State formation, parties and democracy. Studies in comparative European politics

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chapter twelve | ancient pluralism and modern democracy in the netherlands: The 1989 Erasmus Lectures at Harvard University

Lecture I: ancient pluralism and modern democracy^*

Introduction

If one scratches the surface of the benign neglect which traditionally has shielded the Netherlands from studiosi in comparative analysis, one finds at most three ‘moments’ of interest. There is, firstly, a substantial awareness of the (albeit transient) importance of the Dutch Republic as both an economic and a cultural power between the late sixteenth and the late eighteenth century - an awareness predating even Annos S.S., the years before Simon Schama was born and wrote.^1. There is, secondly, although restricted to the much narrower community of political scientists, the view that the 20th century Netherlands is the archetype for a particular model in comparative politics, that of a consociational democracy, which has been brought on the map of comparative politics above all by the daunting analytical skills of Arend Lijphart.^2. And there is, thirdly, the newer stereotype of the Netherlands as a country of pacifism and libertarian traditions gone mad, internationally ailing from what Walter Laqueur has labelled ‘Hollanditis’,^3. and domestically suffering from a host of other ‘Dutch diseases’, including ‘heretic’ churches, legalized drugs, and generally errant government.

In the three public lectures which the holder of the Erasmus Lectureship in Dutch History and Civilization at Harvard University is contractually held to give, I shall take each of these stereotyped impressions of the Netherlands as a starting point. But I also intend to tie these three subjects together, by analyzing developments in Dutch politics and society in a long-term comparative perspective. In the process certain dilemmas in our thinking about such weighty matters as state formation and modernization, pluralism and democracy, will, I hope, become evident.

* The following pages contain three lectures on Dutch political developments delivered on 20 and 27 November and 4 December 1989 at Harvard University as Erasmus Lecturer in Dutch History and Civilization (1989-1990).

1. Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813. New York: Knopf, 1977: Idem, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf, 1987.

2. This model was first outlined in Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968; second edition 1975.

3. Walter Laqueur, ‘Hollanditis: A New Stage in European Neutralism,’ Commentary, August 1981, pp. 19-26

The Netherlands in a decade of bicentennials

In a decade of bicentennials The Netherlands does not fit easily. Of course, there have been celebrations and symposia to mark both the American and the French Revolution.^4. Such events have rekindled a debate initiated by R.R. Palmer,^5. on

4. E.g. J.W. Schulte Nordholt and R.P. Swierenga, A Bilateral Bicentennial: A History of Dutch-American Relations 1782-1982. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1982.

5. R.R. Palmer, ‘Much in Little: The Dutch Revolution of 1795,’ Journal of Modern History, 26(1954); Idem, The Age of Democratic Revolutions: A Political History of Europe and America 1760-1800. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, 2 vols.

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whether one can speak of a separate Dutch Revolution: a democratic movement in the Dutch Republic during the 1780s which antedates 1789 by a number of years and which, if it had not been quelled by Prussian arms in 1787, might have placed the heralding of modern democracy on the European continent in the Low Countries rather than in Paris, to the chagrin no doubt of François Mitterrand. The American example had undoubted influence on such democratic stirrings.^6. But even regarding this revolution there was in the Dutch Republic a sense of déjà vu which made even the last Orange stadholder in the Dutch Republic - the rather weak and hesitant William V whom Thomas Jefferson had dubbed ‘a half-King’^7. - exclaim on reading the American Declaration of Independence that it was little more than ‘a parody of the document which our ancestors made public against King Philip II of Spain^8. two hundred years before. If on the one hand there has been an enduring sense that the Dutch Republic knew many liberties and rights that others were to claim as theirs only through revolutions, there was on the other hand the realization that many properties of a new modern state, let alone of a modern democratic system, did not develop from an autochthonous soil, but were very much the consequence of French imposition after 1795 when in a series of regime changes and written constitutions a new unitary state was established. But this very fact of French influence and domination made neither 1795 when the old Republic fell, nor 1798 when a first somewhat radical constitution was adopted, let alone 1806 when a brother of Napoleon was made the first King of the Netherlands, or 1810 when the Kingdom of the Netherlands was for a short while incorporated into the Napoleonic empire, a suitable date for commemoration. Par contre the growth of nationalism made the ‘liberation’ of 1813 become a much more ardently celebrated event, even though it inaugurated a period of belated enlightened absolutism not known so far in a country which had prided itself on having staved off royal absolutism in the crucial 17th and 18th centuries when absolutism had triumphed in other European lands. Dutch historiography, Simon Schama has rightly argued, has hardly known what to do with the Batavian-French period between 1795 and 1813, its interpretations being haphazard and contentious.^9.

