This article presents a normative framework for good local governance in the digital society. We build on the five principles of Frank Hendriks (laid down in an article in Urban Affairs Review in 2014): participation, effectiveness, learning ability, procedural justice and accountability. An analysis of these five principles leads to the refinement of these principles for the digital society. The overarching points are that attention is needed for the possibility of human contact, that avoiding discrimination must be central, that higher demands are made with regard to speed of action, that the principles increasingly apply to networks of organizations, and that the principles increasingly apply to the design of systems. This overview thus provides concrete tools for organizations that want to reflect with citizens and stakeholders on the extent to which they are able to achieve good local governance in the digital society.

The Dutch central government has a long history in its search to meaningfully present policy effects. One of the instruments that was developed to this end is the Policy Conclusion (beleidsconclusie). This part of the annual report, which has been mandatory since 2013, should provide a judgement for every policy article on its results in the year 2017. To what extent has the Policy Conclusion been successful in its aims? And how do various governmental departments give substance to it? For this article, all policy conclusions that were composed for the most recent reporting year were examined. Among others, our analysis shows that departments differ greatly in their interpretation of what the Policy Conclusion should include, such as the usage of sources and the way in which intended results are (re)addressed. In addition, it was found in the Policy Conclusions that a tendency exists to put a strong focus on positive outcomes.

On 29 May, the highest court in the Netherlands, the Council of State, ruled that the government’s Nitrogen Emissions Program (PAS) did not comply with the European Habitats Directive. The PAS arranged permit applications for economic activities that caused extra nitrogen oxide emissions. According to the Council of State, the PAS proved to be insufficiently capable of protecting the ‘natural characteristics’ of Natura2000-protected areas against damage caused by nitrogen depositions. The ruling has led to a situation in which all pending license applications in construction and agriculture have been rejected or put on hold. This political ‘nitrogen crisis’ that resulted from this ruling has been characterized by major disagreements between the government coalition parties, large farmers’ protests, and a faltering coordination between the central government and provinces. This essay analyzes the root causes of the nitrogen crisis and presents some ideas about how to overcome the current deadlock. I argue that the PAS debacle symbolizes a failing, reactive agricultural and nature policy. More than ever, strong leadership and a clear future perspective for the Dutch food system are needed.

If the stakes are high, policy researchers can find themselves under strong pressures from politicians or policy makers to compromise on issues like scope of a research project, research methodology, reporting, framing and interpretation of results, and timing of publication. Research organizations experiment with various formal and informal arrangements to cope with such pressures and guard their independence.
This article describes six coping strategies that are being explored by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). These are: i) taking control in determining the project scope and the research questions; ii) making responsibilities explicit and guarding respective roles; iii) installing a broad based societal project advisory group; iv) having some researchers in a project that interact with stakeholders, while keeping others at a distance; v) having a differentiated communications strategy; vi) being fully transparent as to hypotheses and uncertainties regarding data and models.
Safeguarding independence in research through formal rules and provisions is generally insufficient to protect research from undue stakeholder influence. Also changes in labor routines, relationship management and organizational cultures are needed, not only on the researcher side, but on the stakeholder side as well. This calls for dialogue and joint learning processes.

The concept of self-reliant citizens reflects an ideology of citizenship that is multiple and flexible. It could be regarded as a ‘plastic’ word, malleable and adjustable according to convictions, needs and purposes. This study shows the importance of considering the way in which ideological views on citizenship are transferred, adjusted and enacted in an organizational context. On the basis of a case study at the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (DTCA), we contribute to knowledge on the way processes of framing interrelate on micro, meso and macro levels. We found that frames on self-reliance are enacted in a way that tensions and dilemmas are neutralized or reduced. In a dynamic context of conflicting goals and limited resources, DTCA-employees create meanings of self-reliance which legitimate practices and policies. By doing this they reproduce both organizational and social perspectives. Accounts of citizenship play an important role in this process. Self-reliant citizens are presented as active and responsible. The need of help is imagined as a normal and yet an atypical situation. This study promotes attention to the possibility that organizational systems reproduce perspectives in a way that alternative views remain unnoticed, whereas organizational choices are silently accepted as natural facts.

In the Netherlands good citizenship has become a topic of increased importance on the government agenda since the murder of Pim Fortuyn. The author assesses the effectiveness of the Dutch citizenship policies within the context of the broader policy framework of the so-called participatory society (participatiesamenleving) or do-democracy (doe-democratie). The evaluative analysis consists of two parts. In the first part the changing ideas concerning good citizenship are identified as well as the normative assumptions that are at the basis of Dutch citizenship policies. In the second part, the potential of current policies, and in particular the ideas that gave rise to creating a new social contract between government and society are assessed. To this end some key aspects of the new contract thinking of the Dutch government are contrasted with the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The findings show that the current strive for tangible agreements on citizen behavior and civic duties is at odds with the main principles of classic contract theory. This leads to the conclusion that the new contractualism that is at the basis of the Dutch citizen policies should rather be seen as a threat to a stable society than as a building block for good citizenship.

Even though many municipalities use a variety of means to improve turnout in local elections, citizen participation in local elections is a point of concern in many Western countries, including the Netherlands. Our research question is therefore: How effective are municipal efforts to improve turnout in (Dutch) local elections? To this end, we collected data from three sources: (1) a survey sent to the municipal clerks of 389 Dutch municipalities to learn what they do to improve turnout; (2) data from Statistics Netherlands on municipalities’ socio-demographic characteristics; and (3) data on the turnout in local elections from the Dutch Electoral Council database. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, we found that the direct impact of local governments’ efforts to improve turnout is low. Nevertheless, some measures seem to be able to make a difference. The relative number of polling stations was especially found to impact turnout.

