Introduction

The call for evidence-based policymaking (see Chapters Two and Four) as a response to the New Public Management (NPM) movement, which has spread around the world over the last few decades, has also induced a revival of policy analysis. At face value, it looks like old wine in new bottles, but a closer inspection reveals that Dutch government has learned from previous efforts, which may be dated back to the post-war reconstruction of the Netherlands. A couple of months after the end of the Second World War, the incumbent Dutch government established the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (Centraal Planbureau; CPB), and even though its core business is more about economic modelling, it prepared the ground for the rationalisation of public policy and, by extension, the development of policy analysis (see also Chapter Nine).

However, the history of policy analysis in the Netherlands cannot be understood properly without reference to the Committee for the Development of Policy Analysis (Commissie voor de Ontwikkeling van Beleidsanalyse; COBA), a high-ranked committee composed of top officials of all ministries, in the early 1970s. Taking cost–benefit analysis as a point of departure, policy analysis gradually developed over time from prospective policy analysis to retrospective policy analysis and evaluation. In an effort to make the efforts more utilisation-focused, the Dutch government launched the so-called Reconsideration of Public Expenditures (Heroverweging van overheidsuitgaven; HO), which is geared to the reduction of the budget deficit. In later years, the Dutch government introduced a new budget format, called ‘From Policy Budget to Accounting for Policy’ (Van Beleidsbegroting tot Beleidsverantwoording; VBTB), which builds upon the basic assumptions of policy analysis in order to reinforce performance in the public sector.

The chapter is organised as follows. First, we take stock of the COBA, which was in operation for almost a decade. The balance sheet is not really positive, although the COBA has enriched the policy dialogue with objectives and instruments. Not surprisingly, the COBA was dismissed after two efforts to adjust the course of action had failed to make policy less theory-driven and utilisation-focused, notably, for fiscal consolidation (Section 6.2). The heritage of the COBA found its way into the system of performance budgeting, which requires spending departments to provide (non-financial) information about objectives (‘outcomes’) and instruments (‘outputs’) in order to improve allocative and technical efficiency in the public sector (Section 6.3).