A review of the policy and management instruments project for municipalities in the Netherlands

A nationwide project has made many Dutch municipalities familiar with the application of various business-like concepts, such as output budgeting and responsibility accounting. After a description of the contents and implementation process of this project, the paper presents a critical review of its underlying principles. The presumed division of roles between politicians and managers is criticized. Moreover, it will be argued that the output-oriented planning and control framework should be replaced by a plural approach which takes into account differences in municipal activities and in their scale. The paper ends with a comparison between the Dutch project and current international trends in managerialism in the public sector.