded between the Dutch central government and provinces in order to overcome this problem: the 1991-Governmental Agreement on Planning Problems Wind Energy (BPW), and the 2001-Governmental Agreement on the National Development Wind Energy (BLOW). In the BLOW provinces have agreed to work towards the realisation of wind turbines with a total capacity of 1,500 MW in 2010. For this purpose provinces need the co-operation of municipalities, wind power project developers and local communities. Municipalities have a crucial role because of their discretion of detailed allocation of land use in local spatial plans. They are no partners to the covenant however. Provinces can use several governance strategies for mobilising co-operation: from top-down governance in which provinces specify locations to bottom-up approaches in which the initiatives are left to municipalities and project developers. This paper compares both covenants and assesses the effectiveness of different governance strategies employed by three distinct provinces.