The Dutch Delta Committee as a boundary organisation

Scholars stress the need to bring science and policy together for effective policy making. This paper highlights an interesting site of co-production: the second Dutch Delta Committee. Consisting of representatives of science, politics, policy and industry, this state committee advised the Dutch government on adapting to climate change in 2008. Although the committee went beyond common climate projections and advocated non-incremental policy recommendations, its report provoked little opposition. Subsequently, its recommendations shaped institutional reform and policy development in Dutch adaptive governance. Using the concept of boundary organisations, this paper opens up the black box of the advisory process to explain the Delta Committee's functioning. We conclude that the current understanding of the effectiveness of boundary organisations tends to focus on their internal organisation. The internal processing, shaped by the deliberate composition and organisation of the committee, was indeed important for the production of useful knowledge and management of multiple boundaries. However, this was paralleled by external practices of continued interaction with a range of political, departmental, scientific and public actors in which the Committee positioned the advise. While the former mainly enabled the production of a high quality advice, the latter quested for its acceptation and legitimacy.