Expansion and Diversification of Public Administration in the Postwar Welfare State: The Case of the Netherlands

Abstract

Although public administration is now taught in The Netherlands at 10 of existing 13 Dutch universities, Dutch public administration seems to be relatively unknown abroad. In 1984 revision of well-known German textbook on Verwaltungslehre by Theime, international survey indicates that Dutch public administration is offered only at Groningen faculty of Law and Free University of Amsterdam. In recent grundliche and comprehensive textbook on Offentliche Verwaltung by Becker (1989), Dutch public administration is also said to be taught only at these two places. Public policy and administration is, however, in reality, a separate, full-scale, regular degree program at Twente, Leiden, and Rotterdam Universities. In these three places, some 700 students enroll yearly making a total of over 2,000 students. The Twente Department of Public Administration has some 60 staff members, and combined Leiden-rotterdam department, well over 100. Apart from that, public administration is a specialization at another seven universities. The Netherlands suffers from tiny but crucial disadvantage that almost nobody in world reads Dutch. This article covers history and state of affairs of Dutch policy and administration sciences(1)--from educational perspective and from point of view of topics and trends in research--in relation to development of state and administration in The Netherlands. Postwar Welfare State and Administrative Science The creation of Dutch administrative science in mid-1960s and its subsequent rapid growth are related to postwar rise and expansion of Dutch welfare state. The enormous increase in public tasks and role of state in providing welfare arrangements in various policy sectors called for government planning and policy making. The traditionally weak central state, with most public tasks performed by the pillarized private initiative, now had to become actively involved in sectoral policy making and develop new policy instruments besides usual legislation and regulation, such as budgeting and planning systems. Legal expertise alone was no longer sufficient for this type of government planning. The days of legalistic state where law dominated study of administration were over. The welfare state was in need of other scientific support for rationalization of its sectoral policy design. This explains growing popularity of social sciences in general and rise and growth of Dutch policy sciences in particular. Dutch State and Administration Pillarization, Corporatism, and Consensus The three main characteristics of The Netherlands in 20th century are sociological characteristic of pillarization, socioeconomic characteristic of corporatism, and political characteristic of consensus-democracy (Hemerijck, 1992). Although Catholics were almost 40 percent of population in The Netherlands in 19th century, traditional Protestant conception that Catholics were second rate citizens still dominated. This tradition originated in successful 16th century struggle of Protestant-calvinist Dutch for separation from Catholic Habsburg-Burgundy Empire. The consequent necessity for Catholics to establish a countervailing social and political power accounts for pillarization of Dutch society (Kossman, 1986), which divided society along ideological rather tha-n class lines. Early 20th century Dutch society became divided along four pillars--Protestant, Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal-Neutral. The whole social organization of Dutch state, ranging from political parties, trade unions, employer organizations, schools and universities, health and welfare institutions, media organizations, and even sports clubs, followed these four divisions. Both Protestants and Catholics had clear ideological ideas about limitations on power of central state. …