No Nonsense

In the 1980s, Dutch politics underwent a neoliberal turn overseen by the Christian Democrat Ruud Lubbers. It formed part of an international trend, famously spearheaded by Reagan and Thatcher. What was new, however, was the way Lubbers depoliticized his reforms and sold them to the public as ‘no-nonsense’ politics. When social democrats and trade unions came to embrace neoliberal reform in the mid-1990s, an elite consensus was forged.

In this path-breaking study, Merijn Oudenampsen traces the long shadow these developments cast over Dutch politics. Neoliberalism helped nurture the right-wing populism of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders and inspired the austerity policies of the right-wing liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte. A bleak political template was created for the world.