The Dutch municipality of Leiden used to be a rather ‘politically troublesome’ municipality, but after the formulation of a short coalition agreement during the 2010 to 2014 term of office, for the first time in a long while, no alderman was sent away. So, could short coalition agreements help to diminish the number of political conflicts, so that aldermen can remain in office for a longer period? In the first place, the answer to this question is important from a societal point of view because in the Netherlands an increasing number of aldermen are sent away. In the second place, it is important from an academic point of view because there is a lack of studies into local coalition agreements. In the third place, it is important because the analysis of the length of coalition agreements and the number of conflicts in almost all Dutch municipalities in the period 2010 to 2014 offers a good opportunity to test the contradictory expectations on the relationship between coalition agreements and political conflicts in Dutch municipalities at a national level. From the analysis, the authors conclude that there is a relationship between a high number of coalition parties and a large municipality, on the one hand, and longer coalition agreements, on the other hand. The length of the coalition agreements is not necessarily related to the number of conflicts measured by the number of aldermen sent away for political reasons. It is clear that the higher the number of coalition parties, the more conflicts there are likely to be, which is not an inviting prospect considering the ongoing fragmentation of municipal councils.

Since 2001, the Dutch province of Overijssel has had its own knowledge centre focusing on urban society, called the ‘KennisInstituut Stedelijke Samenleving’ (KISS), alongside national knowledge centres. This essay gives an overview of some relevant KISS meetings devoted to a many kinds of citizen participation. The overview is based on reports made by the author himself. Examples of citizen participation are: the new styles of neighbourhood governance, citizen participation through neighbourhood budgets, the strength of the city and location-based leadership, innovative urban renewal and the promotion of citizen initiatives in the province of Overijssel. Examples are not only from the province of Overijssel (situated in the east of the Netherlands), but also from other parts of the Netherlands and other countries (Flanders, United Kingdom, United States and all over the world). The subject of citizen participation (in connection with urban renewal and administrative leadership) enjoys an ever-increasing popularity as is shown by the number of KISS meetings devoted to this subject.

Polling is being done a great deal in the Netherlands, especially during election campaigns when market researchers sometimes present new polls every day. The national government also takes polls that are often larger and more complicated than the quick and small polls conducted by market research agencies. They are often called surveys, and they gather information on the state of affairs in society. That information can become the basis for new policies. Local governments also take polls, although on a smaller scale than national government. Dutch municipalities have a tradition of organizing omnibus surveys in which (as the name indicates) several subjects can be addressed. Nowadays many ‘omnibus surveys have been replaced by ‘citizen panels’. One thing all these polls and surveys have in common is that they are based on random samples of the population and statements are made about the population as a whole based on these samples. Such generalizations are only possible if the sample is drawn using by random sampling methods. This article describes good and bad polling. This is illustrated using a unique example: the research into the opinion of the inhabitants of Alphen aan den Rijn, a Dutch municipality, on Sunday shopping. At the same time, and using the same questionnaire, three different polls were carried out. This example makes clear that the wrong sample can lead to incorrect conclusions and maybe to incorrect policy decisions.

The research programme Urban Regions in the Delta (URD) wielded an approach worthy of emulation. Create ‘vital’ project consortia, crosslink the research project with on-going planning and policy making processes, give senior scientists a major role and engage expert process managers. These are four key success factors for knowledge co-creation in the field of area development, according to the programme (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; URD, 2010-2014 http://urd.verdus.nl). Within URD scientists and practitioners were cooperating from the very beginning. The scientific insight and innovations generated are considered not very visible in traditional scientific publications, but the knowledge that was developed provides considerable added value to society.

Planning research is increasingly focused on bridging the gap between practice and academia. However, this requires much effort and is not as commonplace as it seems. To ensure success, innovative research approaches, practitioners and academics are required. The experiential learning cycle of Kolb and Fry (1974) offers a research framework for the authors to reflect on their practice-oriented research on Cost Benefit Analysis processes (CBA) and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) respectively. Both research projects are compared using the learning cycle. The cycle was completed in the CBA project but only partially resolved in the TOD project. Reflecting on their experiences with applying the learning cycle, the authors conclude on the possibilities and limitations of this application and offer insight into how the interaction between theory and practice can occur.

