Bas Denters

Size and local democracy

How large should local governments be, and what are the implications of changing the scale of local governments for the quality of local democracy? These questions have stood at the centre of debates among scholars and public sector reformers alike from antiquity to the present. This monograph offers the first systematic cross-national investigation of these questions using empirical evidence gathered specifically for this purpose. Results provide insights that offer important touchstones for reform activities and academic research efforts in many countries

The Reform of the Political Executive in Dutch Local Government

Following the Local Government Act of 1851 in the Netherlands, the legislative and executive primacy in the local political arena rested with the municipal council, an elected body that represented the local citizenship. In 2002, however, the then newly elected municipal councils were confronted with a radically revised legal setting. This paper assesses the implications of the 2002 reform for the role of the political executive in Dutch local government.

Introduction: The Emergence of New Forms of Governance

During recent decade(s) the traditional role of government in West-European countries has been under discussion. This debate and subsequent reforms were induced by a gradual transformation of the relations between state and society. Increasing social pluriformity and ongoing processes of individualisation have undermined the legitimacy of traditional modes of collective decision making (Andeweg and Van Gunsteren, 1994; Tops, 1994; Thomassen, 1995; Klingemann and Fuchs, 1995; Frissen, 1996; Van Gunsteren, 1998). The authority of government and the steering capacity of public administration are restrained by a growing dependence of public authorities on economic and social actors. The ensuing shift of balance between government and society has had far reaching consequences for public decision making.

Analysis of institutions of university governance

Governance within higher education is a most complicated issue. Managing a university, variously described as ‘monadic chaos’ or ‘organised anarchy’, is a redoubtable challenge. Of all issues currently under discussion in the world of higher education, few are more controversial than those pertaining to the institutions of governance (Neave 1988).1 Who should govern a university, how, and to what ends, have been recurring questions in the history of universities (De Groof et al. 1998). Constitutional issues such as these have been raised passionately, again and again, though obviously there have been quiet times too (Bargh et al. 1996). Matters of institutional design are deemed of particular importance because, right or wrong, they are considered as essential for realising people’s visions of the ideal university (Moodie & Eustace 1974: 23). As such, these issues easily touch upon values like effectiveness, efficiency, the quality of primary processes, democracy, institutional autonomy, academic freedom, or the university’s role towards society. Therefore, discussions of institutional design derive their importance and their fervour in part from the fact that they inspire the ‘affirmation of legitimate values and institutions’ (March & Olsen 1983: 292).

Giving Citizens More Say in Local Government: Comparative Analyses of Change Across Europe in Times of Crisis

The authors show how institutions for citizen participation in European local government have changed from 1990 until today. Relying on data from an expert survey and focusing on the right of free access to information, the direct election of mayors, and binding local referenda, the authors discover a clear trend of democratic renewal in European local politics. However, the trend is not uniform. The authors also offer some interpretations for the pattern of change they found: Democratic reforms are the result of domestic political factors. But as diffusion theory suggests, the reforms are also externally determined by factors like coercion, learning, and imitation.

Beyond ‘What do I get?’ Functional and procedural sources of Dutch citizens’ satisfaction with local democracy

This paper deals with a dual question: (1) How important are procedural value orientations (pertaining to the democratic quality of decision-making) and functional value orientations (pertaining to the governmental performance in solving problems and delivering services) for Dutch citizens’ ideas about what constitutes good local governance? (2) To what extent and how do these functional and procedural evaluations affect Dutch citizens’ overall satisfaction with local democracy? These questions will be answered on the basis of data collected through a survey amongst 1060 Dutch citizens.

Conditional regression analysis

This article deals with the question of whether the inclusion of multiplicative terms to model conditional effects in multiple regression is legitimate. The major arguments in the controversy relating to this subject are reviewed. The main conclusion is that most of the objections against multiplicative terms are based on misinterpretations of the coefficients of conditional models. For the often-ignored possible numerical problems in the estimation of these models, due to multicollinearity, an indirect estimation technique is proposed. The potentials of conditional regression analysis are demonstrated on a concrete example.

Reforming Local Governments in Times of Crisis: Values and Expectations of Good Local Governance in Comparative Perspective

A lot has been written about normative and theoretical expectations of local government. In this chapter we give the word to the citizens. How satisfied are they with the way local democracy works in their municipality and what do they expect from their municipalities in terms of facilities and services? With the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, our study covers four relatively well-off countries holding top positions in most overall assessments of democracy. We start with a general evaluation of the citizens’ satisfaction with their life in their municipality. In a next step we address the different ideas citizens have about the very essence of local democracy and local governance. The chapter ends with a discussion of varying degrees of satisfaction considering the different expectations.

A new role for municipal councils in Dutch local democracy

In 1914, now almost one hundred years ago, the founding father of the modern study of public administration in the Netherlands Gerrit van Poelje (18841976) predicted the end of the directly elected municipal councils as a core institution of democratic local government. His prediction was based on two expectations. Firstly, he argued that the need for more effective and efficient governance and the required professionalisation of local government would marginalize the role of the part-time amateur politicians serving on the councils. Local power would inevitably shift to the executive offices and the local civil service. Secondly, he argued that the individual emancipation of citizens, finding its expression in increasing levels of formal education, awareness, and assertiveness would be increasingly capable of exercising direct, effective democratic control and scrutiny over local public administration. According to Van Poelje the combination of these functional (effectiveness) and democratic requirements would make the role of the municipal councils largely redundant (Van Poelje 1914: 88). If Van Poelje is right, local representative democracy may be crushed between functional and democratic requirements.

Inter-municipal Cooperation in the Netherlands

In this chapter, we describe some of the features of the Dutch way of organizing inter-municipal cooperation, using a nation-wide study. The permissive institutional structure provides municipalities with a wide range of organizational structures for cooperation, including both public and private law options. This has resulted in a wide range of almost 800 inter-municipal cooperations and in high variations in both the level and complexity of inter-municipal cooperations for different municipalities. All in all this ‘crazy-quilt’ pattern of cooperation seems to be working quite well, as both democratic quality and performance in terms of perceived benefits and (transaction) costs are for most cases at a satisfactory level.