The abandonment of procurement-linked strategic activism in Australia: standing still with room to move

In this paper I examine the extent to which preferential trade agreements (PTAs) limit the Australian government's ability to use public procurement for local industry development ends. I do so not only by examining Australia's PTA obligations, but also by examining how other governments with similar obligations—such as Korea—are using public purchasing policies to promote local industrial advancement. I find that the PTA obligations of the Australian and Korean governments leave them both significant scope to use public purchasing strategically. Interestingly, however, Australian policymakers have been standing still in the room that remains, and even abandoning PTA-compliant procurement-linked development policies. South Korean policymakers on the other hand have been capitalising on every inch of space left open to them—and even experimenting with new forms of strategic public purchasing that nonetheless comply with their international obligations. I conclude by offering some suggestions as to how we might explain these countries’ radically different approaches to procurement policy, despite their very similar international obligations.     

Model Evaluation and Causality Testing in Short Panels: The Case of Infrastructure Provision and Population Growth in the Brazilian Amazon

In this paper we examine the relationship between infrastructure growth and population growth in the Amazon using a panel of 293 municipalities over the period from 1975 to 1985. Contemporaneous cross-section analysis confirms a strong positive correlation between infrastructure and urban population but does not indicate direction of causality. Thus, we employ a modified form of the traditional Granger causality tests to suit the short time series that we have available. Based on out-of-sample forecasting tests we conclude that the empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that growing urban populations lead to more infrastructure development, rather than vice versa.     

New local cultural policy evaluation methods in the Netherlands: status and perspectives

Efforts to improve local public policy-making in the Netherlands have led to two changes in local government. First, a budgeting system that focuses political debate on the outcomes of policies rather than on their costs was implemented as of 2004. Second, as of 2006, municipalities have been obliged to install a local Audit Committee (rekenkamercommissie). The committees examine the efficacy and efficiency of municipal policies. Several of these committees have devoted research to cultural policy. In this article, I present the manner in which this budgeting system and the institution of Audit Committees have impacted the evaluation of local cultural policies in the Netherlands. Furthermore, I discuss the way practices relate to key dilemmas concerning evidence-based cultural policy.     

Sozialindex und <Emphasis Type="Italic">gewichtenregeling</Emphasis>

In Germany and the Netherlands spatial information about the social structure of the inhabitants is used for the coordination of financial and human resources in the local school-system. The aim is to reduce educational inequalities by taking the social context of the schools into account. The article explains two approaches. In North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) a so called Sozialindex is used to distribute additional teachers to municipalities with difficult social surroundings. The Dutch government uses an instrument to give each pupil a weight (gewichtenregeling) depending on the specific educational background. Combined with an evaluation of the school location an additional budget, if necessary, will be payed.     

System Innovation in Spatial Development: Current Dutch Approaches

A system innovation is a cross-organizational qualitative intervention that various system participants bring about together through their various contributions of different kinds of knowledge and skill. The term refers to the innovation of an entire system involving many actors. Spatial development refers to both the dynamic in land use, and changes in the development and implementation of spatial plans. The current large number of societal and spatial developments taken as a whole in a country such as the Netherlands increase the pressure on space and create the need for a powerful system innovation. This paper explains the system innovation which is going on in the Netherlands now, drawing on such themes as the coproduction of policy, public–private partnership and demand management. A process architecture for area development is more and more proposed, in which project envelopes are formed, the scope is optimized and surplus profits are ploughed back into the area (value capturing). The future will tell whether this new approach will really work and whether the traditional values and performance of Dutch spatial planning will be safeguarded under changing circumstances.     

Performing dialogical Dutchness: negotiating a national imaginary in parenting guidance

In contemporary Europe, national identities are fiercely contested and governments have sought ways to strengthen national identification. Notwithstanding this European pattern, government policies are implemented differently and belonging to the nation comes to involve different images and enactments across contexts. In the Netherlands, especially, belonging to the nation is at stake in many high‐profile public and political struggles. In this context, a pervasive public imaginary we call ‘dialogical Dutchness’ represents the Dutch as distinctly anti‐nationalist and open to difference. This raises the question whether national boundaries actually become traversable in view of such a national imaginary. How does one become a Dutch subject if Dutchness entails not being nationalist? Through the analysis of a Dutch social policy practice – state‐provided parenting courses – we show how dialogical Dutchness is negotiated and transformed in actual enactments of national difference and belonging. Although dialogical Dutchness foregrounds openness to difference and valorises discussion, it comes to perpetuate and substantiate boundaries between those who belong to the nation and those whose belonging is still in question.     