Forty years ago, Dutch Public Administration started as an independent academic discipline. The founding fathers considered empirical application and multidisciplinarity the most important characteristics of public administration. This article assesses the current state of the discipline in the Netherlands. The assessment is the result of a series of five debates throughout the country, focussing on different elements of the Public Administration discipline: education, academic research, consultancy and policy advice. In brief, the article argues that the discipline has reached maturity in these forty years. It has become an accepted academic discipline, on the verge of a mono-discipline. The Netherlands is considered as one of the leading countries in public administration research. However, these successes also create a gap between public administration as a successful academic discipline and its roots as a multi-disciplinary, applied science. Renewing the balance between these two will be the main challenge for the decades to come.

Co-production is regarded as a way to actively involve vulnerable citizens with public service delivery. However, there are several critical aspects that may lead to the unexpected exclusion of this group by public organizations, which have been insufficiently addressed hitherto. On the basis of a dissertation research, these critical aspects are analyzed for three phases of co-production. In the first phase, self-selection and organizational selection may lead to the exclusion of vulnerable citizens. In the second phase, a lack of commitment of the user and organizational support increase the chance of early discontinuation of co-production by vulnerable citizens. Finally, in the evaluation phase, it is likely that disadvantaged citizens attribute potential success of co-production to themselves and do not reward the public service provider for this. This has the possible consequence that there is no recognition for the added value of co-production, which may lead to less co-production that involves vulnerable citizens in the future.

In de praktijk is het niet altijd haalbaar om effectonderzoek uit te voeren met behulp van een experimentele trial. Het N=1 design is een alternatieve opzet voor effectonderzoek bij interventies met kleine aantallen. Centraal bij de N=1 aanpak staat dat bij een kleine groep deelnemers via verschillende observanten op meerdere tijdstippen informatie wordt verzameld over de ontwikkeling van deelnemers. Daarbij kan zowel gebruik worden gemaakt van kwantitatieve als kwalitatieve onderzoeksmethoden. Dit artikel beschrijft de toepassing van het N=1 design in een onderzoek naar de doeltreffendheid van de justitiële gedragsinterventie Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC). Deze interventie is ontwikkeld voor jeugdigen tussen de 12 en 18 jaar met ernstig antisociaal gedrag. In het onderzoek is de ontwikkeling van acht MTFC-deelnemers in kaart gebracht via vragenlijstonderzoek en interviews. Naast de toepassingsmogelijkheden worden in dit artikel tevens de beperkingen en risico’s van het N=1 design beschreven.

The discussion on how to resolve mass disputes stemming from faulty financial products among banks, insurance companies and other stakeholders in the Netherlands ended in deadlock. While diligent action is considered imperative, parties shy away from discussing options for settling damages suffered by consumers for fear of triggering mass claims themselves. To contribute to a new framework for resolving mass disputes, a responsive evaluation was conducted between 2011 and 2015. In such evaluation, the way stakeholders make sense of the situation serves as an organizing principle in knowledge production. This article discusses the methodical challenges implied in adapting the methodological guidelines for such inquiry to fit the ill-structured, controversial and complex legal issue and its highly politicized context. Because of a careful handling of confidentiality in the inquiry and a focused selection of participants on the basis of their proximity to the issue, the evaluation resulted in insight in options for resolving mass disputes that are supported by various parties. Furthermore, the evaluation itself served, it is argued, as a vehicle to overcome the deadlock by sensitizing stakeholders to the fact that they all aspire similar practical objectives and all acknowledge the need for cooperation on the issue.