If on the one hand ‘True Freedom’ in the Netherlands predated both the American and French Revolution, while on the other modern state formation and democratic institutions came rather late and owed much to foreign example or even imposition, we clearly face a complex problem if we wish to link ancient Republican pluralism with the advent of modern democracy in the Netherlands. The issue is complicated because among Dutch historians one finds at least two substantially different interpretations.

6. See J.W. Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

7. See however H.H. Rowen, The Princes of Orange: The Stadholders in the Dutch Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 226 for the context in which this erroneous remark was made.

8. Cf. P. Geyl, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Stam. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, vol. 5, 1964, p. 1203.

9. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, pp. 15 ff.

A Whig or conciliatory interpretation

In what their antagonists have dubbed a ‘Whig interpretation’ of Dutch history^10. there are immediate and straight links between the traditional liberties of the Dutch Republic and the coming of responsible and democratic government in the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th century. In such an interpretation the following features of the Dutch Republic are singled out as particularly important: the break

10. For the application of this well-known term of H. Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History to Dutch historiography, see S. Stuurman, Verzuiling, Kapitalisme en Patriarchaat. Nijmegen: SUN, 1983, p. 311ff. who follows notably C.H.E. de Wit, De Strijd tussen Aristocratie en Democratie in Nederland 1780-1848: Kritisch Onderzoek van een Historisch Beeld en Herwaardering van een Periode. Heerlen: 1965; Idem, Het Ontstaan van het Moderne Nederland 1780-1848 en zijn Geschiedschrijving. Oirsbeek, 1978; Idem, Thorbecke en de Wording van de Nederlandse Natie. Nijmegen: SUN, 1983. See also S. Schama, Patriots and Liberators who speaks in the postscript of this book of ‘the whiggery of the historical Republic,’ p. 652.
The major names singled out for attack are the historians, H.T. Colenbrander, P. Geyl and E.H. Kossmann whose book The Low Countries 1780-1940. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978 is the easiest accessible source in English besides Schama's Patriots and Liberators. Kossmann has strongly dismissed De Wit's use of the term ‘Conciliante School’ in a review of De Wit's Thorbecke in Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant, 17 January 1981.
My own writings, notably H. Daalder, ‘Political Oppositions in Western Democracies,’ in R.A. Dahl (ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966, pp. 188-236; and a more detailed and later restatement in ‘Consociationalism, Center and Periphery in the Netherlands’, in: Per Torsvik (ed.), Mobilization, Center-Periphery Structures and National-Building: A Volume in Commemoration of Stein Rokkan. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1981, follow on the whole a whiggish orientation.

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in the development of what in the 15th and 16th century had seemed to become a modern absolutist state under a Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty; hence, the weakness of central institutions and the virtual absence of anything like an autochthonous military or a central bureaucracy in the ensuing United Provinces; the early, prominent role of a mercantile bourgeoisie; the emphasis on the right to resistance against unlawful actions of any sovereign and the derivation - at least in theory - of authority from the people; the persistent particularism which required constant accommodation between many actors with inherent rights; the toleration, in practice, of different religions (the privileged position of the Dutch Reformed Church notwithstanding); and the jealous maintenance of rights and privileges which in a cyclical view of history (what else after all did revolution mean) could inspire new freedoms.

