Policy analysis in the Netherlands: An Introduction

The Netherlands is commonly regarded as one of the strongholds of policy analysis. This introductory chapter provides a first overview of developments in policy analysis in terms of academic thinking as well as in terms of its role in policy and politics in the Netherlands. Rather than focusing on one of the schools of academic thinking or practices of policy analysis, we attempt to capture the diversity of academic thinking and policy analysis practices as evolved in the Netherlands over the last decades. We believe that it is this diversity and plurality of perspectives that positions the Dutch case in an international comparative setting as well as accounts for the strength of policy analysis in Dutch academia and policymaking. In this introduction we sketch the contours of Dutch policy analysis and provide a more conceptual analysis of what is referred to as policy analysis.