Introduction

Policy analysis has always played an unmistakeable role in the Dutch political process. The Netherlands has a dualistic political system, in which the House of Representatives has the duty of scrutinising the work of the government and co-legislation. The House can also propose bills on its own account. In order for Parliament to be able to carry out its duties properly, it is important to have good insight into all relevant aspects of policy proposals and the implementation of existing policy. In order to limit its dependency on information provided by the government, the House can decide to carry out research on its own account, for instance in the context of parliamentary inquiries, which provide a powerful instrument for the House to control the power of government and have been used more and more often over the last two decades (see Chapter One).

When compared to the Dutch government's massive research infrastructure (for example planning bureaus, advisory bodies), Parliament's capacity to do research is relatively small. When in 2008/09 the House underwent a process of ‘parliamentary self-reflection’ (Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 2009), one of the conclusions was that the Parliament was too dependent upon policy information from the government. As a consequence, more independent investigation by the Parliament would be desirable in order to cope with the information asymmetries between Parliament and government (Enthoven, 2011; Loeffen, 2013).

In this context, this chapter zooms in on the role of the Parliamentary Bureau for Research and Public Expenditure (Bureau Onderzoek en Rijksuitgaven; BOR), the administrative department established to support the Dutch Parliament in its research function. The BOR plays an advisory and coordinating role in preparing and carrying out parliamentary research. The introduction of a new tool, the so-called Future and Investigation Agenda, emphasises the importance of parliamentary research.

This chapter first provides a brief background sketch of the Dutch Parliament and its relation to government. Second, a more elaborate description will be given of the various ways in which Parliament has access to information. Third, we discuss two cases in which policy analysis by Parliament has played a key role: the reforms of Dutch education policies and Dutch railways policies.