A whiggish, gradualist view of history sees a natural continuity between these traditions and the later development of modern democracy. Proponents of this view treat the so-called Patriot Movement of the 1780s and the Batavian-French era between 1795 and 1813 with some ambivalence. They recognize the need for reform of the deadlocked Republican confederal structures, but castigate the strong drive for unitary government which radical reformers sought to obtain after 1795. They appreciate the desire for inclusion of new bourgeois strata in government but retain a strong suspicion of popular action. They show a grudging appreciation of the work of new activist reformers in areas such as taxation, education, and the unification of law after 1795. As regards the new constitutions of 1814 and 1815, which accompanied the establishment of the new independent Kingdom, they tend to emphasize not so much their centralizing and authoritarian features as their recognition of rights of individuals and restrictions on absolute power. These constitutions thus maintained some old liberties from which eventually opposition could develop against an all too activist and personalist, near-absolutist King William I. In this view it is telling that the first articulate opponent of the King was Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, a typical old patrician regent whose various constitutional drafts (written during the French period when he was without office) had formed the basis of the new post-1813 constitutions. And it was as telling that full ministerial responsibility was adopted as early as 1848, admittedly in a period of a still very restricted franchise, but also through a constitutional revision which greatly expanded the number of political and individual rights, and which replaced a rather weak Parliament (in which the Lower House was only indirectly elected and the Upper House consisted of royal appointees) by a directly elected Lower House with much increased powers and an Upper House elected by the provincial councils.

Admittedly, the political system after 1848 remained for very long rather oligarchic, with suffrage extensions coming in stages only in 1888, in 1896 and full manhood suffrage in 1917 (extended to women two years later). The very word ‘democrat’ retained a connotation of ‘radical’ or ‘populist’ until at least the end of the 19th century, those in the pays légal preferring to speak of constitutional and responsible government. Yet the system remained so pluralist that eventually, through a combination of organization from above and below, modern mass move-

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ments were formed, of Calvinists first, of Catholics and Socialists later which were to strengthen the pluralist, and associationalist, character of Dutch society to such an extent that it became internationally known as a ‘segmented’ society. I shall return to this phenomenon which the Dutch came to call Verzuiling or ‘pillarization’, and to the consociational model and other interpretations to which it gave rise, in my second lecture. Let it suffice for the present that in a ‘Whig’ view of Dutch history there are direct links between the ancient pluralism of the Dutch Republic and the gradualist evolution of a new pluralism which Dutch society retained in a new unitary state.

Such a ‘Whig interpretation’ meets undoubtedly with substantial objections. Thus, the period which separates the high tide of the Dutch Republic (which is the seventeenth rather than the eighteenth century) and the introduction of a full modern democracy (which one should probably date in 1917 when the principle of responsible government of 1848 was supplemented by universal suffrage),^11. is rather long even for those of us who see the impact of history as the most important factor in the development of a political culture. The ‘Whig’ view offers a rather selective picture of the history of The Dutch Republic which could hardly be described as a protodemocracy. Republican political theory of the time of the Republic might honor tenets of natural rights, a mixed state, a certain constitutionalism, the right to (corporate) resistance, and the value of diversity, this did not gainsay the fact that effective political power was concentrated in the hands of closed oligarchies, denying any representative role or accountability to the remainder of the people whatever lip service might be paid to a popular origin of public authority. Though many leaders of the Dutch cities were of bourgeois origin, in the 18th century a process of increased oligarchization and aristocratization increasingly excluded aspiring new strata from any political influence. In fact, the very notion of ‘bourgeoisie’ (or burgerij) is in danger of being used in an altogether too comprehensive and anachronistic manner to serve adequately as descriptive categories or possible explanations. The role of the Orange princes became stronger over time (even though the power of city rulers was sometimes so strong as temporarily to dispense with the appointment of stadholders).^12. Notions of collective freedoms were hardly the same as the recognition of individual rights. More generally, the gradualist view of Dutch history tends to gloss over important cutting-points such as the period of the Patriot movement (1784-1787), the turbulent period of 1795-1798, the particular options taken in 1813-1814, the sudden reforms of 1848 which owed as much to the then King William II's royal nervousness^13. as to the ingenuities of the Liberal lawyer Johan Rudolph Thorbecke who was its auctor intellectualis.

Let us therefore now investigate the alternative, more ‘Radical’ reading of Dutch history.

