Government facilitation of external initiatives: how Dutch water authorities cope with value dilemmas

Abstract

Water authorities search for new collaborations with nongovernmental actors, with the aim of facilitating societal initiatives. A comparative case study was conducted to analyze the value dilemmas faced by water authorities when they choose to facilitate and how they cope with these dilemmas. The study found that the most prevalent dilemma is between traditional democratic values and efficiency-related values. In the chosen solutions, the latter seem to prevail over the former. Casuistry, cycling and hybridization are common coping mechanisms. The study shows the potential of non-governmental initiatives in the water sector while also reflecting critically on dominant administrative values.

Encounters with the organisation: how local civil servants experience and handle tensions in public engagement

“…In a participatory context, Verhoeven and Bochove (2018) recently showed that frontline workers in care and welfare services cooperating with volunteers, deal with tensions by moving away from frail volunteers and moving towards professional, vigorous volunteers. We encountered other ways of dealing with tensions in studies of public engagement processes, in particular co-production (Nils and Vogel 2018; Jaspers and Steen 2019), New Public Governance reforms (Van Gestel, Kuiper, and Hendrikx 2019; Sørensen and Bentzen 2020) and nongovernmental initiatives (Grotenbreg and Altamirano 2017). This also brought us to more recent work on dealing with value tensions in public policy (e.g.…”

Community-based initiatives in the Dutch water domain: the challenge of double helix alignment

“…In other words, water boards, by performing as a functional, mission-oriented government and simultaneously as a demand-oriented government, find it difficult to giving shape to ambidexterity or 'two-leggedness' (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013). In a context that is primarily aimed at executing clearly defined tasks as cheaply as possible (Grotenbreg & Altamirano, 2017), it seems almost impossible to accommodate CBIs, aiming for a broader value creation than developing an infrastructure project alone. Having had a public monopoly on water-related tasks for centuries, the rise of CBIs can only be accommodated with institutional adaptation, making room for organizations other than public authorities to take action.…”

The U-Turn in Government Facilitation: How Dutch Water Authorities Facilitate Nongovernmental Initiatives

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