Speech Minister Jet Bussemaker Speech to be given by Jet Bussemaker, Minister for Education, Culture and Science, at the meeting Political legitimacy and the paradox of regulation, Leiden, 23 January 2013 Ladies and gentlemen, Let me take you back to Saturday 1 December. I have been Minister of Education for just two weeks. I am reading an advance copy of a report about financial mismanagement at Amarantis - a large education group which manages several schools. The organization was on the point of bankruptcy in 2010. It was saved only by a financial injection of public funds and the efforts of a strong interim manager. According to this report, the people in charge had seriously neglected their public task. I shall offer a balanced and well considered response. Various recommendations for reform have been made, and I intend to adopt them. I also intend to call on public sector managers to re-examine their moral attitudes or moral compass, as there is clearly a problem of culture as well. I am still having breakfast when the first news reports start coming in on my Blackberry: the report has been leaked. The directors of Amarantis, some of whom have already resigned, are being accused of financial mismanagement and fraud. How can this have been allowed to happen?, ask the media. The minister must take firm action!, they say. I decide to make a statement on television that evening. If the allegations are true, I announce, the people concerned can expect to face problems with me. I was, perhaps, speaking out of turn at this stage because the report was not officially published yet. But nobody would have understood if I had said nothing at all. Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak to you today. And I would like to thank the organizers for their kind invitation. Like Professor Koole, I am used to tackle such issues from two perspectives that of an academic, and that of a politician. Today, I shall take the more political perspective. That s why I opened with a recent example illustrating the dilemmas of political legitimacy today. When the managers of a public institution fail in their task, all eyes immediately turn to the minister. The media demand that the minister takes action. But is this arrangement actually effective? Can the problem only be solved if the minister wades in with all guns blazing? It is certainly a dilemma. On the one hand, you are responsible for the system, especially when things go amiss. Firm action is then required. On the other, your legitimacy is
restricted. On the whole, schools know rather more than I do about what is good for them. Joop den Uyl, a famous former Minister President and leader of my party, drew attention to the narrow margins of democratic politics more than forty years ago. Those margins have become no wider in the meantime, I can assure you. This leads me to contend that political legitimacy is not automatically created by introducing a raft of rules and regulations. It must be established and re-established over time. This is an active process which demands a combination of different approaches. Allow me to explain. The Netherlands has a long tradition of autonomous public institutions. We have many housing corporations, health care institutes and educational organizations, which have their roots in private initiatives taken in the early years of the twentieth century by individuals with a strong sense of social engagement. With the development of the post-war welfare state, the management and functions of these institutions were assumed. by the government. From the 1980s, however, government once again opted to take a less direct role in public service provision. In the event, this did not lead to a greater focus on the role of the civil society, but rather on the market and market forces. The Netherlands was not alone: the effect of this shift to new public management was seen in many other countries as well. It is interesting to note that new public management was the response to the crisis of legitimacy being experienced by the welfare state. The government was seen to have very few opportunities to change or reform society. The market and the active citizen-consumer, as it was being called, were far better able to do so. We must now admit that this approach has done little to revive the social legitimacy of the public institutions. Moreover, the lack of social legitimacy places the political legitimacy of the government itself under strain. The government must therefore seek an effective system of management in order to restore the public s confidence in the public institutions and in the government itself. That is the quest on which I am now embarking. I intend to pursue two paths which will eventually converge. The first is a top-down approach which is concerned with the effective functioning of government. The second is a bottom-up approach designed to encourage the creation of civic spaces, by which I mean local public arenas in which people can engage in dialogue and exert their joint influence over public service provision. Let us begin with government, about which I wish to make two remarks. First: in order to talk about the legitimacy of government action, we have to distinguish between regulation to set the agenda for social developments and regulation which follows those developments. Our government has recently introduced legislation which limits the
