Formal institutional change and informal institutional persistence: the case of Dutch provinces implementing the Spatial Planning Act

Conscious attempts to affect planning practice by reforming the statutory planning system are a common form of institutional design. Despite this, the effectiveness of institutional design as a strategy has not been sufficiently addressed in the planning literature. The Dutch case has been monitored thoroughly and provides a good opportunity to assess the extent to which the instruments introduced under the new legislation were used according to the stated intent of lawmakers. As the national level has largely devolved responsibility to provinces, these comprised the objects of study. The empirical evidence covering the 2008-11 period reveals remarkable variation between provinces in applying the law, including applications that run directly counter to the law's objectives. These findings point to the difficulty of institutional design in planning practice, and suggest that lawmakers should rethink their approach to influencing behaviour of planning agents.