Disaster and Crisis management has been develops itself in the Netherlands from 1985 as a policy of low political/administrative interest to a field of policy with strong attention to priority over the past 10 years in the context of national security and safety. This research study deals with the implementation of policy in the practice of the disaster and crisis management in the safety region South Holland South over a period of 20-25 years.
The question of research is: "why is implementation of policy so complex and what factors play a role?". The research study approaches this question from a variety of perspectives. An important point of view is that policy and implementation in a particular way are related. This study considers policy and implementation from a synoptical-rational approach and from a multi-actor-oriented process approach.
The research itself will be developed in three ways. In the theory three approaches are studied, such as implementation as a complexity or joint action (Pressman and Wildavky), implementation as an evolutionary process (Weick) and implementation as network management (de Bruijn, ten Heuvelhof). The research in the practice is developed on the basis of content analysis of open interviews (N = 3) and through a number of questionnaires and interviews (N = 23) under officials in the field of safety region South Holland South.
To operationalize the content analysis and the items for the questionnaire/ interviews, the items are based on categories and factors from the literature. All elected perspectives provide insights on how the implementation works and how it in the region of research has going on.
A obvious conclusion is that in the case of the policy of disaster and crisis management in the Netherlands - and in particular in the region of the South Holland South – it has shown that a policy-oriented or synoptical-rational approach is not the determining factor for the implementation of disaster and crisis management. Otherwise more the elements from a (relational) multi-actor-oriented process or an evolutionary approach are the dominant factors for effective implementation of the proposed policy as it is perceived. Discussion raises the question whether in practice - or in view of management- it is better to work more systematically through these approaches and perspectives for effective implementation.
