The Netherlands and the Polder Model: A Response

Abstract

In response to the contributions by Davids-’t Hart, De Vries, and De Munck we emphasise that our book Nederland en het poldermodel [The Netherlands and the Polder Model] has been written for a general audience and therefore does not provide a detailed theoretical framework, nor a large number of graphs and tables. We have focused on the territory of the Netherlands, fully aware that this was not a (politically or economically) coherent territory before the sixteenth century, but any other choice would have been equally arbitrary. In the Middle Ages the region developed much like other, neighbouring parts of Western Europe, but whereas elsewhere the rise of centralised states and absolutist monarchs ended the development path based on bottom-up institutions, the successful Dutch Revolt and the formation of the decentralised Dutch Republic ensured much more continuity. We share the assessment of our critics that the transformation from this institutional structure via the mid-nineteenth century phase of ‘liberalisation’ into the new corporatism of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is still incompletely understood.