De Nederlandse rijksoverheid maakt steeds meer gebruik van DBFM(O)-contracten om grootschalige bouw- en infraprojecten te ontwikkelen en te realiseren (DBFM(O) staat voor Design, Build, Finance, Maintain en eventueel Operate). De organisatie en inrichting van deze contracten en projecten zijn ‘als vanzelfsprekend’ gegroeid en gestandaardiseerd, veelal gebaseerd op de internationale praktijk en buitenlandse voorbeelden. Dit artikel zet uiteen hoe DBFM(O)-projecten georganiseerd en gestructureerd worden door publieke en private partijen. Uit internationaal onderzoek blijkt dat de resultaten wisselend zijn, maar de potentiële voordelen van DBFM(O) zijn groot. Deze potentie blijkt uit de eerste praktijkervaringen in Nederland, maar we kennen inmiddels ook de eerste negatieve gevolgen voor betrokken risicodragende partijen. We onderscheiden bij DBFM(O) zes ‘conventies’ met onderliggende spanningen waar praktijk en wetenschap, in de Nederlandse verhoudingen, kritisch op zullen moeten reflecteren.

This article analyses the Dialogue Table (‘Dialoogtafel’ in Dutch) in Groningen, the most northern province in the Netherlands, as an example of connecting vertical and horizontal steering. The Dialogue Table was set up to supervise the spending of compensation money for the damage from the earthquakes caused by gas extraction in this province. The Dialogue Table combines vertical forms of governance, such as a unilateral imposition of the budget and the presidency of the Dialogue Table, and more horizontal forms such as equal deliberation between administrative bodies and stakeholders. The central questions are which tensions will occur in these two different logics of steering, how one deals with these tensions and which competences this requires from civil servants. An exploratory analysis of the case shows that tensions occur around (1) the starting conditions (costs, presidency, selection and representation), (2) the progress of the process (desired results, openness, inequality) and (3) the outcomes of the process (influence). On the basis of their research, the authors offer recommendations about the organization of such hybrid steering processes and indicate which competences are required in this respect from civil servants.

Citizens’ initiatives are the focus of public attention as part of the popular ‘do-democracy’ (associative democracy). However, it is not clear to what extent citizens are able to shape self-organization in a sustainable manner, what the important factors in this respect are and if citizens’ initiatives are the sole preserve of a better educated group of citizens. Through a secondary quantitative analysis of 56 citizens’ initiatives, this article offers an empirical contribution to answering these questions. The authors explore the effects of three possible factors on the sustainability of citizens’ initiatives: the network structure of the citizens’ initiative, the organizational design of the initiative and the revenue model. They show significant relationships between the organizational design of citizens’ initiatives and their sustainability. They also show a relationship between the network structure of these initiatives and their sustainability: initiatives that develop into a fully connected network or a polycentric network are more sustainable than initiatives with a star network. The personal characteristics of the initiators show a dispersal in age, descent, gender and retirement. Relatively speaking, many initiators have a high level of education: 80% has a higher professional or university education. But there are no significant relations between these personal characteristics and the sustainability of citizens’ initiatives.

Big Data is the new hype in municipal policy and the promise of Big Data is rationalization: better policy that is based on better information. In this article the authors investigate the extent to which the use of Big Data in municipal organizations results in a more rational policy process. Their empirical research was held in two Dutch municipalities: Tilburg, in the south of the Netherlands, and Assen, in the north of the Netherlands. They investigated how Tilburg deploys Big Data for the fight against crime and Assen is trying to improve its traffic management with Big Data. Their analysis shows that policy, more so than in the past, is being steered by specific information because Big Data is being used. The rationalization of policy, however, is limited by the possibilities of Big Data and by political dynamics. Their final conclusion therefore is that the uncertainty, unfamiliarity, complexity and constant change are partly made manageable and controllable by the use of Big Data in municipal organizations. Politics is also partly ‘tamed’ because politicians have to relate to ‘objective data’ from information systems.