11. The 1917 revision brought full manhood suffrage but only removed existing constitutional obstacles for voting rights for women. The latter followed soon afterwards, however, through a parliamentary initiative adopted in 1919.

12. On the office of stadholder see for recent English-language interpretations H.H. Rowen, ‘Neither Fish nor Fowl: The Stadholderate in the Dutch Republic,’ in H.H. Rowen and A. Lossky, Political Ideas and Institutions in the Dutch Republic. Los Angeles: Clark Memorial Library, 1985, pp. 3-31 and the same author's later, more biographical volume (cited in note 7).

13. On hearing of revolutions in Vienna and Berlin the King had summoned the President of the Lower House, bypassing his ministers, to announce that he was willing to accept far-going reforms which he, his ministers and the majority of Parliament had so far resisted. The King declared to a meeting of the Diplomatic Corps that he had changed in twenty four hours ‘from someone very conservative to someone very liberal.’ and appointed a committee of five mainly oppositional politicians with J.R. Thorbecke as its primus movens, to advise on changes in the existing constitution and on the formation of a new cabinet. On these events see notably J.C. Boogman, Rondom 1848: De Politieke Ontwikkeling van Nederland 1840-1858. Amsterdam: Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1978.

The Radical reading of the record

The ‘Radical’ reading of Dutch history is substantially different from the preceding ‘whiggery’. First of all, ‘Radical’ Historians emphasize the oligarchical nature of the Republic which soon after the initial successes of the Revolt excluded all but the most narrow circles from any effective role in government, for all its refer-

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ences to burghers or the people. The pluralism and conflicts of the Republic were mainly expressions of factional strife, in which lower strata were either manipulated from above by rival regent groups or burst out in short-term violence that was rigorously suppressed.^14. Such ‘democracy’ as there was could only come out in the open with the radical wing of the Patriot Movement in the late 18th century which indeed might have carried ofï a Dutch revolution, were it not for the tweespalt (dissension) caused by the betrayal of the democratic cause by those aristocratic, oppositional regents whose radicalism in 1784 was little more than an expression of antagonism towards the Orange princes, and by the repression by Prussian arms. In the ‘Radical’ interpretation real progress was only ensured by the intervention of radical innovators after 1795 who against the intransigent resistance of ‘federalists’ and so-called moderaten enforced a unitary state and were behind the adoption of the first real constitution in Dutch history, that of 1798, which received massive support in a referendum, and which contained many of the properties that a constitution in a modern democracy would demand. In that view the promises which such a constitution contained were foiled by counter-revolutionary forces which in a series of counter-coups in July 1798 and 1801 forced a return to earlier oligarchical politics. If in the end the Batavian-French era brought yet lasting innovations, this was as much due to the direct effect of Napoleonic reforms, and the refusal of the new King William I after 1813 to honor the restorative intentions of the regenten who had wished to return to the status quo ante of Republican days, to old liberties which had in fact been mainly the privileges of the few. The ‘Radicals’, then, see also direct lines between conditions under the Republic and later democratization, but to them such lines run from the ‘democratic’ opposition in the Patriot Movement in the 1780s, via the radical reformers after 1795 and the constructive innovators who continued to lay the groundwork for a new unitary state under different regimes after 1798, to William I who as King did much to modernize government and society, and to the Liberal opposition under Johan Rudolph Thorbecke who as a typical representative of all too long excluded social strata gave shape to a new system of responsible government in 1848 and following years. This ‘Radical’ reading of the record also noted the later process of social segmentation during which Calvinists, Catholics, Radical-Liberals and Socialists mobilized. But they see this process less as the recasting of traditional diversity and pluralism in a process of social modernization, but as a conscious effort at social control by sections of a ruling class which feared the threats of secularization and socialism. Throughout their analysis their main concern is with lasting inequalities rather than with pluralist freedoms. Existing hierarchies and social bonds are seen to stand in the way of genuine freedom and real equality for all.

