ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, successive governments in the Netherlands have engaged in policies to reform public services. These reform policies have in part been inspired by New Public Management (NPM) ideas, as they combine a drive for efficiency and effectiveness, less bureaucracy and better services for citizens and businesses (Hood 1991). Some reform decisions were explicitly motivated by NPM ideas as in the 1980s, when efficiency operations went along with privatization, the creation of agencies and targets for personnel reduction. Also, performance management gained influence through performance measurement and results-oriented budgeting. Since the late 1990s, government interest in efficiency fluctuated, but interest in raising the effectiveness of government and the quality of public services remained. A prominent example is healthcare, where neoliberal ideas led the government in 2006 to introduce market-like mechanisms, hoping that competition would improve efficiency and innovation. However, because governments in the Netherlands are coalition governments, often consisting of three parties, there is a tendency for consensus and compromise, and government policies are less extremely ideological compared to the anti-government ideologies underlying the Thatcher and Reagan reform policies (Pollitt et al. 2007; Noordegraaf 2009). In addition, reforms are incremental and less disruptive, as they tend to be in majoritarian political systems (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011).