Tensions between municipal reform and outdated fiscal levers in rural British Columbia

Debates about the future of small municipalities in Canada are set against a backdrop of economic, political, and social restructuring processes that have displaced former state investment policies in favour of neoliberal public policy approaches. Small municipalities struggle with outdated financial and governance structures and a provincial public policy agenda that asks them to become more creative, innovative, and “entrepreneurial” in their approach and responsibilities. Drawing upon key informant interviews with eight case studies in British Columbia, Canada, this research examines the tensions between municipal reforms mandated by the provincial government over the past 30 years and commensurate fiscal levers and capacities in place to address these broadening responsibilities for small municipalities in volatile staples-dependent regions. Our findings demonstrate how successive provincial governments have mobilized New Public Management objectives through a host of legislative and regulatory changes that have increased the responsibilities and requirements on local governments without commensurate fiscal or jurisdictional capacity.     

Public–Private Plan Development: Can Early Private Involvement Strengthen Infrastructure Planning?

Private parties, who are usually involved in later stages of design, construction and maintenance, can potentially strengthen the early plan-making stages of infrastructure planning. They can bring in knowledge, expertise and experience to help address complexity in planning. Such early private involvement can be accommodated through several models for which experiences in Dutch infrastructure planning practice differ. In this article, we assess the potential of early private involvement for strengthening infrastructure plan development by examining evaluative studies and conducting interviews with public and private actors involved in four early private involvement models in Dutch infrastructure planning: market consultation, early design contest, market reconnaissance and unsolicited proposal. We conclude that in order to unlock the potential of early private involvement government needs to incorporate incentives for creativity, reward private involvement and strike a balance in the setup of the investigated models between conceptual freedom for private solutions and transparent public guidance in preconditions and regulations. Early private involvement could, thus, provide opportunities for conceptual creativity and innovation and opportunities for public–private collaboration, which can strengthen plan development.     

Public engagement in smart city development: Lessons from communities in Canada's Smart City Challenge

Quality of life is often touted as the main benefit of building smart cities. This, however, raises questions about the extent to which the public is engaged as part of the “smart” development process, particularly given the significant financial investments often required to meaningfully design smart city projects. To better understand approaches to public engagement in the context of smart city development, we draw upon three selected finalists of Infrastructure Canada's Smart City Challenge, which invited municipalities, regional governments, and Indigenous communities to enter a competition where the winning proposals would be awarded federal financial grants to complete their projects. Prizes of $5 million, $10 million, and $50 million were awarded. Specifically, we compare the public engagement experiences of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (Quebec), the City of Guelph, and the Region of Waterloo. We carried out semi-structured interviews and reviewed documents in each community to better understand how finalists in each category engaged residents in proposal development. The paper addresses how communities are approaching public engagement in smart city development and the implications of these approaches. We conclude that, despite earnest attempts to publicly engage and become citizen-centric, municipal governments continue to see civic participation as a top-down tool.     

HAVE DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES BECOME MORE EFFICIENT IN MANAGING THE COSTS OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE DEPENDENCY?*

ABSTRACT Many welfare reforms undertaken in Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries are directed toward enhancing efficiency in the administration and implementation of social security. In this perspective, reforms in The Netherlands are an example of decentralization through budgeting financial means to municipalities. By using data envelopment analysis, we assess the effect of the introduction of the new Work and Social Assistance Act (WSA) in 2004 on cost efficiency. By applying a stochastic frontier analysis, we assess the impact of municipal policy strategies on cost inefficiency for the period 2005–2007. We find a clear positive effect of the WSA in 2004 on cost efficiency. Pursuing a strategy of activation raised efficiency significantly.     

Restrained Policy and Careless Execution: Allied Strategic Bombing on the Netherlands in the Second World War

Abstract

This article examines the nature of Allied strategic bombing on the Netherlands in the Second World War. It discusses the endless controversy on strategic bombing, and adds the policy of bombing occupied countries, especially the Dutch involvement in bombing policy development, a quantitative analysis of bombing on the Netherlands, and three case studies to the existing narrative. The paper concludes that Allied bombing policy towards the Netherlands sought to maintain a balance between the usefulness of bombing and the risk of collateral damage. Further, it reveals the absolute magnitude of the bombing campaign in the Netherlands, which contrasts with existing history. This article concludes that the nature of strategic bombing on the Netherlands, notwithstanding the fact of sincere intentions and restrained policies, was that the execution of the bombardments regu- larly failed to attain the defined bombing goals. These failures caused extensive collateral damage, as illustrated by three case studies: bombardments on Amsterdam, Nijmegen, and The Hague.     

