The Netherlands

Abstract

This chapter describes Dutch agencies, their autonomy and control, as well as current debates. Most of the data come from a survey we undertook in 2006 (Van Thiel and Yesilkagit 2006) and analysis of government documents and websites.¹ Agencification has a longstanding history in the Netherlands, fitting with the corporatist tradition of arm’s-length government and involvement of the civil society in policymaking and implementation. Recently, however, there has been a negative political rhetoric, against agencies. So far, that has not resulted in a substantial decrease in their number but there has been some reshuffling, in particular mergers of agencies.