Bureaucrats First.: The Leading Role of Policymakers in the Dutch Neoliberal Turn of the 1980s.

Merijn Oudenampsen; Bram Mellink

doi:10.18352/tseg.1197

Author(s)

Merijn Oudenampsen University of Amsterdam
Bram Mellink University of Amsterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/tseg.1197

Keywords:

Neoliberalism, Bureaucracy, Corporatist consensus

Abstract

In the 1980s, a fundamental shift took place in Dutch economic policy: Keynesian demand-management was exchanged for a neoliberal supply-side approach. The single most influential account of this transformation has focused on consensus among corporatist policymakers as key to the reforms. It is the origin story of the Dutch ‘polder model’. The problem however, is that there is surprisingly little evidence for corporatist consensus in the 1980s. Instead of consensus, we argue that there has been a conflict of ideas between Keynesians and supply-siders. And instead of corporatism, we point to bureaucratic elites as a crucial factor in the Dutch policy shift. From the mid-1970s onwards, an influential group of senior public officials emerged that successfully advocated for a supply-side policy, inspired by the industrialization policies developed in the 1950s. In so doing, we believe the Dutch case exemplifies the pathbreaking role of administrative elites as highlighted by Skocpol, Weir and Heclo, rather than corporatist consensus.

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Author Biographies

Merijn Oudenampsen, University of Amsterdam

Merijn Oudenampsen (1979) is a sociologist and political scientist. He is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, working on a political history of neoliberalism in the Netherlands. He participates in the research project Market Makers, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). For his PhD, he wrote an intellectual history of the swing to the right in Dutch politics around the turn of the century. His PhD-thesis has been published by Routledge as The Rise of the Dutch New Right (2020) while it appeared in Dutch as De conservatieve revolte (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2018).
Bram Mellink, University of Amsterdam

Bram Mellink (1985) is assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam and postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University. He investigates the role of ideas in politics and their translation into policy. His current research focuses on the influence of the early neoliberal movement in Western Europe on Dutch policy debates on welfare politics between 1945 and 1975. This research is part of the research project Market Makers, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).