The Administrative and Academic Politics of Ranking Research: The Case of the 2004 “Public Sector Performance” Study in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

In contrast to the other analyses of rankings in this issue, this paper concentrates on analyzing a single specific case of a rankings exercise from the “inside,” in large part relying on documents produced by observer participation. The case that is analyzed in depth is an exercise conducted by the Dutch government in the early 2000s to produce a critical comparison and de facto ranking of public sector performance in the industrialised countries. The paper examines the production process which culminated in the publication of “Public Sector Performance” by the Dutch Social Cultural Planning Office (SCP) in 2004, and in particular the interactions between the civil servants of the SCP and the outside academic body in Belgium that the SCP commissioned to produce the “public administration” component of the ranking exercise.

On the basis of this “inside” analysis, the paper describes how the SCP ranking analysis of public administration was conducted, and examines the process from three complementary and overlapping analytic perspectives drawn from the literature on the politics of evaluation research. Those perspectives are: how supply interacts with demand for ranking surveys, how the “management of meaning” played out in this case, and how culture shapes ranking surveys. The paper shows that in this case the “Say's law” principle of analytic supply leading to political demand did not apply and that there was a mismatch between demand for and supply of public administration indicators. It also shows how ranking exercises can develop in a politico-administrative culture often said to be much more predisposed to “soft consensus” in its operation than that applying in less “consociational” administrative cultures.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Bob Kuhry (SCP), Evert Pommer (SCP), and Frans van Dongen (Ministry of the Interior) for their support and comments to this study. I am very grateful for the substantial input from Christopher Hood and from Ruth Dixon in rewriting earlier versions of this paper. Two anonymous reviewers were also very helpful. Obviously, all errors are mine.

Notes

The founders of the SCP sat on a number of OECD working committees in the 1960s which recommended that governments in Europe improve their social statistics, develop social indicators and compile social reports. Its current staff comprises about 70 academic researchers from numerous disciplines and its official tasks are threefold. One is to describe the social and cultural situation in the Netherlands and outline expected developments. A second is to provide the information needed for a well-considered choice of policy objectives and resources and for the development of alternatives. A third is to evaluate government policy, especially interministerial policies. To carry out these functions, SCP assesses the attitudes of the population to social, ideological and political issues as revealed in public opinion polls, and their behaviour in terms of how they spend their time and use services. It also monitors the quality of life in the Netherlands on the basis of objective health status, level of education, housing conditions, disposable income, participation and leisure trends.

The author of this paper is a member of the Institute and this paper is based on the experience of producing this chapter.

It appeared in Dutch, French and English, with summaries in several other languages.

As noted earlier, the key interviewees have read, commented, and validated the drafts of this paper that quote from them in exploring the three interpretive themes.

Comparing the Dutch Court of Audit and the UK National Audit Office, Put (2005) concluded that they showed very different strategies. Economy and efficiency seemed to be the priorities in the UK, with less emphasis on effectiveness and policy evaluation. In the Dutch case, the emphasis was almost the opposite.

A debate over more than 30 years on developing, incorporating, and using performance information has resulted in progressive acceptance and high visibility of rankings in the Netherlands. Indeed, new systems for monitoring the public sector have become a policy boom. De Kool (2007) compared monitors between 2003 and 2006 at all levels of government (13 ministries, some special independent institutions, 12 provinces, and the 4 major cities). He concluded that in major ministries, monitors were heavily used and some cities, such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, even had monitor catalogues. Moreover, the 2004 SCP report appeared in a general atmosphere of ranking from central (Tweede Kamer 2001/2002) to local level (Gemeente Rotterdam 2004).

The 2004 SCP study seems to have had high visibility within the Dutch administration and among the departments immediately concerned, and also seems have been used in policy arguments by generating memoranda based on its finding (SCP 2007). But it is not clear what specific impacts it had, and it is also notable that there was no organized follow-up, partly because of a reorganization of the Ministry of the Interior (as confirmed by several interviewees) and possibly because of a lack of any long-term political impetus for the project that went beyond bureaucratic politics within the Ministry.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geert Bouckaert

Geert Bouckaert ([email protected]) is a professor at the Public Management Institute (Department of Political Sciences) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium.