Getting started with participation in Dutch Municipalities

Roadmap for Dutch municipalities to explore important issues surrounding participation.

The 2022 Dutch bill on the strengthening of participation at a decentralized level aims to encourage every Dutch municipality to draw up clear frameworks and rules for participation, appropriate to local circumstances. To take this local context into account, the bill states that the council will set rules not only in the preparation, but also in the implementation and evaluation of the policy.

This guide is meant to help municipalities to comply with the bill, showing how municipalities can work on the subject of participation. Rather than organizing participation in a single process, the resource focuses on working toward a general vision, a general policy and a general implementation program — and ultimately anchoring all of this in the participation regulation.

The resource starts with fundamental questions about participation, democracy and citizenship, then goes into detail about concrete participation frameworks, methods and instruments.

Source: The Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG)
Author information: Steven
Blok, Sophie Piers, Jort Janssen
Language: Dutch

Year of publication: 2023