Reviews
| Date | 01 June 2000 |
| Published date | 01 June 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00214 |
REVIEWS
TEACHING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE
NETHERLANDS AND ITALY: A REVIEW
SYMPOSIUM
MIRIAM LIPS AND RODOLFO LEWANSKI
Public Administration has reviewed some of the literature that is used for
introducing students to public administration programmes in Europe. Pre-
vious issues have dealt with Northern Europe, Mid-Europe and Spain.
These last presentations discuss the Netherlands and Italy.
PETER BOGASON
Review Editor
Miriam Lips is at the Centre for Law, Public Administration and Informatization, Tilburg University,
the Netherlands and Rodolfo Lewanski is at the University of Bologna, Italy
Public Administration Vol. 78, No. 2, 2000 (443–483)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
444 REVIEWS
TEACHING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE NETHERLANDS
MIRIAM LIPS
Considering the extensive position and activities of public sector organiza-
tions in Dutch society, it may not be surprising that public administration
education programmes are currently taught at ten of the fourteen Dutch
universities, one of which (the Open University) provides higher distance
education. Since 1928, endowed chairs in public administration have been
established within various disciplines at the Dutch universities, most of
them after the Second World War. In 1976, the first autonomous degree
programme was started at Twente University.
All of the current public administration degree programmes provide their
graduates with the Dutch degree, the doctorandus (drs.) title, except for the
Universities of Groningen, which provides the Dutch master of laws title
(mr.), and Delft, where graduates receive the Dutch engineer (ir.) title.
According to the Dutch Higher Education and Research Act (in Dutch: Wet
op het Hoger Onderwijs en Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek), the drs. but also the
mr. and ir. titles may be compared and even replaced by the internationally
acknowledged Anglo-Saxon title of Master (M.). However, universities,
higher professional education institutions, private institutions, and inter-
national institutions in the Netherlands increasingly provide various post-
initial education programmes and also offer their graduates the Anglo-
Saxon Master title. In contrast to the university degree programmes, the
degrees offered by these post-initial education programmes are currently
not protected by statute law in the Netherlands. Consequently, the compari-
son of the Dutch drs. title with the internationally acknowledged Master
title is coming more and more under pressure. Therefore, the Dutch Minis-
ter of Education has recently announced a study into the possibility of intro-
ducing a national education system with an undergraduate and graduate
model comparable with the Anglo-Saxon three-year Bachelor and two-year
Master models, which is in line with the Bologna declaration signed by the
European Ministers of Education in June 1999 (Ministry of Education, Cul-
ture and Science, 1999). This may have direct consequences for the structure
and duration of current Dutch public administration degree programmes.
At present, public administration degree programmes at Dutch univer-
sities usually last four years. After completion of this degree programme,
students have the option of further study and research, which, with the
production of a dissertation, lead to the internationally acknowledged title
of doctor (dr.). In practice, only a small percentage of the student population
applies for this option and/or is admitted to this four-year doctorate pro-
gramme. Most students start working in various public sector organiza-
tions; a substantial number of students start their careers in private sector
organizations, mainly in consultancy firms.
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
REVIEWS 445
How may the contents of public administration curriculums in the
Netherlands generally be described?
Usually, four disciplines constitute the basis of public administration
degree programmes: Political Science, Sociology, Law, and Economics. At
the various universities, different levels of integration of these monodisci-
plines can be found in public administration curriculums and courses.
Twente University, for instance, predominantly uses a multidisciplinary
approach to organize its education, leading to a situation in which a sub-
stantial number of courses are provided within each monodiscipline. Other
universities structure their education programmes more along general top-
ics in public administration, such as policy instruments, information man-
agement, and administrative renewal. Here, besides discussing these gen-
eral topics from a multidisciplinary perspective, knowledge is also offered
to students in an integrated way.
The foundations of Dutch public administration in various disciplines
leads to practitioners of public administration in the Netherlands describing
themselves as generalists, as people who have learned to look at the func-
tioning of public administration from different perspectives. As the Dutch
public administration programmes are relatively young, most university
professors of public administration, at the present time, have their edu-
cational background in one of these monodisciplines, most of them in polit-
ical science.
A further differentiation in public administration programmes at the vari-
ous universities is in the predominance of specific monodisciplines in cur-
riculums, which in some cases is reflected in the name of the degree pro-
gramme as a whole, e.g. Public Administration and Management Science
(in Dutch: Bestuurs–en Organisatiewetenschappen) at the Universities of
Utrecht and Nijmegen, and Administrative Law and Public Administration
(in Dutch: Juridische Bestuurswetenschappen) at the Universities of Amster-
dam, Groningen, and Tilburg. In addition, the programme at Delft Univer-
sity called ‘Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management’ differs
from other public administration programmes as it combines knowledge
from the four disciplines in public administration with knowledge from the
technical sciences. A specialization in this field is also offered at Twente
University in the third and fourth year of its public administration
degree programme.
In fostering scientific knowledge in public administration, Dutch scholars
focus on three dimensions: first, improving the functioning of public admin-
istration through recommendations based on an analysis in which theory
and practice are confronted (‘prescription’); second, collecting and dissemi-
nating knowledge on the actual functioning of public administration
(‘description’); and third, stimulating knowledge which may be used in the
practice of public administration (‘application’). These dimensions are inter-
woven with the contents of the public administration curriculum, reflecting
the three-way emphasis of teaching students both public administration
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
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