Theo A. J. Toonen

Introduction: Networks in Public Administration

In the introductory article to the special issue on Comparing Networks, the editors discuss the meaning of the concept of networks in relation to other recent conceptual developments in public administration such as (neo)institutional and (neo)managerial analysis. They trace the broadly understood historical development of network analysis back to the late 1960s and early 1970s and highlight some important factors in its development up to the present-day demands placed on public administration by both globalization and decentralization. The result is organizational fragmentation. Network analysis makes it clear that people working in government and administration will have to learn to think of organization as an external, not internal activity. The prospect is that hierarchical control will be replaced by continuing processes of bargaining among interested parties within most fields of public administration.

Networks, Management and Institutions: Public Administration as ‘Normal Science’

How does network analysis fit into the development of public administration as an academic discipline? This article tries to bridge theoretical developments in public administration between the middle of the 1970s and the first half of the 1990s. The benchmarks being used are (1) the now classical account by Vincent Ostrom of The Intellectual Crisis in (American) Public Administration - published 25 years ago this year - and (2) Christopher Hood’s reconstruction of core values in (British) new public management. Rather than representing analytical developments as an endless succession of different or even mutually exclusive approaches, this contribution tries to reconcile different foci for analysing public administration. Administrative theory provides us with a rather stable meta-theoretical framework for studying the meaning of quality in government, governance and public administration at various levels of analysis. By relating the emergence of network analysis in PA to parallel developments such as the resurgence of (neo-)managerial and (neo-)institutional analysis, it also becomes clear that network analysis is useful as an analytical device, but that it needs to be linked to theoretical perspectives that provide us with operational assumptions about ‘networks’. Network analysis in itself only provides split ground for reinventing government and refounding public administration.

On the administrative condition of politics: Administrative transformation in the Netherlands

There is virtually no public policy sector in the Netherlands which currently does not exhibit signs of serious institutional stress. Administrative change, modernisation and transformation are predominatly studied in terms of managerial change. The managerial perspective is important, but needs to be complemented by an institutional one. In this contribution political and administrative transformation processes in the Dutch case are being analysed from an historical institutionalist perspective. On the basis of a reconstruction of the institutional theory of the Dutch unitary state a perspective is being developed on the way institutional administrative structures may have facilitated the development of the Dutch version of consociationalism, and the way in which ‘pillarisation’ has affected the operation of the legal institutional set up of the Dutch unitary state. Special attention is given to regional governance as the hidden dimension of Dutch pillarisation and current consequences for regional admin...

Modernization and reform of Dutch waterboards: resilience or change?

In this article, we look into the question whether the Dutch waterboards can still be considered resilient institutions, effectively adapting to changing circumstances as often described in literature. We argue that current waterboards resemble the CPR management form of old only in name. Their institutional nature has changed considerably, thus providing a challenge to the future of CPR water management in the Netherlands. We examine not only the implications for the institutional performance and future of the waterboard system but also discuss possible ways to regenerate the system. With respect to the latter (changes in), the system of governance and community base character of waterboards are examined.

Implementation Research and Institutional Design: The Quest for Structure

It seems unavoidable that any “new”, “modern”, or “thus far unexplored” field of social research comes wrapped in a mystical cover that hinders efforts to push directly to the issues underlying the topics that are being put on the research agenda. It takes some time to discover what a new research interest is all about, be it means-goals analysis, P.P.B.S., policy implementation, policy termination, privatizing government, or deregulation (to name but a few). Some of these by now have become demystified. Several others await their turn to be saved from the political rhetoric that - also in their scientific treatment - still surrounds them. The study of policy implementation seems to be somewhere in the middle of this process.

Governing a consensus democracy: The interplay of Pillarisation and administration

Apart from a static structure of institutional blocks erected for a certain purpose, pillarisation might also be viewed as a dynamic process accommodating not only different cultural groupings, but also varying regional, local and historical circumstances. Apart from being a sociological, political and cultural structure, pillarisation for a long time fulfilled important public administrative and executive functions within and for Dutch society. Apart from being a top‐down vehicle for separation and social control, pillarisation can also be seen as a polycentric or ‘bottom‐up’ institutional structure in which a variety of executive agencies, quangos, and other functional professional, local and regional institutions are being co‐ordinated, integrated, guided and controlled. By seeing ‘pillarisation’ as a dynamic form of network management, the question arises how ‘depillarisation’ affects the development system of intergovernmental governance in the Netherlands. More, rather than less historical knowledge of pillarisation is needed, not for understanding historical questions, but for grasping the complexities of contemporary institutional developments.

