The voice of civil society

This research aimed to explain which factors hindered or facilitated civil society actors [CSAs] in influencing the integration approach on permit holders of the Dutch municipalities The Hague and Amersfoort. By using the attributed influence method with a qualitative approach, I researched the influence of five CSAs as the perceived impact on the shape of integration policy. The reader should know that this research was focussed on how CSAs tried to change the integration policies from the integration approaches that were called in life around 2015 during the peak of refugee inflow. In this research, ‘influence’ is defined as the perceived control over the shape of policy. The research differs from previous research as this study is concentrated on the perception of CSA representatives how their CSA has affected the shape of integration policies. In other words, the respondents assessed the influence of their CSA and explained this perceived ability to influence based on three sets of overarching variables: organisational characteristics, institutional characteristics, and issue characteristics. Due to the expected sensitive character of labour market participation policies aimed at permit holders, I additionally examined whether labour market participation policies within these approaches were more difficult to be influenced.In both The Hague and Amersfoort, CSAs perceived very limited influence. Only NVA in Amersfoort believed to have had influence on the shape of current integration policies of Amersfoort. It turned out that none of the nine variables that were distributed over the three overarching variables could singly explain the ability to change integration policies of The Hague or Amersfoort. Although the variables from the institutional characteristics appeared to be dominant in this explanation, the ability to influence cannot be understood without the organisational and issue characteristics. Besides the institutional setting in which CSAs are active, a subsidy relationship with the municipality and a high level of financial resources and staff size seemed to be relevant for being able to influence integration policies. There was short mentioning of the larger difficulty to influence labour market participation policies in The Hague compared to other integration policies due to financial implications for the municipality. However, more research is needed to say more about the salient character of labour market participation policies aimed at permit holders. Overall, I ask academics to expand research on how the variables of this research relate to each other to say more about the implications of this research. Fact is that ‘influence’ remains complicated to be researched. This research was aimed to contribute to the field of civil society advocacy. Further, the research is practically relevant as it informs both CSAs and municipalities of this research which factors have hindered and facilitated CSAs to make their voice effectively known. As democracy is one of the main pillars of the Netherlands, it is of importance to know whether and why CSAs cannot influence the shape of integration policies. As this research is a case study, the reader needs to be aware of the limitedness of generalisations that can be made.