Governance and the democratic deficit: Introduction

In 1994, evaluations of the Rotterdam public safety policy showed that organizations involved in public safety had failed to make the citizens of Rotterdam feel safer. The launch of the national integrated public safety program in 1999 triggered the Rotterdam government to develop a local version. This chapter maps the different relevant underlying democracy models in order to analyze the Rotterdam integrated public safety program and to determine the basis for its legitimacy. The integrated public safety policy, launched mid-2001, was formatted into a five-year program that states that local public safety policy not only concerns local police and the Justice Department, but also local government agencies, societal organizations, civilians and corporations. The main goal of the program is increasing public safety in the city as a whole and in each of its thirteen municipal districts and sixty-two district quarters.

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