During the first decades after World War II income policy was an important topic of public debate in the Netherlands. This changed in the eighties and nineties when gross wages were ‘demoralized’ and taken off the political agenda. Income policy was deemed pointless, inefficient, or superfluous. Moreover wages were determined according to technocratic schemes designed by consultancy firms. These schemes encourage employees to compare themselves with people with a comparable education in other organizations rather than with coworkers in their own organization thus fostering a caste mentality.
However, following the financial crisis a cry for remoralization was launched which ended in a new law which determined that civil servants and top administrators in public organizations should never earn more than a government minister (178.000 euros per annum). In this article it is argued that such a partial remoralization of the highest wages in the public sector is unsatisfactory. It is argued that wages at large should be a moral topic for organizations that should explain their reward policy for their highest and lowest employees, thus encouraging workers to see themselves as members of their organization rather than their educational caste. Public administration scholars should play a role in this debate.

As long as the existence of public administration, there is discussion whether public administration should focus on practice or mainly be a purely scientific field. Opinions of public administration scholars are divided on the matter. Moreover, the question is whether public administration is a discipline in itself or part of other disciplines such as political science, law or the management sciences. This article shows how public administration scholars see the discipline and the developments therein, based on a survey among scholars. Dutch public administration scholars are compared with their European colleagues. There are major differences between the Netherlands and the rest of Europe with regard to the status of the discipline. Firstly, as a separate discipline, public administration in the Netherlands is more important in comparison with other European countries. In the rest of Europe, in particular political sciences play an important role. Secondly, regarding the tension within the discipline, the public administration in the Netherlands is developing less towards practitioners than public administration in other European countries.

In this article we discuss the influence of external policy advisors on the policy process. In the Dutch context, little is known about the role, function and influence of external policy advisors (like consultants) who are hired on a temporary basis by the government. Based on a survey (N = 378) this study provides a profile of external policy advisors and the nature of their advice work. An interesting result is that external advisors generally conduct process-related policy work, but may also provide policy substance. Furthermore, the article develops an empirically and theoretically informed research agenda as a starting point for additional research.

We are only fully aware of our dependency on large scale technical infrastructure systems when they fail to provide reliable services. Yet, at the same time we have witnessed the dismantling of the organizations providing these services due to privatization and liberalization policies. In this article we provide insight into the complexity of managing these now networked systems, consisting of several private and public organizations, by looking at the Dutch railway system. More specifically we analyze a case in which the decision to take several railway tracks and switches out of service resulted in a large scale disruption during rush hour in one of the busiest parts of the Netherlands. With the concept of sensemaking we show that the different actors involved were unable to create a common understanding of the situation to enable coordinated action.

Governments throughout the whole world feel the need to cut spending due to the current financial crisis. The Netherlands are no exception in this matter. Top civil servants are up to the task to implement these cutbacks within their own organizations. However, not much is known about what influences their choice for certain implementation strategies. One factor of interest are the values of top civil servants, which are supposed to be influenced by their work experience. This is a relevant factor, since the introduction of New Public Management made it more common for managers from the private sector to reach the higher echelons of government. Top civil servants with different backgrounds and from different Dutch ministries were interviewed for this study. It seems that using across-the-board cuts are present within Dutch ministries, sometimes combined with targeted cuts. Surprisingly, no differences in values and implementation strategies were found between managers with and without experience in the private sector, contrary to expectation. The implementation strategies used seem mainly influenced by values such as soberness and thrift, values which are not present in current public values literature.

This article is about one of the experiments in local democratic renewal: MyBorne2030 (in Dutch ‘MijnBorne2030’). The aim of the project was to develop a communal vision for Borne (a relatively small suburban municipality of 20.000 inhabitants in the East of the Netherlands) for the year 2030. A steering committee of 20 local organizations has worked out four scenarios on the basis of three building stones: an identity study, a research of societal trends and the formulation of ambitions. These four scenarios have been submitted to the citizens of Borne in a referendum. The scenario that has received the most votes (‘Dynamic villages’) is further elaborated in a new vison for the future called MyBorne2030. Institutionally the decision-making process in Borne can be described as a mixture of participative (deliberative), associative and direct (plebiscitary) democracy. The authors conclude that it was a successful experiment, that has produced broad support for the vision of Borne for the future and a solid basis for the implementation of this vision. Participants (as well as non-participants) think this approach can be repeated not only in Borne, but also in other municipalities. The authors add that this could also be the case for the level above of cooperating municipalities.