This editorial introduction introduces this special issue on young talent in public administration. Published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dutch Association for Public Administration, this special issue reflects on the future and relevance of public administration as a scientific discipline from the perspective of public administration students, PhD students and young practitioners. Their contributions show how a new generation views the future of public administration and how we can realize the potential of our discipline. This special issue illustrates that a meaningful public administration cannot exist without a public administration community of practitioners and academics and high-quality educational public administration programmes.

How can public administration remain impactful in the next fifty years? This was the central question of the essay competition organized by the Vereniging voor Bestuurskunde (the Dutch Association for Public Administration) on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. This entry questions the question itself. Thinking about public administration in terms of ‘making an impact’ is not something inherently neutral. On the contrary: this entry shows that overemphasizing the importance of ‘making an impact’ to public administration is tantamount to affirming the neoliberal performance frame that has equated the academy to a production process. We should not fall into the illusion that there is no alternative to this. Anyone who considers that public administration studies how public governance works and how it can be done differently will see that it has absolutely nothing to prove in terms of relevance. The breathing space this insight provides can give us direction in building and maintaining a meaningful public administration practice.

How can public administration be of positive significance in contributing to major societal challenges? After fifty years, the Dutch Association for Public Administration (VB) takes stock of what has been achieved, offering an opportunity to look towards the future with hope. This essay revolves around the question of how public administration as an academic discipline can remain impactful in the next fifty years. This question is applied to a topic which seems to become more pressing day by day; digitalization and algorithmization of society. This essay is a plea for public administration that puts the public at its core again, and wherein public administration scholars engage with societal issues in an imaginative, explorative and playful way. Moreover, this essay serves as a space for personal reflections on a self-conscious discipline by a student who is at the brink of starting her career in this inspiring and challenging academic field.

Public policy should aim to achieve social equality for everyone, but current public policy is specifically aimed at a white heterosexual male norm group. Public administration requires a more intersectional feminist perspective in order to make public policy more inclusive and increase social equality. An intersectional feminist perspective recognizes that people’s lived experiences are affected by combinations of their identity characteristics, rather than just gender, race or ethnicity. Sexuality, physical and mental health, class and age are also relevant identity characteristics. Specific combinations of these characteristics have more disadvantages than others. Research in public administration as well as public policy can become more inclusive by applying an intersectional feminist perspective. This means that editors, reviewers, policymakers and professionals need to be continuously aware of the inequalities that exist just because of people’s identity characteristics, and how this affects their decision making, and – in turn – social inequality.

Increasing digitalization calls for good digital governance, with responsible digitalization by the government and serving public values at its core. Therefore, frameworks in the form of ethical digital codes with principles and values have recently been developed. However, frameworks do not automatically lead to better behaviour, because good digital governance needs to be embedded in the organization and work processes. This research focuses on safeguarding good digital governance as an organizational change in which civil servants, managers and politicians play a crucial role. Based on a qualitative case study, conditions for safeguarding good digital governance are identified on the short, medium and long term. This study emphasises that both bottom-up and top-down approaches and cooperation between public servants, managers and politicians are necessary for safeguarding good digital governance.

The Dutch child protection system is at its wits’ end when it concerns improving the quality of their services. Discussions about the problems in child protection overshadow a critical, substantive reflection on what high-quality child protection means, while explicit definitions are crucial to achieve, monitor and evaluate policy objectives. This article evaluates whether current child protection services sufficiently guarantee all aspects of ‘growing up and developing safely’. As such, this study aims to contribute to a more holistic perspective on child well-being in child protection, one that safeguards a child’s physical well-being, mental well-being and its social environment. A meta-study of four child protection evaluations shows that child protection services pay insufficient attention to a child’s basic physical needs and wider social environment. Attention to these well-being aspects is necessary to overcome a one-sided focus on child well-being in child protection and effectively provide child protection services.

