'You shouldn't take yourself as a measure'

Professor of Public Administration Mark Bovens will retire with effect from 1 December 2024. His imminent retirement from Utrecht University concludes a rich working life, in which he was one of the founders of the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG), the successful education programme in Public Administration and Organisation Science, and shaped the public administration research in Utrecht, which is now internationally renowned. He was also member of the programme team of the Strategic Research theme of Institutions for Open Societies of Utrecht University from the beginning. Bovens is known to many as the inventor of concepts such as 'klokkenluiden’ (whistleblowing), 'diploma democracy' and 'doenvermogen’ (capacity to act), and for his influential work for the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR).

On 29 November, Mark Bovens will give a farewell lecture entitled 'Education as a new pillarisation. And what this means for the university' in which one of his most important research themes' is discussed: the political and social divisions along educational lines. Prior to that, we interviewed him at home in The Hague on the occasion of his upcoming retirement. A conversation that is ostensibly about books, but above all testifies to Bovens' social involvement.

Bookshelves

After years of living in the city centre of The Hague, Mark Bovens and his wife moved to a house with a large garden, to which they spend a lot of time. When we talk about moving, we quickly get to talk about the bookcases in his office at the university. There were once eleven, he says. However, his changing role in the organization meant moving internally, and the number had to be reduced to six, later even to one – which he will also have to clear out in November. You start small and slowly expand, and at the end you have to reduce again, shrink again. It's like life itself.

I had two walls full of bookcases. That was wonderful. Some of those books came to The Hague, some moved to the USG library and I had to throw some away as well. That's really hard, those books symbolize something. When you renounce them, you also renounce a part of your history. And you also think: “What you don't want to be done to you, don't do to someone else”. You don't want people to throw away your books. You're throwing away a part of someone's life.

Which of your own books should definitely not be thrown away?

A book I am proud of is my dissertation, which was published by Cambridge University Press as The Quest for Responsibility. In hindsight, that still has a lot of topical value. I noticed this when I taught students in education for professionals about the Toeslagenaffaire. My dissertation was about the question of who is responsible for the behaviour of large, complex organisations.

One of the central problems in this regard is the Problem of the Many Hands: in all kinds of places inside or outside the organization, actions are carried out that may each be justifiable individually, but together can lead to very undesirable outcomes. How can you deal with that, who can you hold responsible for the aggregate outcome? The Toeslagenaffaire showed exactly that complexity: the policy was made at the Ministry of Social Affairs, implemented by the Tax and Customs Administration, and the legislators hardly received any signals from the implementers who noticed that it turned out to be very harsh. The signals that were there got stuck at the Ministry of Finance. The judiciary then had its own interpretation that was not tested.

I developed a kind of 'citizenship model' for individual responsibility within large organisations. This consisted of the right to refuse work and a right to 'blow the whistle'.

In my dissertation, I concluded that you have to hold people responsible individually, because other models don't work. But the question then is: how do you organize that? How do you make people in these kinds of large organizations feel more responsible? To this end, I developed a kind of 'citizenship model' for individual responsibility within large organisations. On the one hand, this consisted of the right to refuse work and, on the other hand, a right to 'blow the whistle' –‘klokkenluiden’ in Dutch is a word I coined myself at the time. I have argued for a certain amount of legal protection for civil servants and employees who raise suspicions of wrongdoing. And that also played a role in the Toeslagenaffaire. There were officials who have said: something is going wrong here.

After my dissertation, I did a lot of research on accountability. My article 'Analysing and Assessing Accountability' is by far the most cited paper I have ever written. This arose from an NWO project that I carried out together with Deirdre Curtin and Paul 't Hart, and this theme has become the basis of an entire line of research within USG, I would almost say: an entire industry. USG is now also known worldwide as the centre for accountability studies, thanks to colleagues such as Thomas Schillemans and many others.

Diploma democracy

Another book that is dear to me is Diploma Democracy, in which Anchrit Wille and I tried to understand the new contradictions in society. It's about educational disparities, particularly the dominance of university educated people in virtually every political arena that matters. We have just signed a contract for a new, expanded and revised version of the book. There is a lot of new material in it, because the educational divide has deepened further. In that sense, this book is as relevant as ever. The most important contradiction of the last twenty years has been the socio-cultural divide between the university educated and the practically educated.

The Schoof cabinet is partly a 'revenge' on diploma democracy. The coalition agreement can be read as 'nasty things for university educated people' and 'nice things for practically educated people'.

Is it indeed 'revenge' or is it about justice?

The new pillarization along educational lines resembles the old one that ran along religious lines, but there are two important differences: now one pillar (that of the university educated) has all the political power. Political and administrative agendas have been much more responsive to the wishes of this group than to those of the practically educated. They see much more of their political wishes realized. Only the current cabinet is an exception to this.

The other difference is that the pillar of university educated people is also much better of in socio-economic terms. If you look at the Better Well-being Index (BWI), you will see that regarding income, health, living comfort, employment, and what not – the most highly educated people always score best.

