Regional environmental planning in the Netherlands: An unstable settlement of policy arrangements

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the first Dutch national environmental policy plan published in 1989 (VROM, 1989) symbolised a major turning point in the history of environmental planning in the Netherlands (De Roo, 2001; Van Tatenhove, 1993). The plan is considered to mark the closing of a period of structuring of environmental politics and the beginning of a period of stabilisation (Van Tatenhove, 1993). In this latter period, the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment (VROM) aimed at integrating environmental policy with the policies on water, on nature, and on economic policies that other ministries were competent for. It considered integrated regional environmental planning very helpful and effective for this 'external integration', as it was called (VROM, 1990). Around the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries (LNV) was also getting more involved in regional policy (LNV, 1992). It promoted a reorientation of agriculture in the so-called Valuable Man-made Landscapes (WCL). Finally, an increasing importance of 'integrated water management' could be observed, a regional strategy of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (VW). All these regional and integrated planning strategies emerged and evolved during the 1990s simultaneously, but in relative isolation from each other. Despite their differences, they all contributed to the institutionalisation of regional environmental planning, as can be concluded from the increasing importance thereof in national policy plans since 1990 and from policy evaluation studies (Pleijte, 2000; VROM, 1998a, 1998b). Nowadays, a regional approach has become mainstream in environmental planning (VROM, 2004). In the 1980s and 1990s, major reforms in public administration took place, not only in the Netherlands, but also in many other OECD countries. The New Public Management (NPM) movement is generally considered the driving force behind these reforms (Bovaird and Löffler, 2003; OECD, 1995; Pollit and Bouckaert, 2004). One could think of the Reaganadministration (1981-1989), the era of Prime Minister Mrs. Thatcher (1979-1990) and, in the Netherlands, the first two Lubbers cabinets (1982-1989) to recall a period of budgetary pressures, a revaluation of economic interests, a wave of privatisation, and other efficiency-oriented operations. In the 1990s, practices that are more responsive to societal demands were included in NPM, such as client and community orientation. At national level, this 'inclusive' NPM was a leading concept for the Dutch liberal/social-democratic cabinets during 1994-1998 and 1998-2002 (De Vries, 2002), and it still is for the current liberal/Christian-democratic cabinet that took office in 2002. At local level during the 1990s experiments started, such as 'social renewal', 'urban community policies' and 'interactive policy making' (Hendriks and Tops, 2003; Kickert, 1997; Van Helden and Jansen, 2003). The experiments aimed to stop the alleged 'gap' between government and citizens. The current cabinet has launched an ambitious program Another Government to the same end. The program's slogans are: better services, less bureaucracy, effective organisation, and responsive procedures. NPM represents shifts in governance and hence, as one may expect, may affect policy arrangements for regional environmental planning. In this chapter, I will elaborate on this proposition. To do so, I will treat NPM as a grand political discourse and analyse it at the level of political modernisation (Arts and Van Tatenhove, this volume). Regional environmental planning will be treated at the level of policy arrangements, and the structuring and stabilisation thereof. The research questions are the following: 1. What policy practices emerge from the political discourse of NPM? 2. What policy arrangements could be observed in regional environmental planning at national level during the 1990s? 3. How do these policy arrangements manifest themselves and evolve at regional level? 4. How do actors at the regional level appropriate NPM in their regional practices, and, as a result, can we witness the structuring of a new policy arrangement at regional level? Question 1 will be answered by unravelling the political discourse of NPM into a set of practices. Moreover, a critical discourse and counter-practices are described. For these purposes international NPM-literature was examined. To answer question 2, a typology of policy arrangements was developed first. This was done after consideration of different conceptual approaches. This typology is used to reconstruct policy arrangements at national level, using policy documents and evaluations. In order to answer question 3, the typology is applied to a case study on agricultural reconstruction in de Brabant Peel (Southern Netherlands). The methods applied here include an intensive search in the records, interviews, content analyses, and media research. The case study results are reported in a narrative style. For an answer to question 4, finally, the practices of NPM and the critical discourses are assessed against the practices and the policy arrangement in the Brabant case. This assessment is based on interview results. © 2006 Springer.