The first report (2013) by the Association of Netherlands Municipalities think tank deals with the question of how local governments can improve their own performance regarding the current trend of social initiatives in which citizens organize themselves to tackle problems in their neighborhoods. Kleistra and Walraven discuss the method, content and findings of the report. They question the widely used citizen perspective that is adopted by the think tank as a starting point for further research on the topic; its uncritical stance with regard to the highly debated issue of citizen participation; the limited research effort that underpins its overall findings and conclusions; and in particular its unequivocal call for large scale municipal experimenting and improvising without further elaborating on the key question of ‘how to proceed’ for the benefit of municipal policymakers. This brings them to the conclusion that the report itself generates highly relevant questions, but that these questions should be addressed more effectively than has so far been the case, by connecting in-depth empirical research on municipal performance with regard to citizens initiatives to the large body of scientific knowledge on citizen participation.

A profession can be defined as a group of workers with shared knowledge, skills and quality standards. To maintain its professional status, the professional community needs to be relatively autonomous. However, while performing their tasks, many pressures jeopardize the professional worker’s autonomous position. Here, the professional community can make a difference.
Subordination to the political principal characterizes the position of the civil servant. What margin of professional independence do political leaders allow their civil servants? Recent academic empirical reports in the Netherlands show conflicting outcomes.
This essay describes how civil servants from a Dutch ministry deal with their professional standards and argues that, in the process of professionalization, more clarity is required with regard to how autonomy and independence for civil servants are safeguarded. This is especially relevant in a contemporary context where new ways to account for the professional behavior of civil servants need to be sought.

The article aims to compare the current legal status of codes of conduct (if any) in five different EU-countries. Its starting point is the recent legal initiative in the Netherlands to abolish the existing status for officials and to replace it with contracts of employment. The parliamentary initiators indicate ethical elements as crucial for the employment relation in the public sector. Does this imply that a code of conduct has to be established?
The article first focuses on the historical evolution of codes of conduct in different EU-Member States. Within the UK, integrity has always been considered a key stone of the civil service. However, it took until the nineties until a code of conduct was set out. The spread out of the importance of integrity for civil servants has spread out later in continental Europe. The impact of the theory of New Public Management, through the OECD, was therefore crucial. Consequently, Belgium and Germany developed codes of conduct while France and the Netherlands paid more attention to weight of ethical behavior in the public sector.
Currently, it stays beyond any doubt that the codes of conduct in the UK have got a binding legal value. This value has not yet been achieved by the Belgian and the German codes. The article defends the point of view that a binding code in the Netherlands can be a useful tool.

The changes in the role of government raise questions about the training and socialization of Dutch public servants. How can civil servants and their organizations prepare for what it means to be a civil servant in the 21st century? In this article, the authors give an overview of training and other means of socialization for public servants. They conclude that there is hardly any evidence of universal and coherent means to shape the collective identity of civil servants, and suggest ways to improve this.

This contribution gives an overview of the results of recent research into the role perception and the role behaviour of councillors. The research is the MAELG-survey (Municipal Assemblies in European Local Governance) carried out in 2007 and 2008 in 15 European countries and Israel. A special issue of Local Government Studies has been dedicated to this research. Three articles of this special issue are discussed intensively. These articles look at the role perception and the role behaviour of local councillors from the perspective of the tension between representative and participative democracy, the relation between participative democracy (also called citizen democracy) and the responsiveness of councillors and the influence of informal institutions on the representation style of local councils. Another recent article in Acta Politica looks specifically at the situation in Belgium. It is interesting that the authors do not apply the classic typology of representation styles (trustee and delegate), but an alternative typology (with delegation, responsiveness, authorization and accountability as four styles of representation) developed by the Dutch political scientists Andeweg and Thomassen.