Decentralisations have devolved many responsibilities in the domains of health and social care in the Netherlands to municipalities. These decentralisations aim at facilitating innovative and personalized solutions for pressing social issues. Professionals are expected to develop social innovations to provide personalized care. These goals require them to work together in an interprofessional setting to attain social innovations consisting of both the exploration of new and useful ideas and the exploitation of current processes. This study examines the extent to which psychological safety and innovative leadership behaviours of team leaders can promote innovation in social support teams. Drawing on data from 833 professionals and 62 leaders of social support teams in five different municipalities, this study shows that the combination of psychological safety and innovative leadership behaviours of team leaders is positively associated with social innovation in the form of exploration but not exploitation. As such, this study informs us about the boundary conditions of leadership in promoting social innovation. Recommendations are made to encourage leaders to implement practices to increase psychological safety and encourage social innovation in their teams.

Far-reaching policy changes, such as a reintroduction of a study grant system, often evolve in a fragmented and intermittent manner. They are usually preceded by a series of incidents and media attention, and a succession of smaller and larger policy proposals. Existing policy theories focus on major changes or on the smaller step-by-step changes. What is missing is an integrated story in which the entire process, with incidents, media attention and interim adjustments, is brought together.
We argue that an ecological tipping-point theory is a useful addition to existing policy-change theories. Our study of Article 23 of the Constitution, which regulates the freedom of education in the Netherlands, shows that a succession of incidents (disturbances) has increased the stress within the policy system and increased the likelihood of a policy adjustment. However, change should not be taken for granted. Understanding policy change trajectories as ecosystem changes can help policymakers to transition from one stable policy system to another.

In recent decades, public administration has branched out into numerous fields and subfields. As a result of continuous growth and ongoing specialization, theoretically, thematically and methodically, and further internationalization, public administration is omnipresent. The recent emphasis on ‘societal impact’ has further reinforced this. An international academic research and publication culture is combined with national and local impact and practical relevance. At the same time, the question is whether public administration visibly and directly contributes to the analysis and tackling of societal issues, such as sustainability, energy and equality of opportunity. In this article, Dr Honingh, Dr Overmans and Professor Noordegraaf build upon their recent book, Societal Public Administration (2023). They argue that public administration is too silent, too quiet and too neutral when it comes to dealing with real and pressing societal issues. They explore what it takes to improve connective capabilities of public administration experts to be more ‘in the lead’ in societal circuits, to contribute to societal debates, to take a stance, to become more active, if not activists. This calls for actions via academic and practitioner associations and networks, via policy think thanks and advisory boards, and via training and research programmes at universities and colleges.

Governments face major societal challenges that cannot be tackled easily. In this article, Professor Van de Donk reflects on the proposition that dealing with issues requires connective public administration experts, and a societal public administration. For many years (two decades), Van de Donk has held a chair with the same title. He argues that although societal administrative sciences are desirable and can be helpful, the phenomenon is not limited to mere societal issues. Societal public administration can best be seen as a mixed field of public, private, hybrid and societal organizations, which includes several roles and responsibilities, with diverging worldviews and policy views. At the same time, that is where connective experts can be most meaningful; they can uncover, interpret and connect divergent images.

Societal public administration requires connective public administration experts with certain skillsets. In this article, Professor Prins, chair of the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, uses her many years of experience as a scholar and practitioner to reflect on competencies that will be valuable. She mentions three: being equipped, being aware and having focus. She explains why and how public administrators can move from experts on the side to insiders with authority, how they can become more normative while retaining stature and how they can be beneficial as a connective force.

There have been strong calls for a more socially relevant public administration, which has more impact and is more visible. But what does that mean for young researchers? In this article, three early career scholars report on a conversation with Professor Geert Bouckaert, a leading administrative scholar. He challenges young public administration scholars to clarify strategic research goals, to adopt a clear vision of impact and to shape multidisciplinarity. The authors aim to emphasize Bouckaert’s plea to stay true to what young scholars want to achieve with their work, instead of mainly focusing on the here and now. By designing academically rigorous and socially relevant research, young researchers can move beyond their neutral positions.

The Netherlands has the most public administration scholars per capita in the world. Rather than analysing and understanding problems, they often want to contribute to tackling them. That is why public administration scholars are valuable to civil servants. In this article, the minister of the Interior, Hanke Bruins Slot, mentions three crucial challenges for strengthening connections between scholarship and policy: investing in a value-driven government; recognising the value of operations and implementation; and paying more attention to justice and equality. The quality of government can be structurally improved if the exchange of knowledge and experience between the two worlds is properly organized. Public administration scholars can act as scholarly allies.