Plato's Ideal State

Why have these themes of responsibility and the educational divide been occupying you for so long? Is there also a personal motivation behind this?

Back in 2006, I wondered why so many citizens have so much political resentment. Of course, the fact that I didn't understand it, told me something about myself, about someone who is academically educated himself. But the impetus for writing Diploma Democracy was an intellectual one rather than a personal one.

In the 'Classics' course of the Bachelor’s programme in Public Administration and Organisation Science, we discuss classical authors such as Plato, Machiavelli and Weber, and initially also Hannah Arendt. I had lectured on Plato for years and I would always say: "We read Plato as a kind of counterpoint, because he is an extreme anti-democrat. Plato's ideal state is dominated by academically educated, only they are allowed to govern. Of course, that's not the case with us." But after a few years, I started to wonder: is that actually true? I realized that that wasn't true at all. Our state is much more like Plato's ideal state than anyone realizes. That's when I started looking into it.

A meritocracy is essentially as unjust as an aristocracy

Intelligence and self-control – at the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy we refer to this as 'doenvermogen’ (capacity to act) – the two most important factors for success in school and career are to a large extent a matter of innate predisposition, or are determined in the first three years of life. If you are unlucky, and cannot keep up well at school, this means that your well-being will be much lower in the long run than that of the people who were able to do well in school. Even if you try your best.

I've been lucky and did very well at school, so I'm having a great time in this society. But a meritocracy is essentially as unjust as an aristocracy. Distributing wealth on the basis of aptitude is actually just as arbitrary as on the basis of descent.

So it's not just about equal opportunities, but also about equal outcomes.

Can better access to education play a role in this?

That's the romantic idea of "dimes that can become quarters." We at universities melt at the idea that someone from a humble background can still make it to college. That's great, of course, but it's also a fig leaf, a legitimization of our own privileges. Because what happens to the dimes that can't become quarters? You can't bring everyone up to academic level. So, it's not just about equal opportunities, but also about equal outcomes.

The meritocracy is very suitable for education and sports, in which you get grades and medals based on your performance, but not as a principle for a fair distribution of all kinds of other social goods, such as the houses you can get, the health you have, etc. The meritocracy as a model of justice is flawed. It basically means that the distribution of goods in society is based on innate predisposition – for which you have actually done nothing. From an economic point of view, a meritocracy is preferable to an aristocracy, it provides more prosperity, but from the point of view of social justice, it is a rather poor ideal.

You referred not only to Plato but also to Hannah Arendt as a more important 'classic'

Yes, in addition to Plato, Machiavelli and Weber, I had chosen Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem as a fourth classic in the course. As a young university lecturer, I read a lot of her work and also taught about her work. In particular; the question of who can be held responsible for the whole machinery that led to the Holocaust, and what the position of individuals in this is. This brings us back to the question of who is actually responsible for behaviour in complex organisations, the question that also drove my dissertation. I showed Arendt to the students of Public Administration and Organisation Science to make them realize that organizations can also be used for very terrible things.

Could you add another modern classic to the list?

The central question in this classic course is: what is a good administrator or politician? The fifth book I would like to add is Fire and Ashes by Michael Ignatieff. He is a Canadian political philosopher and later served as rector of the Central European University. At the beginning of this century, he was asked to lead the Canadian Liberal Party in the elections, as a 'charismatic intellectual outsider', a kind of Hans van Mierlo. In the book, however, he describes his utter failure at that. From the outset, he was no match for the harshness of political life. Started full of fire, it ends with ashes. He shows that politics is different from science: being right and being proven right are two very different things. Politics is all about framing, image-making and the language you use.

Capacity to act

Of my own books, I would like to mention two others that I am proud of: Understanding Policy Fiascoes written with Paul ‘t Hart and the WRR report about Doenvermogen (capacity to act) Looking back, that report is one of the highlights of my applied scientific work, which was written together  with Wil Tiemeijer and Anne-Greet Keijzer of the WRR.

What is 'the capacity to act'?

Capacity to act is the ability to take action, to set yourself a goal, and even when things are not going well, to keep that goal in mind, to resist temptations and to achieve that goal step by step. One of its key components is self-control. There is a relationship with the level of education, but it is not one-to-one: some people with a practical education have a lot of capacity to act, and some university educated people have very little.

You shouldn't take yourself as a measure, and be constantly on the lookout for it

I'm pretty good at it myself, I think. But I used to have quite strong opinions. For example, I could never be so understanding towards people with overweight or debts. I thought, 'You know that's not wise, right? Go eat healthy, don't take the fat bike but start exercising'. Because I thought: I can do that myself, can't I, so why can’t you? However, I have come to realize much more that on the one hand there is a question of aptitude (some people are much better at self-control than others) and on the other hand: when things go wrong in life, when people become unemployed or get into debt, self-control declines sharply, and people start doing all kinds of things that are actually unwise, that they wouldn't have done otherwise. That is a very important lesson for students and public administration experts: you should not take yourself as a measure. You have to be constantly aware of that.

