Sabine van Zuydam

Credibility Enacted: Understanding the Meaning of Credible Political Leadership in the Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign of 2010

In times of perception politics, the credibility of electoral candidates is a crucial asset in political marketing. This raises the question to which political leaders citizens attribute credibility and how political credibility is gained and lost through media performance. We analyze and compare two contrasting cases during the Dutch parliamentary election campaign of 2010. Whereas in this campaign Mark Rutte—leader of the liberal party VVD—gained credibility, the credibility of Job Cohen—at the time, leader of the social-democratic PvdA—waned substantially. To understand this we extend the source credibility approach with a dramaturgical approach, and as such we shed light on what happens in the dynamic, interactive process between leaders and audiences in which credibility is constructed.

Chapter seven Frankenstein’s Monster: the Amsterdam Case of Good Collaborative Governance

“We have created Frankenstein’s monster.” This is what Lodewijk Asscher, then Amsterdam’s alderman for Finance, Education, and Youth Affairs, concluded in 2007 about the programs and projects for the city’s youngsters. In his opinion, social welfare, youth healthcare, youth mental care, and education were not transparent and accessible enough for children and teenagers in need. Several problems occurred in this domain. For one, there were overlaps and gaps in the supply of programs and projects by professional organizations, and the city’s services led children to get stuck between organizations or to an overload of professionals.

Innovation Unlimited? Working Across Boundaries in a Case of Collaborative Governance on the ‘Youth Domain’

This paper studies how collaborative governance might take place in synergy with the routines and practices of “normal” policy making. We investigated if and how discursive and extra-discursive boundaries from bureaucratic and organizational silos were crossed in boundary concepts, objects and people. Moreover, we studied the limits to this type of collaboration in a case of collaborative governance on the youth domain” – youth welfare and youth care – in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. In this case, participants were confronted with restrictions to their innovative ways of cooperating. The paper addresses the limits and dilemmas that organizers and participants in collaborative governance ran into when faced with the routines and practices of “normal” policy making. Moreover, we seek possible solutions to these dilemma’s and to the boundaries to collaborative governance both from a theoretical point of view and from the practices of the participants in collaborative governance.