Samenvatting

The Dutch social care system was fundamentally reformed in 2015. A key policy aim was to activate citizens and their social networks, turning them from mere consumers into co-producers of care. The expectation was that, by doing so, public spending could be reduced and community engagement could be restored at the same time. Regulation was put in place to incentivize network support.
Whether this constitutes ‘smart governance’, however, depends on whether the variety of factors determining sustainable network support can be identified in the first place. At present, the new care policy is supposed to apply indiscriminately, and is as such not yet evidence based. In addition, flaws in the present budgetary and regulatory steering mechanisms need to be addressed. Potential users are not very familiar with the regulation in place for incentivizing network support, and the regulation is currently neutralized by law courts, unaware of the participatory relationship between care authorities and citizens as envisaged by the 2015 reform. Moreover, engaging networks is time-consuming and requires investments before returns can start to materialize. From a normative stance, network volunteers moreover ought to participate in decision-making, as they will be investing their private resources (such as time) instead of tax payers money. Effectiveness and legitimacy are thus two prerequisites for governance in the social domain to be genuinely ‘smart’.