Philip Marcel Karré

Hybrid Organizations: No Cause for Concern?

Hybrid organizations mix the characteristics of state, market, and civil society. Critics have suggested that such organizations pose severe risks to the public sector, both financially and culturally. However, these assertions are based mostly on theoretical claims or single case studies. No systematic evidence has been collected to support them. The findings of a large research program in The Netherlands in several policy fields show that the concerns over hybrid organizations appear to be overstated, since theoretically defined risks have not materialized. Conditions such as the presence of active regulators and a high degree of professionalism appear to dampen the risks.

Joined-Up Government in The Netherlands: Experiences with Program Ministries

Over the last 15 years there have been many experiments with joined-up (also known as whole of) government practices, aimed at horizontal coordination to overcome the fragmentation of vertical governmental structures due to departmentalism and New Public Management. These practices were initiated to address wicked problems and to better interact with society at large. Now that there are signs that the rhetoric of joined-up government is winding down and many joined-up government developments are being dismantled, it is time to evaluate this approach. This is especially appropriate as some suggest that the overall impact of these developments may be relatively small, despite (overly) optimistic claims made in the past. In this article we take experiences with joined-up government in the Netherlands as the departing point for a critical discussion of this approach. By comparing the Dutch experiences with those in other countries, we will draw a picture of the challenges and dilemmas of horizontal coordination in the vertical world of government.

Public accountability in the Internet age: changing roles for governments and citizens

The Internet has created opportunities for instant and cheap communication, including communication between government and citizens. The interactive capabilities of Web 2.0 in general and social media in particular have turned this communication from a (mostly) one-way stream to an interactive experience. This low-cost, accessible medium has levelled the playing field between government and citizen: everyone now has the means to organize and spread a message at their fingertips. As a result, the role of citizens in the public discourse has changed: they have become monitorial citizens and armchair auditors. Public accountability, one of the key processes in any democracy, is changing and become a more dynamic process. In this article we describe this trend and discuss its implications.

When Citizens Take Matters into Their Own Hands

Citizens have begun to take public matters into their own hands and establish their own communities. They have self-defined rules and norms, separated from what is regularly defined as the public arena but are still included in a more general framework of societal rules. The public sphere in these domains has become privatized, in the sense that others are excluded from it and social interaction is regulated in private contracts between individuals, or between individuals and actors other than the state. The trend of citizens organizing public matters privately and opting out of certain shared public institutions poses ethical questions for representative democracy and for society as a whole. What does it mean for society if these practices of self-government keep growing in number and size? Are there lessons to be learned from self-government in local communities?

Slotartikel: Het oplossend vermogen van living labs

textabstractIn dit slotartikel vatten wij de opbrengsten samen van de individuele artikelen uit dit themanummer en trekken wij een aantal overkoepelende lessen. Wij komen tot de con‐ clusie dat in het kader van de stad als living lab meer aandacht geschonken moet wor‐ den aan drie uitdagingen: (1) onduidelijke of tegenstrijdige doelen en verwachtingen, (2) organisatorische onduidelijkheid en (3) de ontbrekende institutionele inbedding en verankering. Op basis hiervan doen we een aantal aanbevelingen voor bestuurskundig onderzoek en de praktijk.

Chapter 5 Steering Societal Resilience: An Empirical Exploration of Trends and Challenges in Government–Citizen Collaboration

In these times of financial austerity and the emergence of wicked problems, traditional Public Administration and New Public Management as governments conventional mechanisms to steer society often fail to produce desired societal outcomes. This has made the governments of many Western nations call for civic engagement hoping this will lead to the emergence of a resilient society that can resist and react to even the most major shocks and disasters by being flexible and adaptive (Longstaff, 2005; Meijs, 2004; Wildavsky, 1988). A recent example of this broader trend are the discussions in the United Kingdom on how government can help create a Big Society, in which local people and communities feel empowered to deal with social problems on their own, without the interference of politics or governmental busybodies.