An important contributor to cost overruns of infrastructure projects is contract changes after the construction contract has been concluded. Using mainly descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests, real project data were analyzed from forty-five Dutch transportation infrastructure projects with a total construction contract value of over € 8.5 billion. First it was explored if we could find evidence for the presumption that contractors bid low on contracts to recover the loss of bid profit by claiming contract change costs in the project implementation. We conclude that we could not find evidence for the opportunistic behavior of contractors. Second, the different sizes and reasons for the contract changes were explored. We conclude that: scope changes are the most significant reason for contract changes, followed by technical necessities; smaller projects tend to have higher relative contract change costs; and contract changes due to omissions in the contract are more present in smaller projects than in larger projects. The results of the analysis suggest among other things that policymakers and planners should pay more attention to flexible contracting, and to the contract management of smaller projects.

This article looks at the influence of media attention on governance processes and explores some new thoughts to incorporate in our theory building on governance. It systematically discusses recent theories about mediatization and connects them to what we know about governance in the field of Public Administration. The article identifies a tension between backstage logic (the world of governance and networks) and front-stage logic (the world of media). This tension requires modern leaders and (network) managers to engage in a balancing act between the requirements of media logic and those of today's networked society: how to connect to or in networks and be a strong leader. This current dilemma alone justifies the field of governance paying more attention to the relation between media attention and governance.

for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. Moreover, the author likes to thank the ten students, for their valuable coding work in their research project in bachelor 3. 2 WHO GETS ON THE NEWS? The relation between media biases and different actors in news reporting on complex policy processes ABSTRACT Having a voice in media is important to gain power and legitimacy in policy processes. However, media are biased in transmitting information. Using a quantitative content analysis of ten years' news reporting around water management policies in the Netherlands, we study how much media attention different groups of actors receive and how media biases relate to this attention. Executive politicians get on the news because of their authoritative position; less authoritative actors getting on the news is more related to information biases. Information biases can thus function as a form of checks and balances in news reporting on policy processes.

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Despite the importance of news media and their commercial logic for society at large and politics in particular, the impact of media and media logic on network governance processes is often disregarded. In this article we examine the effects of commercialized news and mediatized politics on trust between network actors and perceived network performance. Our study draws on a survey of project managers involved in urban spatial projects in the four largest cities in the Netherlands (N = 141). The results show that commercialized news and mediatized politics negatively affect trust relations between network actors. Commercialized news has a direct effect on the perceived network performance.