The focus of the diversity policy in the Dutch public sector has moved during the past decennia. In the eighties offering equal chances for the different target groups was the central policy goal, after the millennium this became the effective and efficient management of a diverse work force in order to arrive at a better performing public sector, also called the business case of diversity. This article investigates the question how far the Dutch cabinet has influenced the diversity policy of public organizations. The answer to the question is that there was limited influence from the Dutch cabinet on the arguments for diversity of public organizations, but there was greater influence on the diversity interventions, especially in three sectors: central government, municipalities and police. This influence on interventions of other (‘fellow’) governments is caused by the strong steering of the cabinet. The interventions undertaken therefore reflect to a more limited extent the business case of diversity and remain stuck in the old target group policy. However, public organizations with a longer history in diversity policy, that operate closer to society and see the necessity for diversity, are more inclined to embrace the business case and start interventions that are related to this new approach.

Dutch Ministries differ in the manner in which they design and manage their steering relations with independent governing bodies. Based on six cases at four Dutch ministries the authors show these differences. They use two theoretical models (the principal-agent approach and the principal-steward approach) to clarify the kind of relationship. Ministries not only differ in their approach, they also differ in how far they have advanced in the development of their steering relations with independent governing bodies. Because there is no coordination or exchange of knowledge between ministries, ministries that are ‘lagging behind’ cannot learn from the experiences of ministries that have more experience. The authors do not propose one form of central coordination or one model, but they do propose more exchange of knowledge within and between Dutch ministries.

According to the policy makers of the Dutch police the more complex society for years requires a police organization that can operate as a network player, or even network director, in ever increasing local safety networks to fulfil the police functions of criminal investigation and maintenance of public order in an effective manner. This claim hardly seems to validated by empirical evidence. Validation is important because research shows that a lot of time is spent on the police network function within community based policing. The question is if this time is spent in an effective manner. Therefore this article addresses the question of the revenues of the police network function within community based policing for the core tasks maintenance of political order and criminal investigation. Based on a policy analysis, interviews and five weeks of participatory research in one police force in the Netherlands, the authors conclude that the policy of the police is only to ‘take’ out and not ‘give’ to local safety networks, although according to the practice and the network literature networkers from the police should give to be able to achieve results. Because the police network function does contribute to the quality of life and the social safety in the community, the authors believe that the community is best served by police officers that have a broad network function.

This paper attempts a normative assessment of the input and output-oriented legitimacy of the present euro-rescuing regime on the basis of policy analyses examining the causes of present crises, the available policy options, and the impact of the policies actually chosen. Concluding that the regime lacks input-oriented legitimacy and that its claim to output-oriented legitimacy is ambivalent at best, the paper explores potential – majoritarian or unilateral – exits from the present institutional constellation that is characterized by the synthesis of a non-democratic expertocracy and an extremely asymmetric intergovernmental bargaining system.

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

Nudging is currently high on the political agenda. The idea behind nudging is that the government can gently push citizens in the ‘good’ direction by anticipating their predictable irrational behaviour. In the Dutch discussion nudging often is seen as an instrument to influence citizens more. Therefore critics fear paternalism, manipulation and technocracy. However, we could also see nudging as a replacement of more coercive instruments. Then nudges might even offer chances for a state that is withdrawing under the condition that citizens have both the opportunity and the capability to make alternative choices in practice than the choices to which nudges aim. Therefore nudges by the government should not avoid reflective and conscious thinking processes, but rather stimulate deliberation and make citizens more aware of their decisions.

Government employs Public-Private Partnerships as a remedial strategy directed at compensating for failures that typically occur in pure market arrangements, networks or pure hierarchical government settings. It is then possible to engage in Public-Private Partnerships corresponding with the three basic forms of social organization: market, network and government. The distinction between: (1) market-PPP, (2) network-PPP and (3) public authority-PPP is elaborated.

How far should governments go to keep their citizens safe? Not an easy question to answer, but the three books reviewed in this essay provide food for thought on this matter. Power (2004) describes how risk management could become such a dominant feature in today’s society while warning for the danger of risk management being misused to save one’s reputation if things do go wrong. Boutellier (2013) paints a picture of Dutch societal uncertainty and explains how crime became a part of Dutch risk society. According to Boutellier, Dutch government tries to deal with this complexity in an improvising manner. Van Duin, Wijkhuijs, and Jong (2013) present an edited volume of crises and incidents which happened in 2012. Lessons are drawn and warnings given, including the warning that it is impossible to prepare for all possible incidents, let alone plan everything ahead and distil those plans in rules and regulations.