Needless to say, such a ‘Radical’ interpretation also meets with objections. There is more than a bit of anachronism in their use of terms like burgerij, volk and democratie in an analysis of conditions under the Dutch Republic. Following that era one encounters rather a strong element of teleological and determinist reasoning. This leads to many aprioristic value judgments, and to a grouping of actors in mutually exclusive categories of ‘reactionaries’ and ‘progressive’ elements which makes for rather strange bed-fellows. Unmistakably authoritarian

14. The work of Charles Tilly has become recently an increasingly important inspiration for Dutch historians. Cf. Rudolf Dekker, Holland in Beroering: Oproeren in de 17e en 18e Eeuw. Baarn: Ambo, 1982.

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figures, including Napoleon and King William I, are portrayed as unwitting builders of democracy, whereas proponents of ancient liberties are seen as incorrigible defenders of privilege. The importance of constitutionalist provisions, even in the admittedly rather ‘royalist’ constitutions of 1814 and 1815 are belittled. Against this the constitutional revision of 1848 is too much seen as the work of only a few like Thorbecke, without due emphasis on certain continuities which were there also,^15. and the great importance that the co-existence of different interests (e.g. the wish of Catholics to obtain greater guarantees for freedom of education and church organization, for instance) had in its passing.

15. Thus, the first Orange King, William I, met with increasing parliamentary resistance. In 1839 Parliament rejected the budget, leading the two ministers of Finance and the Colonies most directly concerned to resign. The end of the protracted struggle over the secession of the Southern Netherlands between 1830 and 1839 necessitated a constitutional revision. This revision introduced reforms which the King would not accept. He preferred to abdicate in 1840.

Rival conceptions of democracy

In evaluating these two rival interpretations of Dutch history, one should distinguish, I submit, between two rather different questions: democracy as a theoretical notion, and democratization as a long-term historical process. Whereas the first should be solved by reference to political theory, the latter is more a matter of comparative empirical analysis.

The ‘Whig’ and the ‘Radical’ interpretations would seem to reflect rather closely different views of what democracy is all about. On the one hand we find in democratic theory an insistence on the need of a social as well as a constitutional ‘balance of powers’, apt to restrain absolute power from whatever source. On the other hand there is the equally strong tradition of popular sovereignty which emphasizes the participation of equals. It is an old dilemma in political thought known from the days of Plato and Aristotle and particularly salient in the Enlightenment. On the one hand there is the honored theory of the ‘mixed constitution’ elaborated in particular by thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu and Madison and later, notably after the French Revolution, by numerous politicians and lawyers analyzing political systems in terms of ‘powers’ and ‘fundamental rights’. On the other hand there are theories starting from notions of absolute sovereignty in which a clear connection is seen between absolutism and individualism (the one being to some extent the logical presupposition of the other) and which wishes to do away with all ‘corps intermédiaires’ - to Montesquieu the essential protection against despotism, to Hobbes on the contrary ‘worms in the entrails of natural man’ and to Rousseau dangerous ‘associations partielles’. In the latter, more radical view it is necessary to free individuals from existing social bonds which serve only to protect privilege and hierarchy, so as to allow every one to participate equally in the formation of the general will. ‘One and indivisible’ - a notion already theoretically present in the canons of royal absolutism - received its full emotional expression in the eschatology of Jacobin revolution. It was a notion which fitted ill with the ancient pluralism in Dutch society, and which was resisted as such also after 1795 by those who regarded too much unification as a real threat, to liberty as much as to established positions.

Proponents of the two different interpretations of Dutch history would therefore have done well to read for instance that small Tractatus of Robert A. Dahl's A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago University Press, 1956) which would have brought home the dilemma's inherent in both ‘Madisonian democracy’ and

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‘Populist Democracy.’^16. And if they had followed through on Dahl's writings^17. they would also have turned automatically to a more systematic analysis of the processes of democratization. Dahl has analyzed the coming about of democracy as the product of change along two distinct dimensions: on the one hand that of ‘hegemony’ versus free and open competition, and on the other hand that of a lesser or greater inclusiveness, i.e. the more limited or extensive possibilities of political participation. One cannot help feeling that the ‘Whig’ interpretation lays too exclusive stress on persistent pluralism as the guarantor of open competition to the neglect of patent inequalities, whereas the more ‘Radical’ view stresses individualism and equality taking authoritarian elements in its stride as presumably necessary, but transient and hence not very worrisome, stages on the road to a participatory democracy.

