This article focuses on the administrative relation between the levels of authority in the Netherlands while paying special attention to the distribution of administrative tasks and legislative power between government tiers. How has this process developed since the constitutional reform in 1848? Which motives have underpinned the fluctuating ways in which responsibilities and powers were divided? The constitutional reform of 1848 laid the foundation for the current administrative structure. A three-tier system forms the basis of its organization: national government, regional government (provinces) and local governments (municipalities). This article shows that in the Netherlands the leitmotiv for decentralization is to improve the governmental performance; efficiency, standardization and simplification are recurring objectives. Decentralization is also often used as an instrument to resolve specific policy issues. The article describes a discrepancy between the motives for decentralization, which can be explained by the differences between fundamental legislation involving the administrative structure on the one hand and legislation aimed at policy-making on the other hand.

Dutch policies concerning the illegal stay of aliens are characterized by regular tensions between central and local governments. This article describes various concrete (proposals for) policy changes in the last twenty years and examines the reasons for these tensions while using the distinction between policy strategies based on denial versus strategies based on adaptation (Garland). When it comes to refugee policies, the central government works in the denial mode while local governments adapt and try to find solutions in order to bring problems under control. This attitude can be explained by the local governments’ duty to provide for in the case of humanitarian emergency situations.

The advent of the Dutch National Police in 2012 is the culmination of a much longer process of centralization and scaling up of the regular police organization. Partly as a result of this process of increased scale, municipalities have introduced their own surveillance officers to patrol the streets. Thus, the contours of a dual police system have arisen. This raises various questions, and in this article we focus on two of them. First, which background factors have contributed to the emergence of new municipal enforcement organizations and to what extent developments within the police have contributed to this development? Second, what are the consequences of this dual police system and what problems and risks are involved?

Tensions between the central national level and the local level become clearly visible in coffee shop policies, which have to fit within the international VN and EU treaties and strategies, national drug policy principles and local interests of public order. Three cases, all concerning long-term problems of drug tourism, nuisance and crime around coffee shops, illustrate these tensions. In the case of coffee shop Checkpoint near the Belgian border the Public Prosecutor aimed at solving the problem by prosecuting the coffee shop as a criminal network, while the mayor tried to minimize the negative effects by facilitating visitor flows. In the case of the private club and residence criterion in 2012 not all the mayors actually enforced these national criteria. This leads to a bigger emphasis on local tailoring. Thirdly, several mayors have opted for a regulation of cannabis production for coffee shops, while the stance of the national government is that international treaties banning this practice should be respected. The influence of local policies may be small, but in the end the local communities seem crucial when it comes to finding new ways of managing drug problems.