This paper draws some lessons, expected and unexpected, from the different contributions in this special issue on the retreating state. The special issue has shown that the retreat of the retreat of the state is a paradoxical and unequivocal development. The retreat of the state is also accompanied by active forms of central management and policy initiatives. Wider developments in the economy and international politics demonstrate that the state is not, as has often been suggested, obsolete. Disregarding this, however, many citizens are actively involved in shaping a new form of participative society.

The state has been expanding throughout the twentieth century but now seems to be in retreat. This special issue addresses the question how central governments can organize their retreats. It is a theme with a double-sided focus. On the one hand, we will offer an empirical and theoretical state of the art of the ‘state of the state’. On the other hand, this special issue will thematise how a retreat of the state can be organized in a proper way. The special issue consists of eight different articles; some more theoretical and normative and others clearly empirical. Together the articles provide a colourful overview of the state of the Dutch state in the early 21st Century.

Various advisory councils for the government advocate a retreat of government. This can take the form of less government, i.e. abandoning certain public tasks, or a more modest government. This retreat of government is said to be necessary to give space to initiatives from society – which are now hampered by policy makers – and because of the failure of both the state and the market to perform public tasks adequately. Yet, it remains to be seen how realistic this call for the retreat of government is. In addition, it is unclear whether this process is already taking place (descriptive) or whether it concerns a desired situation to be achieved in the future (prescriptive). What does a facilitating government actually look like? The advisory rapports discussed in this paper share a thorough line of argumentation analysis which is plausible at first sight. At the same time, they miss out in the practical application for policy makers, they seem to be overly optimistic in their assessment of the role of citizens. Moreover, all advisory councils shy away from making fundamental choices about which tasks governments should discontinue and hand over to societal initiatives.

In 2012 the Dutch government decided to implement severe budget cuts for the cultural sector, more than in almost any other European country. Not only for austerity reasons but also due to ideological motives 200 million in subsidies to the cultural sector were cut by the central government. Also local government cut their cultural budgets, but only for economic reasons. After an outrage among artists and cultural institutions they started to adapt. But cultural entrepreneurship proved difficult in an era of economic crisis. Sponsorship and donations were difficult to get. Visitors saved on their expenses for visits to theatres. Nevertheless just a small number of cultural institutions stopped their activities. Most cut their staff and are only working with freelancers. The consequences of cuts are mostly felt by individual artists. With the institutions they are trying to find new ways for reaching audiences. But it is too early to tell if they will survive. The government is developing new indicators for judging the performances of the cultural institutions. That has the danger of a cultural utilitarianism, without a vision on other values for society that the cultural sector could provide.

In this paper it is argued that the discourse on the retreating government is a story about mobilizing executive power deemed necessary for enforcing a neoliberal worldview. The intellectual discourse about the retreating government, the argument goes, develops as a radical and neoliberal critique of the Keynesian planning and organization of the enlightenment – an organization that is above all expressed in the postwar welfare state. The Dutch policy discourse, by contrast, is of a practical nature: it is about the organization of the government retreat. In the reconstruction of the policy discourse, as it is manifest in leading policy documents of the Dutch central government, it is observed that this discourse has emancipated from the intellectual discourse. The policy discourse of the retreating government has developed into a financial management discourse, free from European ideals.

Many authors have claimed that the role of the Dutch government, and other governments, is changing. The overarching consensus is that states are now retreating after decades of expansion. This paper investigates, on the basis of a secondary analysis of existing data, whether, where and how the Dutch state can be said to be retreating. This leads to mixed findings: four different analyses of the ‘state of the state’. The first tale, focusing on macro financial indicators, suggests ‘stability’. The second tale, focusing on net changes in expenses, depicts further expansion, particularly in the domain of health care. The third tale, focusing on policy intentions, sees a retreat indeed. And the fourth tale would suggest that it is merely about a reorganization of the state itself.