Civil Service Systems and the Challenges of the 21st Century

During the past decades’, civil service systems (CSS) have come under intense scrutiny. The role and position of the civil service as core actors in the public sector has been seriously questioned by political pundits and other actors in society and academia. Allegedly, the central position of civil servants in the political-administrative and societal systems is eroding. It is argued that the supposed monopoly of the civil service in public service delivery has gradually broken down. Some visionaries even expect the demise of the civil service as we know it (Demmke 2004; 2005). Perhaps this particular prophecy is grossly exaggerated, sooner reflecting the author’s wish than an empirical fact. Yet, it cannot be denied that, due to a variety of reasons, CSS have increasingly been influenced by a range of internal and external pressures prompted by changes in the institutional context. These internal and environmental changes will be examined in this volume and will be introduced in this chapter. Taken together, these changes supposedly amount to a new, more fragmented order in the public domain generally referred to nowadays as multi-level governance. In this supposed new order, governments and CSS have to find their place. Although there appears to be some common understanding in the scientific community with respect to the nature of these wide-ranging change processes, the analysis of the actual consequences for CSS has received less attention.

Civil Servants in the Enabling Framework State of the 21st Century

Many observations in this volume concern changes and transformations in civil service systems (CSS), which have been defined as mediating institutions for the mobilization of human resources in the service of the state in a given territory (Bekke, Perry and Toonen, 1996: 2). How they work and operate has changed considerably in recent years. Whatever the nature of these changes, the desire for a solid and reliable civil service, based on the rule of law, has been pivotal to public sector reforms in various regions of the world, and certainly in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. In Western Europe and Anglo-American countries, the reform efforts were more focused on establishing a flexible CSS by means of new public management (NPM) reforms. Where systems have not been able to achieve solid results to developing and maintaining a CSS strategy aimed at reform, especially when such reforms are not anchored in a Rechtsstaat tradition, deformation and regression have become more likely outcomes than reform and progression

Administrative Conditions to Institutional Politics: Federalism in an Unitary State

The Netherlands is a paradoxical case in comparative public administration and comparative political science. On the one hand it is often seen as one of the most centralized state systems in Western Europe. On the other hand the system exhibits the institutional characteristics of a fragmented and disjointed ‘consociational’ consensus democracy. The institutional features of both political and administrative systems are traditionally characterized by differentiation, plurality and diversity. This strange marriage between unity and plurality is reflected in the self-imposed label of the constitutional structure as a ‘decentralized unitary state’, a label that merely seems to underscore the hybrid nature of the system (Toonen, 1990). The combination of the characteristics of a plural consensus democracy with those of a unitary rather than a federal structure — which would have been in line with the more common pattern — makes it a case of its own in comparative studies (Lijphart, 1984). This case is difficult to assess in comparative terms and therefore intriguing in academic terms.

The Work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom

Abstract This essay examines the remarkable careers of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, exploring polycentricity and human management of common property resources from the “no-name fields” of public administration in the late 1950s, through the metropolitan public service industries and public choice approach to democratic administration in the 1960s and 1970s and the institutional analysis of common pool resource management of the 1980s and 1990s. It continues with the diagnosis of the self-governing capabilities of socio-ecological systems in the 2000s. Continuities underlie focal shifts in attention. Their work will be related to developments in the public administration field along with illustrations of their pioneer example for public administration on research as a collaborative enterprise. The 2009 Nobel Laureate in economics, Elinor Ostrom has been working from an academic background and intellectual tradition that, particularly through her long-term collaboration with Vincent Ostrom, is strongly rooted in the classical and prevailing institutional concerns that may be seen as core to public administration as an academic field of education and research.