Transnational environmental obligations: locating new spaces of accountability in a post-Westphalian global order

The growth of transnational environmental harm is not only leading to new obligations between states, it is also recasting democratic accountability for the crossboundary environmental performance of public and private actors. Informed by pragmatist ideas on public discourse, I propose a conceptual schema for understanding the moral geography of these new transnational environmental obligations: they mark out non-territorial spaces of public communication delimited according to moral precepts of harm prevention, inclusiveness and impartiality. I outline how the recognition of transnational affected publics is reconstituting and rescaling environmental accountability within international regimes of harm prevention and liability. The critical geopolitical challenge in institutionalizing non-territorial domains of environmental accountability will be the mapping and empowerment of transnational affected publics.     

Actors,Decisions and Policy Changes in Local Urbanization

Land-use policies have long been recognized as important driving forces of urbanization, but little research has been conducted on the interrelationship of actors, policy decision processes and changes in the built environment. In this paper, we use the advocacy coalition framework to analyse policy decisions that affected the development of the built environment in three Swiss municipalities between 1970 and 2007. We found that all three municipalities experienced the same major policy changes, namely a new definition of the role of urban management (1970s); the adoption of an environment- and problem-oriented approach in land-use planning (1980s) as well as an increased emphasis on public participation and intra-municipal coordination (1990s). Although national laws and actors have shaped the crucial driving forces of urban change, local actors, their coalitions and the local distribution of resources crucially determined these decisions in the study period. Our findings suggest that a stronger focus on local actors, their coalitions and resources could greatly improve our understanding of spatial development processes in Switzerland. For instance, as land ownership turned out to be a crucial resource, Swiss municipalities could benefit from engaging more actively in the land market.     

The British commercial development industry

Academic and professional accounts of the commercial development industry often portray an implicit but false picture of homogeneity, when in reality the sector is highly diverse. This diversity has important implications for the production of the built environment, since the extent to which particular developers see themselves also as dealers or investors will colour their approach to a development project. Building on earlier work, this paper therefore presents a four-fold typology of the British commercial development industry, by distinguishing between property dealers, developer/dealers, developer/investors and investor/developers. Recent case studies are included in each case to demonstrate how the motives, operations and financial stability of each type of developer reflect this distinction.     

Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up: Insurgent Capital,Regional Struggle,and the Assetisation of Land

In this paper we argue that “assetisation” has been a central axis through which both neoliberalisation and financialisation have encroached in the post‐Fordist era. We focus on the mobilisation of land as a financial asset in northwest England's former industrial heartlands, offering an account of how property developer the Peel Group came to dominate the land and port infrastructure of the region through aggressive debt‐led expansion and, in particular, a hostile takeover of the Manchester Ship Canal for its land‐bank. In doing so, we illustrate how the capture of resources, especially land, by private corporations has shaped both substance and process of neoliberalisation from the ground up. By focusing on transformative struggles over land we contribute to research agendas attempting to understand the systemically dispossessive nature of assetisation, its relationship to fictitious capital formation, and the way such neoliberalising transformations are produced through grounded and situated socio‐spatial struggles.     

Rescaling citizenship: gendering Canadian immigration policy

Tracing the impact of public consultation on policy development is vital to theories of the state. Without investigating how civic participation is transformed into policy outcomes researchers cannot adequately account for the interaction of state and civil society. In particular researchers need to refine their explanations of policy development by highlighting how identity and scale can alter both policy application and outcome. I develop this approach by tracing how the civic participation of immigrant women in Canada advanced the rights of women in the development of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which came into law in June 2002. By tracing the consultation process between Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and Sahara and NAC, two women’s advocacy groups, I reveal how public involvement and concern with gender equity transmitted into policy change. The outcomes of this interaction do, however, present some contradictions. In particular policy changes attempt to limit one source of inequality, but in the process enforce greater state control of mobility. Despite this paradox, I conclude that this political involvement represents a partial victory for immigrant women since it succeeded in promoting concerns with gender within the ‘formal’ arena of national policy development.     

