This paper presents the policy theory of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education’s 2017 framework. The framework includes a set of indicators and working methods for the inspections of school boards which are expected to lead to improved quality and organizational learning of the schools and colleges within each board’s portfolio. Inspection feedback, quality assurance, stakeholder involvement and governance are the key mechanisms through which customized inspections are assumed to affect change. These customized inspections start from a set of legal requirements schools and colleges have to meet, but add inspections modules which are agreed on with each school board at the start of an inspection visit. As these inspections are currently being implemented, there is no evidence yet on the validity of these assumptions.

In practice, diversity interventions do not always appear to be effective. One argument is that there is little or no match between the perspectives of public organizations on diversity and the interventions used. This article provides an overview of the underlying rationales for diversity policy and discusses the perspectives on diversity from the diversity literature, HRM, and management literature and how these overlap, complement each other and differ from each other. What these perspectives have in common is that they all emphasize the added value of diversity. In the diversity literature, the emphasis is on the four perspectives equality, legitimacy, creativity, and the labour market. HRM literature focusses on managing differences. In public administration, there is a shift from active representation by individuals to connecting by all employees. Furthermore, the binding perspective is gaining more and more importance in the public domain because it may be possible to close the gap between the government and its citizen. This perspective emphasizes the importance of the long-term relationship with citizens to strengthen the trust of citizens in the government for realizing social tasks and responsibilities. It makes diversity an issue for all employees. For Hassan and Havva, and also for Hans and Hanna.

Using survey data from 1,300 welfare recipients in the Netherlands, this paper explores the effects of different enforcement styles in the field of social security law. Although most policy debates focus on punitive and persuasive enforcement, our findings suggest that both styles only play a limited role in explaining regulatory compliance. Our study also shows that the level of compliance among welfare recipients is related to their ‘motivational postures’ (Braithwaite 2003; 2009; 2011). While some of these ‘postures’ are shaped by elements of procedural justice, others are related to the perceived legitimacy of laws or to instrumental motives. Given these findings, we suggest that compliance with social security laws may not only depend on punitive or persuasive enforcement, but also on the degree in which regulatory enforcement is attuned to the individual characteristics of welfare recipients. Finally, these ideas are translated into several practical suggestions for the ‘smart enforcement’ of social security law.

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.

There is a lot of polling in the Netherlands, especially in the run-up to elections. The assessment of future voting behavior in the run-up to elections is inherently difficult, because many voters do not know in advance whether they will vote, let alone for which party. There is therefore constant debate about the quality of these surveys. However, there are also polls that are not held prior to elections, but on election day instead. They are called exit polls or shadow elections. The sample consists of voters who actually visited the polling station and cast their vote. In this article the authors emphasize the nature and useful and interesting role of exit polls. Exit polls are an important tool for making an accurate prognosis of the results shortly after the closing of the ballot boxes. Secondly, an exit poll can provide further insight into electoral gains and losses, and thus counteract unfounded speculation. After all, the data collected form an empirical source for a first analysis of the outcome and electoral behavior. All in all, the exit poll is a relatively easy-to-organize and attractive ingredient for a results evening. Confusing pre-election polls with exit polls probably does not do justice to the higher quality of exit polls in terms of prognosis. The article explains where exit polls differ from pre-election polls and what the most important choices are when setting up such a poll; it also shows that a well-designed exit poll is accurate and has adds value to a results evening. The authors give practical examples in their argument and discuss the exit poll that was organized in Leiden at the council elections of 21 March 2018.