The argument thus shifts to the comparative, empirical level of democratization as an historical process. The question to be answered becomes which road to democracy is more likely to be the more enduring. One which starts from ancient pluralism (in the Dutch case: the Oud-Republikeinse Veelheid^18.) characterized by ineradicable diversity in which initially narrow circles of elites live per force in a climate of both conflict and accommodation, to broaden gradually over wider social strata. Or one in which, existing privileges are broken by unitary state power in which an initial authoritarianism is eventually replaced by a system of open competition.^19. Clearly, the ‘Whig’ interpretation underwrites the first argument, whereas the ‘Radical’, or let us call it: more Jacobin, interpretation embraces the second one, discounting in the name of popular sovereignty and a desirable social equality the need for free and open competition which in their view is likely to develop automatically once an effective central sovereign has laid the real foundations for individual rights and participation. In a comparative European perspective there would seem little doubt that ‘gradualist’ developments such as took place in England, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Switzerland have led to more stable democratic regimes in the 20th century than countries with greater Jacobin ruptures, such as France or Spain. Dutch ‘Radical’ historians rightly demand a more open and positive approach to the undoubted importance of the democratic wing of the Patriot movement before the French period, and of the substantial achievements of the initial builders of a unitary state after 1795. But ‘Whigs’ are equally right in emphasizing the relatively ‘moderate’ character of that period in a comparative European perspective, and to see rather more continuity between old Republican pluralism and later constitutionalism than the radicals tend to grant. In the light of comparative developmental analysis, the Netherlands clearly fit two generalizations put forward by the much-missed Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan:

1.	the stronger the inherited traditions of representative rule, whether within estates, territorial assemblies or city councils, the greater the chances of early legitimation of opposition;
2.	the stronger the inherited traditions of representative rule, the slower, and the less likely to be reversed the processes of enfranchisement and equalization.^20.

16. See R.A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

17. Notably the two books in which he turned to more developmental analyses Political Oppositions in Western Democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966; and Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971.

18. This happy term is taken from J.A. Bornewasser, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Weesp: Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1983, vol. 11, p. 208.

19. For a fuller analysis along these lines, see H. Daalder, ‘Parties, Elites and Political Developments in Western Europe,’ in: J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner eds., Political Parties and Political Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, pp.43-77 (Chapter 5 in this volume).

20. S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties. Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1970, pp. 82-83.

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On the basis of the contrast so far presented of conflicting ‘Whig’ and ‘Radical’ interpretations of Dutch history, let me illustrate the argument with a more detailed analysis of three themes: (1) the relation between corporate and individual freedoms in Dutch history; (2) the nature of the notion of ‘state’; and (3) the special composition of the Dutch political elites.

Corporate freedoms and individual liberty

‘Whigs’ and Radicals' would undoubtedly agree that claims for, and the recognition of, group rights and collective freedoms preceded the full recognition of individual rights in Dutch history. Existing privileges and rights were evoked to justify the Dutch Revolt. Both medieval organicist conceptions and natural right traditions provided ample arguments. The major historian of Dutch political theory in the 17th century, Ernst H. Kossmann,^21. has therefore stressed the conservative character of much of the right of resistance literature (initially of Catholic origin, but later extensively elaborated by Calvinist writers). They generally remained ‘within narrow hedges’, he argued, containing a mixture of Aristotelian, Humanist, Calvinist and Natural Law reasoning.^22. He sees a much more real breakthrough in later theories, analyzing a development in the 17th century from Althusius (whom he regards as a far from modern thinker compared to, for instance, Bodin^23.) via Spinoza, to Willem Van der Muelen^24. and Ulrich Huber whose theories preceded Locke, in a development which antedates by at least one century a similar evolution of thought during the Enlightenment from Montesquieu via Rousseau to Constitutionalists of 1789 and the post-Napoleonic era.

