Introduction

The Netherlands is commonly regarded as one of the strongholds of policy analysis, both in academia and in policymaking. Few countries have such a high density of institutes specialised in policy analysis, and in few countries have such institutes played and continue to play such a key role in policymaking as in the Netherlands. For instance, so-called planning bureaus, a specific Dutch phenomenon, have a played a central role not just in the evaluation and monitoring of policies, but also in setting issues on the political agenda, raising policy alternatives and sometimes even directly affecting political decision-making. Even in the political arena, it is institutionalised practice in the Netherlands that policy analyses are made by authoritative institutes of the social and economic impacts of the political programmes of different parties. Policy analysis is clearly an authoritative factor without which it is impossible to comprehend the dynamics of policymaking and politics in the Netherlands.

This is also reflected in the strong presence of policy analysis in research groups and teaching at universities throughout the Netherlands. Most Dutch universities have research groups specialised in policy analysis, sometimes as part of departments of public administration, but sometimes also as part of more specialised departments for the technological or agricultural sector. Some of these groups have played a key role in the development of the international literature on policy analysis, for instance, providing a stronghold for the development of rational as well as critical and postempiricist perspectives on policy analysis. Moreover, in between universities and policy agencies, an amalgam of institutes has evolved that are specialised in policy analysis. The Dutch setting is characterised by an abundance of what can be described as ‘boundary organisations’ (Halffman and Hoppe, 2005).

The aim of this book is to provide an overview of developments in policy analysis in terms of academic thinking, as well as in terms of its role in policy and politics in the Netherlands. It brings together contributions from key Dutch scholars in this field, as well as from practitioners from institutes specialised in policy analysis. Rather than focusing on one of the schools of academic thinking or practices of policy analysis, we attempt to capture the diversity of academic thinking and policy analysis practices as evolved in the Netherlands over the last decades.