Frank Hendriks

Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World

Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the others; (2) provides a clear expression of the way in which a significant portion of the populace feels we should live with one another and with nature; and (3) needs all of the others in order to be sustainable. ‘Clumsy solutions’– policies that creatively combine all opposing perspectives on what the problems are and how they should be resolved – are therefore called for. We illustrate these claims for the issue of global warming.

The Oxford handbook of local and regional democracy in Europe

PART I THE BRITISH ISLES PART II THE RHINELANDIC STATES PART III THE NORDIC STATES PART IV THE SOUTHERN EUROPEAN STATES PART V THE NEW DEMOCRACIES PART VI CONCLUSIONS

Local public management reforms in the Netherlands: fads, fashions and winds of change

Compared to other continental European countries, especially Germany and Switzerland, which have experimented with New Public Management (NPM) in local government, The Netherlands has been relatively quick in following trends stemming from Anglo-Saxon management thinking, but also relatively quick in redressing its course. The rise of the New Public Management in Dutch local government has been relatively swift and strong but also relatively superficial and non-committal. The dominant picture that emerges is one of an administrative system that, while responsive to the latest trends, is also surprisingly stable. Management reforms, forcefully advocated in the 1980s, were decisively revised and redressed in the 1990s, with the city of Tilburg, celebrated for its ‘Tilburg Model’, a case in point. The Werdegang of NPM (that is, how things developed) in Dutch local government, detailed in this article, can be understood only partially as a result of changing economic and budgetary constraints. The article shows that endogenous features of the Dutch politico-administrative system – more specifically: the compact, dense and decentralized pattern of the intergovernmental network, the administrative tradition of pragmatism, dynamic conservatism and the comparatively technocratic character of local government – have also strongly influenced the reception, effect and correction of NPM in Dutch local government.

Between Democracy and Efficiency: Trends in Local Government Reform in the Netherlands and Germany

In this article attention is drawn to a striking difference between recent attempts to reform local government in the Netherlands and in Germany. What has been the prime focus of attention in the Netherlands in the 1980s is being emphasized in Germany in the 1990s, and what is being emphasized in the Netherlands in the 1990s has been the prime focus of attention in Germany in the 1980s. Trends in local goverment reform in the Netherlands have been going from a focus on more efficiency to a focus on more democracy, while trends in local government reform in Germany have been going the other way around. Likely explanations for these intersecting reform trends are built on four pillars: financial crises, legitimacy crises, formal institutions and informal institutions

The Case for Clumsiness

Most climatologists agree that by burning fossil fuels and engaging in other forms of consumption and production we are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases that float around in the atmosphere. These gases, in trapping some of the sun’s heat, warm the earth and enable life. The trouble is, some predict, that if we continue to accumulate those gases, over the course of the new century the average temperature on earth will rise and local climates will change, with possibly catastrophic consequences. Will this indeed happen? Does climate-change put the future of the world at risk? Can only a radical reallocation of global wealth and power rescue us from this threat? Or should people not be overly worried, as the steady march of technological progress will see us through in the end?

Understanding Good Urban Governance : Essentials, Shifts and Values

Building on the relevant international literature, as well as empirical research on urban cases, this article determines and discusses five core values of good urban governance: responsiveness, effectiveness, procedural justice, resilience, and counterbalance. The quest for good governance can take various forms. This article focuses on urban governance, and identifies four different shifts, with increased emphasis on the real decision makers or the ordinary citizens, with increased attention to selective choice or integrative deliberation as modes of urban governance. Urban governance and good urban governance are not synonymous. This article advocates critical reflection, moving beyond the performance bias that tends to accompany governance reform.

Everyday Fixers as Local Heroes: A Case Study of Vital Interaction in Urban Governance

This article exemplifies the importance of viable coalitions in processes of neighbourhood development and local governance. Elaborating on the notion of the ‘everyday maker’, discovered in Danish local politics by Bang and Sörensen, this article further explores the characteristics and conditions of organising capacity, using the case of the Neighbourhood Development Corporation in the Dutch city of The Hague as a paradigmatic case. This case shows that individual actors, ‘everyday fixers’ or ‘local heroes’, can make a real difference in local politics if they are well connected to a supportive structure and if they are sensitive to the logic of the situation at hand. Context matters, sometimes impedes, but smart individuals can also make it work.

Democracy Transformed? Reforms in Britain and The Netherlands (1990–2010)

This article focuses on democratic reform in Britain and the Netherlands since 1990. The question is whether the UK has become less ‘majoritarian’ and the Netherlands less ‘consensual’, as some have argued. If we look at the formalised institutions of the national system of representative democracy the overall conclusion is that convergence has been rather limited. But, if we extend our analysis to non-formal, sub-national and non-representative democratic institutions also, the picture becomes more nuanced. We also looked at traces of direct democracy. Our analysis shows that both countries have witnessed changes that incline to voter democracy (directly-majoritarian) and participatory democracy (directly-integrative), although the Dutch case exhibits a somewhat stronger tendency to participatory democracy than the British case. A general lesson to be drawn is that thinking in terms of pure types of democracy has become obsolete.

The post-industrialising city: political perspectives and cultural biases

Many Western cities face marked changes that are associated with post-industrialisation of the urban environment. In this article, four political perspectives on the threats and opportunities associated with post-industrialisation are discussed: liberal productivism; communitarianism; institutional perfectionism and participative democracy. In cultural terms these four approaches appear to be remarkably biased. As such, they are unlikely to match the complicated, confusing and unpredictable processes that are taking place in Western cities. The complexities of post-industrialisation demand cultural variety in the public domain. This, in turn, requires connectivity and openness in the institutions that structure urban politics and urban policy making.

Democratic reform between the extreme makeover and the reinvention of tradition: the case of the Netherlands

Democracy in the Netherlands, like in so many other Western countries, is under substantial reform pressure. The problem with the democratic system in the Netherlands, according to democratic reformers, is that it is out of step with the fast and major changes taking place in modern society. Champions of democratic reform in the Netherlands mostly look to sweeping, large-scale, and all-encompassing plans for democratic reform, achieving, however, little success. Major structural changes have been planned time and again, but eventually the institutional structure has remained largely the same. This article presents a critical analysis of the standard recipe that democratic reformers often prescribe – radical makeover – and outlines a viable alternative that can also be derived from the Dutch case – reinventing tradition. Reinventing tradition implies a mixture of change and preservation, of movement and counter-movement. It is, arguably, the only way for democratic reform to go, at least in a consensus democracy like the Netherlands. Dutch history demonstrates that large-scale blueprint reform runs a serious risk of non-implementation, and that small-scale adaptive tinkering, part of the incremental ‘reinvention of tradition’, can be significantly more successful as a reform strategy.