Exploration of the future is about systematically exploring future developments and the possible consequences for an organization or issue. The demand for future explorations at local policy level has increased in recent years. This article focuses on the relationship between participatory future exportations and local strategic policy processes. On the basis of four case studies, the meaning of participatory foresight studies for local policy processes was investigated. The research, which was carried out as action research, shows that future explorations in local strategic policy processes can be significant in different ways: they provide new knowledge, they promote learning in an integral and future-oriented manner and they encourage social learning processes that are independent of the content, which is valuable for group dynamics. In addition, future explorations can be useful in different phases of the policy cycle. Despite the fact that participatory explorations of the future can be meaningful in local strategic policy processes, there is still a bridge between the method of future exploration on the one hand and policy processes and organizations on the other. The research shows that a demand-driven approach starting from the needs of the participants in the policy process and responding to the culture, structure and working method of the organization is a promising approach. At the same time, the research shows that there are several factors that need to be considered in order to achieve a stronger interrelatedness of future exploration and policy. The policy practice and the exploratory practice seem to be gradually evolving towards each other. On the one hand, policy practice is becoming more rational, transparent and analytical in nature through the use of future explorations, at least in policy preparation. The explorations promote substantive discussions on policy agendas and policy intentions. On the other hand, they are becoming more policy oriented through more reasoning from the policy practice in terms of process design and knowledge needs of the policy process.

It may seem obvious to say that society changes and that this is happening at an increasing speed. But not everyone fully realizes that society as a whole is undergoing fundamental changes and that this will lead to a complete transformation and structural change of society over a longer period of time. Some think that tomorrow is a multitude of today, others think that the present is not really a good compass for what tomorrow and especially the day after tomorrow will be. In this respect, municipalities are faced with the considerable task of making a ‘future-proof’ diagnosis of ‘municipal reality’ and of forming a picture of what that future will be, or should be. Municipalities differ considerably in the way in which they deal with these aspects administratively: from ‘government as usual’ on the one hand to ‘complete tilt’ on the other side of the continuum. Much municipal policy is a slightly adapted version of what they have been doing for a long time. The real initiatives to ‘fundamentally tilt’ systems have yet to reach many municipalities. In other words: everything changes, but… have things not remained the same? In this essay the author discusses these issues in the context of his hometown Maastricht (in the south of the Netherlands) as an example.

Debates about the quality of local democracy are not new. This was also the case 100 years ago. In 1918 the ground-breaking dissertation of Adriaan Buriks on democratic municipal government was published in the Netherlands. In his dissertation Buriks proposed a radical democratic reform of Dutch municipal government by adopting the new system of ‘commission government’ from the US. That is a system of city government in which (almost) all city authority functions are concentrated in a small commission. The commission is organized in such a way that each member of the commission is the head of a city government department, every member is chosen by the population of the whole city and the exercise of authority is controlled by the whole population. The essay describes the remarkable life of this social revolutionary and municipal law expert. It goes on to discusses the dissertation through an introduction on the central issue of democratic municipal government, a description of the government systems of the US before and after the American Revolution of 1787, a description of the new system of ‘commission government’ and his proposal to adopt the new system in the Netherlands. The essay is closed by the author’s reflection on how the dissertation was received and its impact.

A polarizing society, ever-changing politics and an administrative field that is fragmented: that is the present world of Dutch mayors. These three processes have had a profound impact on local government and on the office of mayor. The position of the mayor has become vulnerable and his or her functioning is being put under a magnifying glass, sometimes leading to negative imaging and even a premature departure of mayors. More and sometimes conflicting demands are being imposed on mayors on the basis of their different tasks and responsibilities, as a result of which their positional authority has come under pressure, among other things. Based on discussions with 20 Dutch mayors, the authors of this essay present five central leadership dilemmas for mayors: (1) internal versus external connection; (2) authenticity versus adaptability; (3) involvement versus distance; (4) setting the course versus being of service; and (5) knowledge of content versus process monitoring. Coping with these leadership dilemmas also requires a different set of skills. First, the mayor must be pro-active and have a good antenna for new developments. Secondly, it is essential that he or she not only keeps in mind the short-term perspective, but also the middle-term and the long-term perspective. Thirdly, the mayor is expected to be able to combine hard and soft personality traits: just being nice is not enough.

