F.P. Wagenaar

Negotiating the 'Trading Zone'. Creating a Shared Information Infrastructure in the Dutch Public Safety Sector .

Abstract Our main concern in this article is whether nation-wide information technology (IT) infrastructures or systems in emergency response and disaster management are the solution to the communication problems the safety sector suffers from. It has been argued that implementing nation-wide IT systems will help to create shared cognition and situational awareness among relief workers. We put this claim to the test by presenting a case study on the introduction of ‘netcentric work’, an IT system-based platform aiming at the creation of situational awareness for professionals in the safety sector in the Netherlands. The outcome of our research is that the negotiation with relevant stakeholders by the Dutch government has lead to the emergence of several fragmented IT systems. It becomes clear that a top-down implementation strategy for a single nation-wide information system will fail because of the fragmentation of the Dutch safety sector it is supposed to be a solution to. As the US safety sector is at least as fragmented as its Dutch counterpart, this may serve as a caveat for the introduction of similar IT systems in the US.

Extortion and Abuse of Power in the Dutch Republic: The Case of Bailiff Lodewijk van Alteren

Administrative systems sometimes need to answer to two normative frameworks, which are mutually incommensurable. Historians give accounts of what happened when one set of values was replaced with another, usually during blatant scandals. What went on in everyday life, when people simply worked with their conflicting systems, is much less obvious. In the case study below, we try to answer that question by looking at a case of “normal” corruption.

Excises, postal services, oath of office and property taxes. How small local administrative adjustments led to large changes in intergovernmental relations

Before the French Revolution, the choice between centralization and decentralization was between being able to reach down to the individual citizen, and having the ability to make policy on a national scale. Scholarly orthodoxy has it that it was French revolutionary armies that would serve as the great reconciler of these two mutually exclusive choices. By exporting the so-called “Napoleonic administrative model,” they not only triggered stark centralization all over the European continent, but also caused much deeper penetration of central government into the lives of individual citizens. Yet recent research has made it clear that in most countries these two tendencies had long indigenous roots as well. In this article research is presented into pre-Napoleonic centralization and administrative penetration in one of those countries: the Dutch Republic. It is an exploration into the question of how central government came to reach down to the spaces we, as individual citizens, used to cultivate almost on our own, only a few centuries ago.

Essentializing ‘Black Pete’: competing narratives surrounding the Sinterklaas tradition in the Netherlands

Abstract The Netherlands’ most important tradition, the celebration of the feast of Saint Nicholas, (Sinterklaas) has become subject to nation-wide contestation. As Dutch society has become more multicultural, partly due to the immigration from the former Dutch colonies in the West-Indies, new sensitivities have arisen about this institutionalised heritage practice. At the core of the controversy is the figure of Black Pete (Zwarte Piet), Saint Nicholas’ black-faced companion. Some communities within Dutch society perceive this figure as highly menacing and insulting. To the majority of the population, however, Zwarte Piet is an essential part of its heritage and identity. The ensuing controversy can be understood as a matter of heritage narratives conflicting. These narratives do not just give meaning to the tradition, but are also instrumentalized by actors in the debate to achieve their goals. They are used to justify or reject the appearance of Zwarte Piet, and to critically debate Dutch identity. In this article we reconstruct the Zwarte Piet narratives, and explain why these are so incommensurable. Naturally, we also pay attention to what is at stake for the activists on all sides.