Positive Public Administration (PPA) encourages scholars to examine governance success. The appreciation of successes, however, is not new. During previous decades, awards were bestowed for exceptional performance. We analyse whether two important awards in the Netherlands and Flanders are an expression of PPA. Firstly, we find that successes are interpreted differently: in the Netherlands, one-off, trendy performances are rewarded, while in Flanders the focus is on consolidated results of long-term change processes. Secondly, we see that ‘clean’ success criteria promote a suggestion of ‘control’, whilst public settings are ambiguous and unpredictable. Finally, we conclude that prizes are primarily celebrations; little evidence is found of systematic knowledge exchange, learning and professionalisation.

In several regions in the Netherlands there are declining population numbers. In those regions, administrators, companies and societal organisations often start regional collaborations in order to anticipate population decline and maintain a good quality of life. This is a logical step, but in practice the collaborating partners face challenges. For this article we analysed over a period of eight years the dynamics of cooperation in the Hoeksche Waard, a region in the province of South Holland that is dealing with a decrease in the number of inhabitants. On the basis of the regime model (Stone 1989), and by conducting qualitative research, in this exploratory study we discerned a paradox of regional cooperation in this ‘shrinking’ region: a decline of population numbers is the reason to initiate informal cooperation in networks, but the complexity of the regional agenda leads to the desire for formalisation of the collaborations in formal decision making structures. This formalisation, in its turn, leads to less commitment from the parties and makes cooperation and achieving results difficult, which increases the need for informalisation.

At the time of the ‘dualization’ of Dutch local government in 2002 the acting municipal chairman of the local council under article 77 (1) of the Dutch Municipal Act was seen as the ‘guardian of the local council’, who has a special responsibility for the functioning of the council as a whole and who can give the council a face opposite the local board. However, this role has never been given to this ‘vice-president’. This option has recently been suggested again, with the aim of promoting cooperation within the local council and facilitating the changing role of the council. In this article, the authors show that the role of the vice-president in practice is limited, although importance is attached to it and a majority of municipal councils use the power to appoint their own vice-president. For the time being the Netherlands does not seem inclined to learn from Flanders, where the council now appoints its own chairman. This is partly due to differences between the mayor’s positions in the Netherlands and in Flanders. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that in the Netherlands too in the future more attention will be paid to the issue of the (vice-)presidency of the municipal council.

There are many good reasons to dwell a little longer on current developments in Dutch and Flemish local government and to examine what both countries can learn from each other. Despite all the differences, Flemish and Dutch municipalities have more in common than with local government in France, the United Kingdom, German Länder or Scandinavian countries. Different words are used on both sides of the border, but the duties and powers of local officials are largely the same. It is therefore a good reason to subject the local government on either side of the border to a first comparison, as a prelude to the contributions in this special issue. After an initial interpretation of the institutional and administrative differences and agreements, the editors of this special issue discuss a number of current discussions about the role and position of the municipal council in Flanders and the Netherlands. They conclude with a brief introduction to the two contributions to this special issue.

Until 2002, local government in Flanders and the Netherlands had a monistic approach. In both systems, the city council was formally the head of the board. However, due to the interplay of factors and evolutions, the influence of the council in practice was increasing. This contribution compares and evaluates the institutional reforms that have been implemented in Flanders and the Netherlands over the past decades in an attempt to reassess the role and position of the council. While Flanders opted for more limited reforms within the existing monistic system (e.g. its own chairman for the council, a special committee for intermunicipal cooperation, a procedure for restoring structural unmanageability), the Netherlands opted with dualism for a radical personnel and functional separation between council and board. Although the reforms in Flanders often seem half-hearted and councilors in the Netherlands attribute more influence to themselves, research also shows that the revaluation of the council in the Netherlands is (still) incomplete too. This theme will undoubtedly remain on the political agenda in the coming years. The authors are thinking of the development of a better statute for council members, or the functioning of the council as a democratic watchdog of the network society.

Access to affordable, decent and secure housing is under increasing pressure in countries across the world, especially in burgeoning cities. This results in displacement, exclusion and increasing housing cost burdens. This theme issue consists of a collection of papers that approach inequality on urban housing markets from different angles. In this introduction to the special issue, we provide a framework to understand these various dimensions of inequality and their interconnectedness. We identify three scales of inequality: First, at the abstract level of housing systems, market developments and housing policies contribute to increasing housing costs and a reduction in affordable housing units. Second, at the urban level we identify increasing spatial segregation between populations as well as the intertwined trends of intensifying gentrification and suburbanization of poverty. Third, at the everyday level we can identify a loss of belonging among long-term residents of changing (gentrifying) neighbourhoods, while other residents may appreciate change. This also fosters the potential for conflict and poses new challenges to professionals dealing with families in situations of poverty. We argue that emerging inequalities at these different scales need to be considered as interconnected.

This paper investigates the effects of neighbourhood change caused by the inflow of new residents in the still existing social rental stock in a post-World War II district next to the effects of the changing population as the result of urban restructuring. All residents, native Dutch and residents that belong to an ethnic minority, are critical about the occurring concentration of the latter in the existing rental housing stock. Loss of respectability and of shared norms and values of how to live in the neighbourhood play an important role in the critical stance of mostly older Dutch native residents. Residents with a migrant background criticize the concentration as a negative influence for their integration in Dutch society. Most residents support the idea of a mixed neighbourhood based on income and ethnicity. Restructuring by demolition of old social rental dwellings and new housing development for owner-occupiers is supported by most residents, based on the positive impact on the liveability. Urban restructuring has however not decreased the share of non-Dutch-native residents but it did bring more middle-class households. In the view of the residents these are ‘decent people’ as they have to work in daytime and do not linger at night in the streets.

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.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

Reflection and debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.