Whereas constitutions establish the institutions of government, human beings actually govern countries, municipalities, and regions. The institutional position of these people may be constitutionally constrained but the people who occupy these positions always have some discretion with regard to the way they fulfil their duties. Either consciously or unconsciously these officials develop their styles of governance. A style of governance reflects a combination of personal traits, institutional constraints, and a genuine set of beliefs with regard to what these duties exactly entail. While some people in a government position believe that a debate in Parliament constitutes the core of their work others may prefer developing policies or meeting citizens. Twenty years ago, observational research conducted in Dutch municipalities led to a set of five coherent beliefs or styles of governance. Over the past two decades, politics in the Netherlands has changed dramatically. The stable pillars that characterized and stabilized the Dutch political system have been replaced by political online and offline swarms, the volatility of the electorate has increased more than in other European countries, and incident driven politics has replaced the ideological and managerial political styles of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In this article we explore the implications of these dramatic changes for the styles of governance in the Netherlands. As recent empirical research is not available yet, we analyse the changes in the Dutch political context to derive a number of implications for the styles of governance.

Credibility is an essential quality for executive politicians but cannot be taken for granted. The literature on political leadership suggests that credible politicians are competent, trustworthy, and caring. Existing studies, however, often do not take into account differences between various offices and tend to ignore the distinction between disparate layers of government. In this article, we analyze as yet unutilized data from local and provincial councilors’ and executives’ evaluations on the qualities they ascribe to their fellow executive politicians. The data were collected for the 2015 Best Dutch Executive election and covers almost all executives who were in office at the time. In contrast to what the existing literature often presumes, our secondary quantitative analysis of this data on 1,776 executives shows that there are significant differences in the qualities that are used to evaluate the most appreciated local and provincial chairpersons on the one hand, and the most appreciated executives on the other hand. Whereas municipal mayors and provincial King’s Commissioners are championed for being particularly caring and showing decisiveness, municipal aldermen and provincial executives are valued in particular for their expertise. This finding indicates that a politician’s credibility for his peers depends on his office as each position requires a particular set of qualities.

Een lerende evaluatie combineert leren en verantwoorden. Deze methode past bij complexe beleidsopgaven, waar meerdere actoren en overheden bij betrokken zijn die een behoefte hebben om te leren van elkaars ervaringen. In de evaluatie van het Natuurpact is deze methode op nationale schaal voor het gedecentraliseerde natuurbeleid toegepast. Uit deze casus blijkt dat een succesvolle toepassing vraagt om een voortdurende en zorgvuldige aansluiting van het onderzoek op de beleidspraktijk. Dit is nodig voor het betrekken van en interactie met stakeholders, het combineren van leren en verantwoorden, de wetenschappelijke onafhankelijkheid, het bestuurlijk mandaat en de beheersbaarheid van het onderzoek.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.
Mounting concerns exist that small private investors exacerbate the urban housing crisis, by purchasing dwellings to rent out so-called ‘buy-to-let’ purchases. By buying up property, they may drive up house prices and exclude regular house-seekers. In this paper, we show that buy-to-let purchases constitute an increasing share of all purchases on the Dutch housing market, and especially so in larger cities and university cities. We argue these local trends do not emerge out of thin air and are not a ‘natural’ market process but should be considered the product of both global economic developments and national policies supporting these changes. Global developments include the increased mobility and ample availability of capital, exemplified by a prolonged low interest environment and a growing scarcity of high quality collateral and investment opportunities, making housing attractive for storing capital. Dutch housing policies have increasingly restricted access to social rent to low-income groups, while blowing up house prices fuelled with mortgage debts. As a consequence, a growing number of households falls in-between these two tenures: they have to resort to private rent. Private investors respond to and accommodate this demand through buy-to-let investments. Furthermore, the Dutch national government has made steps to relax regulation on the private-rental market and weakened tenant rights. In so doing, it sets the scene for amplifying social and spatial inequalities between the property rich and the property poor.

