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.