The National Ombudsman enjoys growing prestige in The Hague, especially because of his alertness in the allowance affair. So it seemed important that he Monday pleaded for a minister charged with Groningen natural gas damage. In this case too, governments appear to be better at delaying and referring than at solving, and the ombudsman explained Fidelity and on Radio 1 assume that there is now enough counting.
People in Groningen applauded it – logically. But you looked up to the Ombudsman himself. Pleas for new ministries do well in the media, but are rarely followed. In the campaign this spring, Volt asked a minister of Digital Affairs, Think a minister of Inclusiveness and the PVV a minister of De-Islamisation. Only the CDA plan for a housing minister was widely embraced.
Sadly, new ministries often fail. Even the return of the old Ministry of Agriculture, four years ago, turned out to be a setback. Inside rooms you heard that it took more than two years before the organization was set up. So when the Council of State rejected the nitrogen policy in May 2019, Minister Carola Schouten (CU) was left with a device that could barely respond adequately: the re-establishment of Agriculture caused so many implementation problems that there was actually no policy crisis.
And you would expect the ombudsman, with his focus on implementation problems, to realize that a new Minister of Natural Gas Damage would have to deal with similar implementation problems.
At the same time, this is the great shortcoming of The Hague: the interest of politicians and advisers in the implementation of policy is outweighed by the desire for strong action. It also explains why this spring, in the same campaign, so many parties advocated a ‘strong government’, even though recent affairs – benefits, evictions of children, drilling for gas for too long – showed that the government is rather too strong. And that the government’s weakness is a choice: disinterest in implementation problems that citizens face because politicians wanted to appear bold earlier.
I’m not telling anything new. Herman Tjeenk Willink has been writing wonderful essays about politicians who are uninterested in policy implementation for forty years now. And in research into implementing organizations concluded the House this spring that there is ‘too little interest’ in implementation.
So this problem is too persistent for a new ministerial position here and there. This requires a reversal of Hague logic. Because we know that politicians who want to appear powerful mainly stand up for themselves. And that politicians who first want to know whether a plan is feasible, think first of the citizen – and only then of themselves.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 26, 2021
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