The government needs to take much more account of differences

The government needs to take much more account of these differences. Then you can really do something about the differences in better wellbeing. To this end, we at the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy have developed a 'capacity test'. Much more thought needs to be given to it when making policy. You have to test policies in advance, try out whether what you want will work for people. Citizens must not only know the law, but also be able to act accordingly. Policy must therefore be made in such a way that ordinary people in difficult circumstances do not have to exert themselves excessively to comply with what policymakers ask of them. Policymakers must always check this and adjust it if necessary.

Doenvermogen was successful because, also in the Toeslagenaffaire, it gave language to what was going on. Our report Grip was a follow-up to that, but also an attempt to understand why so many people experience unease, get angry or perhaps even start thinking in terms of enemies and conspiracies. We tried to understand the backgrounds, the mechanisms that give rise to social struggles and polarization. On the other hand, we saw that opportunities are unevenly distributed. Some people have more control over their lives than others.

Language plays an important role in your work anyway. Perhaps a lot of your research has received the attention it deserved because you have attached the right words to it. You are the inventor of ’klokkenluiden’, diploma democracy, ‘doenvermogen’ and more.

Van Kooten and De Bie have, I believe, added 29 words to the Dutch language, I may have added three, albeit partly already existing words. 'Grip' was, whatever you can say about it, an attempt to encapsulate 200 pages in one word. Words are the building blocks of policy.

The technical term for capacity to act is 'non-cognitive skills'. But we noticed that when we started talking to policymakers, the shutters immediately closed when we used these words. We tried all kinds ofwords, but suddenly I thought: what is the opposite of thinking or thinking-ability? That is doing, the ability to act. Looking back, that reframing helped tremendously. There's a whole library underneath the term, but everyone immediately understands that it's about 'doing'.

I'm truly a teacher by birth.

I come from a family of local journalists. The importance of words and language, I think, comes from there. My father was city editor at Dagblad Het Binnenhof and my godfather was also a journalist. Writing clearly, keeping it simple – that's what was important to my father. On my mother's side, my grandfather was a schoolteacher, headmaster in the small village of Hoogland near Amersfoort. 

You have always enjoyed teaching yourself. Are you going to miss that?

Sure,  I'm going to miss teaching tremendously. I just really enjoy explaining how things work, he says with irony in his voice. I am a very conceited man. My children will immediately confirm that. Of course, it is character-spoiling to be a professor, because you can lecture endlessly. But it was really my destiny: teaching at the university, telling stories with enthusiasm, I love that. I am truly a teacher by birth.

I secretly hope that I will be able to give a guest lecture every now and then. To the first-year students, as I did again this year, or in the education for professionals. I have to be reluctant, but if there are still topics they want to invite me to, I'm happy to come back for them.

Are there any other books coming up?

I hope to get more time for writing now. Together with Anchrit Wille, I am working on a book in which we try to analyse the major patterns in Dutch politics over the past sixty years. Another book, for which I take notes, is about academic craftsmanship: how to start an education programme; how to write a good story; how to give good, strategic advice; how to keep enjoying yourself in academia; how to end your career in a good way...

And furthermore: hiking and gardening?

Nature and the garden are indeed a huge source of pleasure for me. Always have been, by the way. It's fun to develop the garden further, make it more exciting. We have already been featured in a magazine with our garden. When I said goodbye to the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, there was a quiz and one of the questions was: which publication is Mark most proud of? 1. ‘Doenvermogen 2. Diploma democracy or 3. The article in Groei & Bloei (Growth and Flowering)? The correct answer, of course, was 3.

But we also have a sandbox and a swing in the back, because that's the third thing about my retirement: grandchildren. Our three, soon to be four grandchildren live within fifteen minutes by bike from here. That will also take up a lot of my time. Anyway, everything they write about grandchildren is true.

Are you also happy that you are freed of certain things?

I look back on a very fulfilling, fine career. I am extremely grateful for all that I have been able to do. I therefore see my retirement mainly as a responsibility vacation. Responsibility was pretty much my middle name. As a professor and board member, I have always felt very responsible; at USG, at the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, in other contexts. When I do something, I want to do it properly.

I see my retirement mainly as a responsibility vacation.

When I was still on the board of USG, I went to Utrecht by train and had days that were filled from hour to hour with meetings. Then I sometimes saw these 'older people' with walking shoes going out for a day of walking. And I thought: I'd like to do that too. I've never allowed myself to take time off during the week and do fun things. I explicitly asked Peter Leisink, my former colleague and roommate at work: how do you do that, retire? I learned from him that I don't have to feel so responsible anymore. That you only have to do the things you enjoy – and there are plenty of them.

Farewell lecture

On Friday, November 29, 2024 at 4:15 p.m., Mark Bovens will say goodbye to Utrecht University with a closed symposium at the USG and a lecture entitled 'Opleiding als nieuwe verzuiling. En wat dit betekent voor de universiteit’ (Education as a new pillarisation. And what this means for the university') in the aula of Utrecht University Hall.