Jaap Hoogenboezem

Coping with targets: performance measurement in The Netherlands police

Purpose – The article aims to understand why performance management schemes or targeting were introduced in the Dutch police organisation after 2002. This question is relevant for two reasons. First, Dutch political culture is traditionally not overly concerned with performance of public organisations, and second, police work seems especially averse to targeting.Design/methodology/approach – The article explores changes in Dutch politics, and especially the rise and agenda of Pim Fortuyn, a flamboyant politician who disrupted the traditional political relations in the Dutch polity, and who put government performance on top of the political agenda. Analysis of secondary sources is used to track the response of police management, and field work is used to investigate the reactions of street level police officers.Findings – The introduction of targeting is directly attributable to changes in the polity. As such, they represent a pendulum swing that will move back, especially when the limitations of targeting...

Local Government Performance Indicators in Europe: an Exploration

Local governments need reliable information about the cities they are governing. However, an analysis of the availability of basic descriptive data (population data, information on household composition, unemployment, poverty, condition of the housing stock, homelessness, recorded crime and composition and size of local municipal income) in 55 European cities makes clear that these data are often not available because they have neither been collected nor disseminated. On average, 30 percent of simple local performance indicators is missing. National statistical traditions may help explaining the lack of data-gathering.

Brinkmanship and beyond. The political leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt

This article compares two legislative initiatives of President F. D. Roosevelt with the aim of finding an explanation for one of the failures of Roosevelts presidency: his attempt to change the composition of the Supreme Court in 1937. Comparing Roosevelts strategy and activities during the Court-packing crisis and drafting and processing the Lend-Lease act it can be concluded that the differences are not structural but gradual. In both cases he pushed the political system to the limits in about the same way, but in the Court-packing case this brinkmanship fails. Roosevelt misinterprets signals and misses good opportunities to come out of it a winner because of specific, and particular circumstances further explored in the article.

Hidden Success: A Case Study of Secretary-General Dirk Stikker’s Leadership at NATO

This study of NATO Secretary-General Dirk Stikker analyses his leadership at NATO. Generally Stikker is seen as an unsuccessful leader because he was not able to solve the differences between European alliance members and the Unites States over nuclear strategy. However, this study argues that this would be a wrong measure of success. NATO was hopelessly deadlocked, and keeping the unity was in itself a hidden success. It shows that success and failure are not judgments that are always obvious and clear, but that interpretation is an important part of the study of leadership.