Scale is an important topic in the fields of public administration, political sciences, and environmental sciences. How scales are defined, studied, and dealt with varies substantially within and across these fields. This article aims to reduce the existing conceptual confusion regarding scales by disentangling three representative approaches that address both governance and scaling: monocentric governance, multilevel governance, and adaptive governance. It does so by analyzing the differences in underlying views on governing, assumptions about scales, dominant problem definitions regarding scales, and preferred responses for dealing with multiple scales. Finally, this article identifies research opportunities within and across these approaches.

The theme of scale is simply too big to grasp in one special issue of this journal. However, having discussed some topical issues of scale, we denounce the illusion of an ideal scale and welcome a new perspective. We introduce the concept of scale sensitive governance and use insights from the different articles in this special issue to discuss the concept. Scale sensitive governance relates to 1) being sensitive towards different logics of scale, 2) leaving behind scale as a dogmatic concept, and (3) linking scale to broader developments in society.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

A main motive for policy decentralization is the belief that municipalities are better able to customize public policy to local circumstances, and to realize made-to-measure service provision. In this respect, the introduction of the Social Support Act (Wmo) is an interesting example. With the lack of ‘vertical’ accountability obligations to the national government, the Wmo is governmentally innovative. Whether the decentralization results in customized forms of social support is a fascinating one because a detailed reading of the Wmo and its implementation displays possible incentives as well as barriers to made-to-measure service provision. The empirical exploration in this article uses data from the 2007-2009 evaluation of the Wmo conducted by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). The evaluation shows that municipalities involve diverse stakeholders in formulating Wmo policy, and that their involvement seems to lead to customized service provision. At the same time, municipalities follow nationwide models, and information provided by the central government seems to have a major impact on local social care policy. The article concludes with an outlook on future directions in local debates on social care and the recommendation to give time for major decentralization trajectories such as the Wmo.

In a column a journal editor or an author expresses his or her opinion on a particular subject.