Measuring the Stakes: The Dutch Planning Bureaus

Abstract

The planning bureaus are knowledge institutes that provide the Dutch gov-ernment with knowledge about the present and future state of the country and how it is affected by the government’s policies. The name is somewhat mis-leading, as planning may invoke associations with the faltering centralisation policies of the darker days in really existing socialism. These institutes are not involved in planning the economy or the provision of services through state-controlled resource allocation, but in the provision of policy relevant know-ledge. For these reasons, they prefer to use terms like policy assessment insti-tutes in their English names, although their Dutch names are anchored in law and have become commonplace in Dutch political parlance – and hence I pre-fer to use planning bureau in English too. Currently, there are four planning bureaus in the Netherlands: one provid-ing advice for economic policy, one providing advice for environmental and nature conservation policy, one for social policy, and one for urban and re-gional planning policy.1 They are government institutes with agency status.

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