Kossmann uses criteria of modernity, including an explicit recognition of individualism, which would seem to do insufficient justice to the importance of corporate freedoms also for later developments. Ancient Calvinist conceptions of pluralism (as developed notably in the Dutch Republic) would inspire later neopluralist analyses, both in the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th century,^25. as well as in Germany (e.g. the work of Otto Von Gierke) and in Anglo-Saxon political thought (e.g. the work of the so-called ethical pluralists: J.N. Figgis, F. Maitland and the younger H.J. Laski who were to influence pluralist political theory also in later days).^26.

But does this imply that early corporate freedoms also led to early individual rights? On this the answer must be rather more tentative. There was the important article XIII in the Union of Utrecht of 1579 which stipulated that ‘any one particular person should remain free in his religion’, but this clause was as much a ban on Inquisition as it was the recognition of an individual right. The right to property was obviously well-understood. But if one scrutinizes Kossmann's survey of 17th century political thought in the Netherlands one does not encounter a developed doctrine of individual rights among mainstream theorists, but rather among outsiders who had elaborated ‘a new individualist foundation of absolutism.’^27. Such an argument would bring Kossmann unwittingly rather near to the position of the ‘Radicals’, who tend to regard the old Republican diversity more as props of privilege than foundations of individual right.

Should we then conclude that actual individual rights (as distinct from theoret-

21. See notably E.H. Kossmann, Politieke Theorie in het Zeventiende-Eeuwse Nederland. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, deel LXVII, No. 2. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1960; E.H. Kossmann, ‘The Development of Political Theory in the Seventeenth Century,’ in J.S. Bromley eds., Britain and the Netherlands. Papers Delivered to the Oxford-Netherlands Historical Conference 1959. London, 1963, pp. 91-110. Kossmann published a number of later essays on this subject, sometimes written in reaction to international authorities like J.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Francesco Venturi. [Note by author (2011): Some of these have been reprinted in E.H. Kossmann, Politieke Theorie en Geschiedenis: Verspreide Opstellen en Voordrachten. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1987. Long after this lecture was given, an English translation appeared of Kossmanns important survey of Dutch political thinkers: E.H. Kossmann, Political Thought in the Dutch Republic. Three Studies, Amsterdam: Koinklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2000.]

22. Politieke Theorie in de Zeventiende Eeuw, p. 9.

23. See his ‘Popular Sovereignty at the Beginning of the Dutch Ancien Regime,’ The Low Countries History Yearbook/Acta Historiae Neerlandicae, vol. 14 (1981), pp. 1-28, and ‘Bodin, Althusius, Parker. Of: Over de Moderniteit van de Nederlandse Opstand,’ in: Politieke Theorie en Geschiedenis, pp. 93-110

24. Kossmann compared Van der Muelen to Locke asking: ‘Why was he forgotten while the fame of Locke, who moved over a wider field, but who was not a more penetrating or original thinker than he, would only grow? Was this simply because what in the final analysis had nothing surprising in the Netherlands was still fresh for Englishmen?’ Politieke Theorie in de Zeventiende Eeuw, p. 71 (translation HD).

25. E.g. the influential Calvinist leader, Abraham Kuyper, in his doctrine of soevereiniteit in eigen kring (inherent sovereignty for social groups), later developed by Herman Dooyeweerd in his philosophy of wetskringen, and the Liberal Hugo Krabbe who consciously opposed the doctrine of state sovereignty with a counter doctrine of rechtssoevereiniteit. Krabbe's study published in German as Die Lehre der Rechtssouveränität (1906) was translated into English by George H. Sabine under the title The Modern Idea of the State (New York: 1927). Sabine, of course, gave considerable credit to Althusius as the founder of a modern pluralism in his influential A History of Political Theory.

26. For a more general analysis see H. Daalder, ‘European Political Traditions and Processes of Modernization: Groups, the Individual and the State,’ in: S.N. Eisenstadt ed., Patterns of Modernity, I, The West, London: Frances Pinter, 1987, pp. 22-43; reprinted in this volume chapter 4.