salaries of senior managers in the public sector. This is agenda-setting legislation in that it forces a change to existing practice. The government is responding to the dissatisfaction expressed by many members of the public, because the public service managers themselves are not doing so. While we may have lost some legitimacy in the eyes of the managers, we have gained legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Regulation can also follow social developments, as in the case of medical ethics. This is an area with which I am very familiar, having previously served as State Secretary for Health. One particularly thorny topic is euthanasia. Our national legislation is largely based on jurisprudence. There have been several court cases testing the protocols which have been in existence for many years. Here, the legislation formalizes existing practice by laying down clear rules and requirements. It can therefore rely on the broad support of society at large, and will enhance trust and confidence in those responsible. The danger of formal regulation that follows existing practice is that it could, in some cases, come too late and might even impede the process of long-term reform. The Amarantis case has prompted calls for big organizations which run large numbers of schools to be split up. But if we start to prepare the necessary legislation today, we may be in a position to implement it in around four years time. Meanwhile, the field has already taken the initiative. Some schools in Rotterdam, for example, have already decided to go their separate ways. That s why I will mention another important means of achieving effective government: management by speech. I have noticed more than once that drawing public attention to unacceptable situations can do far more to bring about change than formal legislation. In many cases, reform relies not on the strict letter of the law, but on its interpretation and use. It is a question of culture rather than structure. As you know, the Netherlands champions gay rights and equality. In the international sphere, we have found that telling an uncomfortable story can be highly effective to present our case forcefully to important organizations in the field of human rights, like the United Nations. This approach entails devoting attention to why something should be done, not merely how. Doing so adds weight to the message. In recent decades, evolving ideologies and new public management have taken the message itself out of the public sphere. Both the formulation and implementation of policy have become far more pragmatic and technocratic. And yet it remains the why of policy measures and the accompanying social dialogue which have the greatest impact in terms of acceptance and success. This brings me to my second path, that of promoting social initiatives and creating civic spaces. What does this have to do with political legitimacy? And why do we want to create civic spaces at all?
First, citizens themselves should have a say in how the things that directly affect them are run. This will bolster trust in the social and political institutions. Second, I firmly believe that political responsibility and democracy should not be confined to the formal institutions, but should influence society at large. Great thinkers such as Tocqueville already reached the same conclusion. I am reminded of my recent visit to the IMC Weekend School. Here, doctors, lawyers, artists, politicians and other professionals volunteer as guest teachers, giving classes to underprivileged Amsterdam children on a Sunday. The Weekend School was founded by an altruistic psychologist who was keen to offer young people better opportunities for personal development and the chance of a brighter future. Since the outset, the project has enjoyed the support of various funding organizations and a small army of dedicated volunteers. The scheme is now being rolled out into other towns and cities nationwide. An initiative like this should not be funded directly by the government. That would bring a mass of rules and requirements which will stifle rather than promote its aims. Nevertheless, it is highly appropriate for the Minister of Education to visit and express support and admiration for the project, as I did. It is also appropriate for the government to provide some practical support, helping to develop new networks for example. Doing so acknowledges the strength and value of such a bottom-up social initiative. The tradition of social initiatives and local civic spaces is now being rediscovered and reinvented, not only here in the Netherlands but elsewhere. This comes as no surprise. People are not motivated by economics alone, but also by a strong sense of solidarity, interdependence and reciprocity. Countless new forms of social solidarity and dialogue are possible. We need not confine ourselves to the family and the immediate neighborhood. The social media enable people to engage with each other regardless of boundaries or distance. I believe that the government should make such initiatives more visible, at least where they serve the public interests. We must encourage them, and where necessary facilitate them. Ladies and gentlemen, Many interpretations of the legitimacy of government set bottom-up social initiatives against a forceful government role, as if the two are mutually exclusive. They are not and I wish to bring them together. This is why I opted for a combined response to the Amarantis issue. That response involves tightening the existing regulations so that the government is able to take appropriate action in cases of financial mismanagement. It involves creating the necessary conditions for a culture of accountability. Finally, it involves management by speech, whereby we shall encourage debate about the role and responsibilities of public service managers. We shall help them to set their moral responsibility and moral compass.
These are the lines along which I hope to increase the legitimacy of government policy, in the broadest sense of the term, in the years ahead. This can be mutually beneficial to the worlds of everyday life and science, so I warmly invite you to join my quest for a solution. Thank you for your attention.