‘Governance without governance’¹

1. The title is paraphrasing the much used term in the governance literature ‘governance (or ‘governing’) without government’ (Rhodes 1996, Peters and Pierre 1998).

: how nature policy was democratized in the Netherlands

Abstract

Trends in governance, including a changing role for the state and increasing civil society participation, are often seen as promising ways to achieve democratic legitimacy. The prominent presence of these claims and intentions in the new Dutch nature policy plan, ‘Nature for People, People for Nature’, stimulated us to look more closely into how this plan came about. Our analysis shows that the process started with the organization of several informal participatory processes, which involved not only traditional but also new actors. However, it ended in a fairly traditional way, with limited participation, which involved mostly traditional actors, and which was strictly orchestrated by central government. Based on these findings, we argue that although the plan itself was clearly intended to achieve participatory governance, the participatory characteristics of the process can be questioned. For this reason, the case may be seen as one of ‘governance without governance’. The article ends by discussing the implications of these findings for democratic legitimacy.

Keywords:

• civil society
• participation
• governance
• nature conservation policy
• legitimacy

Acknowledgements

The study this article reports on was conducted as part of and funded under the EU 6th framework project ‘GoFOR’ on new modes of governance for sustainable forestry in Europe.

Notes

1. The title is paraphrasing the much used term in the governance literature ‘governance (or ‘governing’) without government’ (Rhodes 1996, Peters and Pierre 1998).

2. The RPC is the committee that is concerned with the inter-ministerial coordination of spatial planning issues. It mainly consists of top-level civil servants (often director-generals) from all ministries. They prepare agenda items that will then be taken to the sub-ministerial Council for Spatial Planning (RROM).

3. The RROM is the sub-ministerial Council for Spatial Planning in which the decisions of the ministerial council are prepared. It consists of ministers and state secretaries, complemented with the chair of the RPC and several top-level civil servants.

4. This reflects a certain degree of input legitimacy to be sure. The starting points of the new plan were based on criticisms of the old plan, which stemmed from society. However, it was the central government who decided to take these into account and translated them into the main lines of the new plan.