Public service bargains in Dutch top civil service

Abstract

In this article the position, role and functioning of the highest ranking officials in the Dutch civil service is discussed, using the theory of public service bargains (PSBs) as outlined by Hood and Lodge (2006). For the notion of a shift in PSB to be studied, we need a clear view on the initial PSB. We therefore first describe Dutch society and politics and the type of bargain traditionally found in Dutch public service, and briefly consider the reforms which might have had an impact on the PSB. Next, we analyse the key aspects of the current PSB. These include elements of reward, competency, and loyalty and responsibility. The current PSB is assessed in terms of Hood’s typology. While embedded in the specificities and history of the Dutch political—administrative system, a number of elements point to a shift towards a managerial bargain. As a result, we find a new, hybrid PSB to have emerged.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 27 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.