The in Between: How Civil Servants Balance Politics, Bureaucracy, and Stakeholder Demands to Support an Agrifood System Transition in the Netherlands

The civil service plays a key role in designing and implementing policies that support sustainable agrifood transitions. These transitions are increasingly urgent in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss, and societal demands for more sustainable food systems. However, the growing politicization of the civil service in highly contested policy a renas introduces significant tensions, particularly around democratic legitimacy and evolving expectations of what constitutes a “good” civil servant Braams et al., 2022; Diercks et al., 2025) 2025). These tensions are not merely theoretical but have real world consequences for policy processes and public trust in government al institutions. These challenges all converge in the Netherlands, where the debate over the future of agriculture has become deeply polarized. The Dutch agricultural sector is a major economic driver but also a significant source of environmental pressures, particularly nitrogen emissions. The governmen t’s inability to address the nitrogen crisis has led to widespread frustration among farmers, environmental groups, and the public, eroding trust in the civil service’s ability to ma nage these c hallenges effectively (den Uijl et al., 2022). Recent contributions h ave begun to identify strategies for civil servants to deal with such tensions. These include advocacy for specific policies , alig ning new policies with existing policies , enhancing political robustness, and increasing adaptive capacity (Brinkman et al., 2025; Luger et al., However, few address how civil servants deal with stakeholder conflicts and legitimize their actions towards sustainability transitions . This study addresses this gap by empirically studying whether and how civil servants employ and legitimize strategies to navigate ten sion s around agrifood transitions . Our empirical focus is on a process for developing a long term agricultural policy vision at the provincial level in the Netherlands. This case is especially interesting because it involves conflicting values and illustrates long term policy making under uncertainty . Additionally , provinces hold a unique position within multi level governance, where they must implement national policies while also attending to local interests . To study this, w e adopt an in ductive approach by combining participatory observation, interviews with civil servants and politicians, and document analysis. This method enables us to capture micro dynamics of the policy process, such as negotiations, compromises, and power plays that influence outcomes but are often hidden. Preliminary findings show how civil servants navigate the tensions inherent in agrifood transitions through strategic processes . For example, the provincial council's inability to vote in favour of the vision led civil servants to split the vision into separate chapters to be accepted one at a time . Beyond this case, our research sheds light on broader questions about the role of the civil service in sustainability transitions . How can civil servants maintain their commitment to sustainability while operating in politicized environments? What institutional supports or reforms might help them navigate these tensions more effectively? For transition literature, this study contributes to understanding h ow civil servants engage with the complexities of agrifood transitions. For practitioners, it provides practical insights into the strategies and pitfalls of policy making in contested arenas.