Images of coordination : how implementing organizations perceive coordination arrangements

A crucial challenge for the coordination of horizontal policy programs those designed to tackle crosscutting issues is how to motivate government organizations to contribute to such programs. Hence, it is crucial to study how practitioners in implementing organizations view and appreciate the coordination of such programs. Assisted by Q-methodology, this inductive study reveals three significantly different "images" centralframe setting, networking via boundary spanners, and coordination beyond window dressing Most surprisingly, different images show up among respondents within the same organizations and horizontal programs. The authors find that the images reflect elements of the literature: the resistance to hierarchical central control, the need for local differentiation and increased incentives, and a collaboration-oriented culture. Most importantly, practitioners of implementing organizations perceive top-dawn mechanisms as ineffective to achieve coordination and ask for adaptive arrangements, involvement, and deliberative processes when designing coordination arrangements and during the collaboration

Explaining trajectories of municipal amalgamations: a case comparison of the Netherlands and Flanders

status: publishe

Co-producing safety in the local community : a q-methodology study on the incentives of Belgian and Dutch members of neighbourhood watch schemes

This study aims to explain citizens’ engagement in co-production activities in the domain of community safety. We use a multiple case study design by looking at neighbourhood watch schemes in Belgium and the Netherlands. We applied Q-methodology to map the opinions of citizens about their co-productive efforts, and to cluster these opinions into co-producers’ profiles. Discussing differences and similarities in profiles enables a more generalised understanding of the reasons why people co-produce. We conclude with some policy-relevant points about incentivation when local governments want to achieve an increase in citizen co-production.The politics and administration of institutional chang