Four ministries,four spatial planning perspectives? Dutch evidence on the persistent problem of horizontal coordination

The formulation of spatial policy at the national level is fraught with coordination problems, mainly owing to competition among ministries. This paper considers ways to improve horizontal coordination. It is based on a review of current Dutch policy documents and the political debate they have spawned in the Netherlands. To set the stage, the paper discusses the spatial policy now in force, which derives from the Fourth Report on Spatial Planning Extra (VINEX). After presenting the views espoused by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, the paper highlights key spatial concepts proposed by three other ministries. The inherent contradictions come into play when allocating strategic spatial investments, which are drawn from the Economic Structure Enhancing Fund. The defensive position that government bodies take regarding their own spatial concepts may be understood in terms of the competition for billions of Euros in public money. In our opinion, the recipe for success is a blend of ingredients from each of the sectoral approaches, combined in an integrated spatial policy. We are pleased to say that since the time of writing, this approach has actually been adopted in the Netherlands. In January 1999, the government published what it calls a Starting Memorandum on Spatial Planning. That document seeks to realign national spatial policy by combining diverse sectoral views and introducing new spatial concepts such as ‘corridor’ and ‘network city’. The ideals of ‘spatial vision’ and ‘spatial quality’ are combined with criteria like ‘sustainability’ as well as with the flexibility and responsiveness that is needed in a market setting, whereby households and firms operate increasingly in a European context. The associated style of governance would be to alternate a loose rein—a strategy of divergence and competition—with a tight rein—the implementation of policy that is both horizontally coordinated and integrated. This approach is bound to fan the flames of public debate on national spatial planning. In this sense, other countries might do well to keep an eye on it.     

Infrastructure shortfall in the United Kingdom: the private finance initiative and government policy

Investment infrastructure is essential for long term economic growth, sustainable regional economic development, and the quality of urban life. Yet the available evidence suggests a significant shortfall in current UK government investment on infrastructure, and a long term pattern of low investment compared to other European countries. Given the pre-occupation of the Labour government with managing expenditures within the parameters set by the previous government, and the vulnerability of any government to financial markets' valuation of current spending plans in relation to interest rates and currency exchange rates, there is little likelihood of major new public spending on infrastructure in the near future. In this context, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is very important for the government's plans to make up the shortfall. Although inherited from the previous Conservative government, the PFI has powerful advocates within the Labour government. The PFI is the formal mechanism by which government departments, agencies and instrumentalities, like the National Heath Service, utilise private sector investment capital and, in particular, pension fund assets, to revitalise public services. This paper sets out the institutional history of the PFI, beginning with the Thatcher government's Ryrie Rules, the efforts of the Major Conservative government to make it a viable operational practice, and the reasons why the new government supports PFI and has made significant moves to improve its effectiveness. Still we are sceptical about the future of the PFI. We show that the PFI has foundered upon fundamentally flawed design and the politicians' obsession with control of public sector spending. Notwithstanding recent `reforms', PFI may only succeed if the PFI process is decentralised and linked explicitly with regional development programmes. In any event, given the difficulties posed by the PFI process for private investors, perhaps different institutional responses to infrastructure shortfall should be contemplated, including the introduction of traded infrastructure bonds.     

Multi-Firm City Versus Company Town: A Micro Foundation Model of Localization Economies

When do we have a company town and when do we have a multi‐firm city? In this paper I analyze the impact of public infrastructure investment decisions on types of cities in a decentralized urban system. This is done in a one‐sector spatial general equilibrium model of a closed economy. Investment in public infrastructures reduces the fixed set up cost of all firms within the city resulting in multi‐firm cities. Thus, in this approach localization economies are modelled explicitly instead of assuming that larger industrial size within the city enhances productivity. On the other hand, when the infrastructure is not provided, a company town will be formed by a developer because of the fixed cost required by each firm. The decision of whether to invest in the provision of public infrastructures depends on the type of city that will provide households with the highest utility. This paper characterizes the conditions that lead to each of the two equilibrium configurations.     

Malta’s Unintentional Consequences: Archaeological Heritage and the Politics of Exclusion in the Netherlands

Abstract

We argue that the apparently successful implementation of the European Malta Convention (1992) in the Netherlands resulted in a relatively closed archaeological policy system, which separates ordinary people from experts. As a result, citizens were increasingly excluded from the archaeological process. The process of closure and exclusion is made visible by investigating Dutch amateur archaeologists and their changing roles within Dutch archaeology. Amateur archaeologists are a group of semi-experts often deemed essential to the quality of research and policy regarding archaeological heritage. Their marginalization after Malta caused discussion and frustration, undermining public support for the initial policy goal of the Malta Convention: conservation of archaeological heritage. Our analysis draws on recent academic debates concerning the policy-practice nexus in processes of Europeanization. Reducing negative side effects and re-targeting policies for greater efficacy and democracy requires insight into the pathways of implementation.