At the beginning of each Parliamentary session, the Dutch Queen gives a speech (Troonrede) in which she presents the government's policy goals and legislative agenda for the year to come. The general assumption is that newly elected governments will use agenda-setting moments such as the Queen's speech to put new issues on the national agenda. But does this really happen? Are governmental agendas characterized by sudden shifts following elections or by continuity? After all, at least one coalition party of the previous Dutch government is also a member of the new coalition government. So how much do changes in coalition membership result in changes in policy agendas? In this paper, we study the macro-level structure of the Dutch policy agenda and link patterns of agenda-setting with the institutional context in which this agenda-setting process occurs, that is, the Dutch parliamentary democracy characterized by multi-party government. We coded all Queen's speeches between 1945 and 2007 with a topic code book, based on similar code books used in other countries. In this way, we can examine Dutch agendasetting patterns and assess the effects of coalition composition and coalition life cycle (from the first year a newly formed government is installed to the last year it is still in office) on agenda-setting.
Both leadership and public value are increasingly seen as concepts highly relevant to public administration, not only because of complex societal challenges but also as ways to address pluralistic interests in society. This article explores in detail the varied conceptualizations of public value and of public leadership. Furthermore, we argue that political astuteness provides an important conceptual linkage between leadership and public value, enabling actors to read, understand and foster coalitions around diverse and sometimes competing interests. In this introduction to the symposium, we analyse the different conceptualizations of public value, of leadership, and also show how the six articles explicitly or implicitly draw on the linking concept of political astuteness. The article assesses how the six articles of the symposium contribute to each of these three concepts.
Following crises and fiascos, a framing contest takes place in which actors have to account for their actions and might get blamed for what went wrong. An inadequate response to blame can lead to resignation or losing a re‐election. Currently, the literature on blame games focuses mainly on the policy, agency, and – especially – presentational strategies one can use to respond to blame. Based on our analysis of the blame games following two festival disasters in Germany and the Netherlands, we show that our current understanding of blame games and blame responses needs to be broadened to include context, rituals, and sub‐blame games.
Inquiries are often seen as a useful tool to deal with a crisis. By installing an inquiry, crisis managers show that they are in control of the crisis response. Moreover, they can hope that by the time the inquiry publishes its report a new topic has caught the attention of media and Parliament and reform measures do not need to be taken to end the crisis (McConnell, 2003). Following a series of riots in British prisons in 1990, the Home Secretary installed an inquiry. By the time the Woolf inquiry published its report, media and Parliamentary attention for the British Prison Service was indeed dwindling. Normally, this low level of attention would provide political actors room to end the crisis with mere small measures and no need for reform. Yet in this case, and contrary to the dominant view on how inquiries influence the crisis management process, the Woolf inquiry provided an unexpected impetus to the crisis managing process, resulting in institutional reform of the British Prison Service (or to be more accurate, the Prison Service of England and Wales). This article shows how an inquiry can have an unexpected effect for political actors managing the crisis by introducing a new way of defining the problem at hand.
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