Introduction

The Netherlands has developed a relatively extensive and strong system of advisory bodies. By the end of the 1970s, the Netherlands had more than 400 advisory councils of some sort. This includes a number of generic councils, such as the Social and Economic Council (Sociaal en Economische Raad; SER), which has continued to play a key role in welfare state discussions and labour–employer negotiations up to this very day, and the Scientific Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid; WRR), which provides advice on long-term policy developments. Furthermore, there are many advisory bodies that focus on more specific policy areas, such as the Council for Public Government, the Council for Spatial, Environmental and Nature Research, the Council for Education, and the Health Council. Although the number of advisory bodies has been reduced significantly in the Netherlands since the end of the 1990s, as part of a broader strategy to establish firm political primacy, advisory bodies have remained a cornerstone in Dutch policymaking in many areas.

A specific phenomenon in the Dutch setting involves the so-called ‘planning bureaus’, a specific form of advisory body that not so much actually plans policies, but provides policy-relevant knowledge on developments in society, nature or the economy (Halffman, 2009). In English, they are often referred to as ‘policy assessment institutes’, but in Dutch, the term ‘planning bureau’ is commonplace. Perhaps the most powerful of the planning bureaus is the Central Planning Bureau (Centraal Planbureau; CPB – also known as the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis), established in 1945, which focuses primarily on economic policy assessments. In order to balance the economic influence on policymaking by the CPB, a Social and Cultural Planning Bureau (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau; SCP) was established in 1973. In addition to these two main planning bureaus, there is also an Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving; PBL), which focuses on spatial planning and issues of the environment and nature.

In this chapter, we take a closer look at the origin, practice and impact of this peculiar Dutch system of advisory bodies and planning bureaus. We first attempt to reconstruct the origin and development of this system in order to understand why advisory boards and planning offices evolved as such powerful actors in the Netherlands and to be able to position the Dutch case in a comparative perspective.