Samenvatting

At the Dutch municipal level, public order and safety are mainly associated with the mayor, who possesses most competences in that area. Nevertheless, in recent decades, the ‘safety alderman’ also seems on the rise. We define ‘safety alderman’ as an alderman that explicitly has safety, public order and/or enforcement in his or her portfolio. In this article, we examine how safety aldermen function, especially regarding cooperation with the mayor and other aldermen. We see that in practice an implicit or explicit dividing line exists between the work of a mayor and that of a safety alderman and that cooperation between the two is essential for the effective functioning of the safety alderman.