De griffier in gemeenteland

The registrar in the municipality The introduction of dualistic administration in the municipal government in the Netherlands in 2002 created the profession of the registrar. This article contains a description of the way Dutch municipal registrars fill in their office nowadays. The research shows that registrars deal with a wide range of tasks, that can be divided in four task fields: secretarial tasks, facilitating, representing and advising councillors. In the filling in of these task fields several profiles of registrars arise. So the basic registrar mainly organizes council meetings and reports on these meetings. The basic registrar plus performs the same tasks, but is also active in a few other task fields. The strategic advisor is the most active on all task fields. There are some significant differences between the three profiles when it comes to the importance of registrars to their activities, their value orientations and their competences. Contextual factors are hardly important, except the size of the municipality. It is also remarkable that the registrar has shown little activity with respect to two developments that are becoming increasingly important for municipal councils: regionalization and socialization of local government.