This book focuses on gender equality policy in the Netherlands since 1974, when the issue made it to the political agenda and the major policy goals became attaining equal rights for women and equal status between women and men. The authors offer a chronological overview, intended for a wider audience, and focus mainly on the ‘second wave’ of feminism and the national level. In providing an overview, the book could have been a welcome addition to the existing literature on the topic, but it is marked by several flaws. It makes little use of this existing literature on the topic, neglects the policy input of women’s movement organizations, and the legal struggle on equal treatment. As the book lacks a central question, it does not provide an analytical analysis, an adequate definition of the scope of gender equality or discussion of the political difficulties of intersectoral policies. It also does not deal with the issue of implementation. Finally, there are too many inaccuracies and flaws in the references to make the book a reliable guide for a wider audience into the area.

This text wants to draw attention to the question: How do peer specialists build a bridge between the modus operandi of health care professionals and the lifeworld problems of clients receiving mental health care? The Dutch mental healthcare system has recently been host to a range of new developments. Two new trends can be distinguished, going by the name of ‘Recovery-oriented healthcare’ and the introduction of ‘Peer Specialists’. These coincide with changes in budget and organization of treatment. There is an increased awareness of the need for efficiency and cost reduction in the organization of care. The meaning and use of recovery-centered approaches and working with peer specialists remain fairly marginal enterprises due to ever increasing pressure emanating from execution of regulations and administrative procedures, and an accompanying decrease of professional autonomy. In the light of Habermas’ theoretical framework, it is an emphasis on a system-oriented organization of care that cause new approaches to barely be able to find a considerable place in the contemporary practice of mental healthcare in the Netherlands. Trust is identified as an essential foundation on the basis of which future principles of organization should be developed.

During the last ten years, the private rental sector in the Netherlands has experienced a rapid growth. In the larger cities, this sector grew with 30 percent, mainly as a result of the large amount of private persons operating as small scale landlords (buy-to-let). This article reflects on the findings of a recent report on the nature of the buy-to-let sector in the Netherlands, carried out by Manuel Aalbers, Jelke Bosma, Rodrigo Fernandez and Cody Hochstenbach. This takes their findings as a starting point, and positions the Dutch private rental sector in an internationally comparative perspective. Furthermore, this article explains the rise of the buy-to-let sector not just from a housing market point of view, but from a welfare state perspective. In different European countries, the private rental sector plays a different role in the housing market, which impacts on the availability and affordability of housing in urban areas. Moreover, rental income for buy-to-let or small-scale private landlords can be seen as part of the provision of welfare. For some it is a pension arrangement, for others a speculative investment. This article reflects on the policy recommendations that Aalbers cum suis propose in their report. To what extent are their proposals able to increase the availability and affordability of housing, without undermining the livelihood of landlords for whom the rental incomes function as social security arrangement?

Over the past three years buy-to-let purchases have become a substantial presence in the Dutch housing market. Private investors buy existing homes in order to rent out. Rental yields have become attractive to a large group of individuals due to low interest rates and high rents. Though buy-to-let helps to increase the stock of rental homes (a broadly recognized need in the Netherlands) there are concerns about negative effects for instance on affordability for regular house seekers. A new group of buyers enters the market and this poses new or potentially aggrevated risks for the Dutch housing market, in particular regarding overall house price stability.

The revolving door is an ambiguous concept evoking strong opinions, and often is seen to lead to a decline in trust and legitimacy of the policy-making system of the Netherlands. But the different moral objections against the revolving door between functions and jobs in public and private organizations are barely matched with systematic empirical evidence of negative effects on the policy-making system. In this article, a definition of the concept is presented in order to help focusing the discussion on moral objections and practical implications of the revolving door. Two fundamental contradictions emerge from the panoply of arguments and assertions about this phenomenon. With our definition as a basis, we consider the different forms of the revolving door and discuss conditions under which it may be contained without solutions that are disproportionate to the problem. The way out is to develop clearer norms and integrity-enhancing mechanisms with which negative effects may be avoided and positive effects strengthened.

Wicked problems ask for new, smart forms of governance beyond a singular focus on hierarchy, market or community. Based on the case studies presented in the individual articles of this special issue, this concluding article describes what smart governance could entail and discusses its strengths and weaknesses, both as a concept and a practical tool.