27. Kossmann, Politieke Theorie in het Zeventiende-Eeuwse Nederland, p. 68, p. 77 and pp. 80 ff. In discussing Vander Muelen Kossmann points to ‘how the rights of men and citizen could grow owing to the new, individualist foundation of absolutism which writers such as Hobbes had provided, and being no longer absorbed and evaporated in the aristocratie constitutionalism of the 16th century acquired a very precise and dynamic meaning.’ (translation HD).

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ical argumentation) originated only with the change of political regime after 1795, and that they resulted from an imitation of American and French declarations rather than that they grew in domestic Dutch soil? There are strong pointers in this direction: a direct tie between state and subject was only laid after the arrival of the unitary state in 1795, and such important elements of a modern democracy as citizenship, equality before the law, a recognition for the need for a unification of laws and one common judiciary were undoubtedly the products of the Batavian and French periods. It would be too simple, however, to regard the formal enunciation of fundamental human rights as essentially the product of radical political action, and to remain blind for the much longer gestation which preceded it. In the Netherlands, just as much as in Britain or America, vested corporate interests played an important role in the elaboration of concepts of inherent rights. It is no accident that old regenten in particular thought fit to secure constitutional rights at the very moment when they hoped for a restoration of Republican privileges in 1813. The constitution of 1814 guaranteed the liberty of the person, access to the judiciary, public court proceedings. The Constitution of the new Dutch-Belgian Kingdom of 1815 added equality before the law, freedom of petition, freedom of expression, the inviolability of private homes and the right to property. Significantly, many erstwhile radical politicians nestled comfortably in positions of authority and privilege, whereas some of the old regenten were to develop from defenders of old privilege into more modern liberals.

In fact, the relation between collective and individual rights was to remain on the political agenda for centuries to come. It presented substantial problems in the emancipation of erstwhile discriminated groups, such as Jews, Dissenters and Catholics, with some preferring an individual road to freedom and equality, but others desiring much more collectivist ways. It would reveal itself in crucial conflicts of policy, e.g. on the control of schools, the position of minorities (including that majoritarian minority of women, and homosexuals), and the handling of issues like abortion and euthanasia.

The notion of state and the development of state institutions

The rather ambiguous use of the term ‘state’ when applied to Dutch developments shows up similar dilemmas as the terms rights and freedoms. Its use, notably in the days of the Republic, reveals rather different and variable meanings. Independence as an actor on the international scene was clearly implied, but internally the situation was rather more obscure. Hence, to quote Kossmann once more, there was ‘little relevance in French or English theories in a state which seemed destined for an entirely different future and which had a wholly different foundation.’^28. The term ‘state’ might mean something like commonwealth, a polis, a manner of living together. But it could not easily be identified with one central sovereign authority. It could even be doubted whether there was such a sovereign center at all, or whether one should rather speak of ‘Seven Sovereignties’. And even the latter notion would do little justice to the congeries of public and private arrangements which led to rather different titles to authority in different areas of the Republic. Perhaps the best generalization would be that there was a system of varying cor-

28. Kossmann, Politieke Theorie in het Zeventiende-Eeuwse Nederland, p. 7. (translation HD).

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porate offices and authorities loosely linked together in collegial bodies in which those at the apex might enjoy titles like High Mightinesses and would represent the Republic externally, while having only very limited direct control over authorities and individuals lower down.

Hence it is not wrong to speak of events after 1795 in terms of state building, given that only then a true central government was established which exercised direct control over individual subjects, now turned citizens. The process is too often glossed over in blanket statements about the establishment of a unitary state, without detailed analysis about actual organizational developments. One speaks of measures taken in particular areas of government policy such as a pooling of debts, the introduction of common taxes, new government measures on sea and river defenses (waterstaat), agriculture, education, the postal services, the introduction of population registers, etc. There are general references to the influence of French institutions and administrative procedures. There was a Wholesale borrowing of French legal codes. But on the whole the importance and the impact of such reforms have remained obscure, with much greater attention being given to the formal institutions of government (notably the relations between King and Parliament as laid down in successive constitutions after 1813) than to the realities of administration and government activity, whether centrally of locally in the early 19th century.

As a result mistaken views could arise on the actual meaning of reforms. General references to the Napoleonic model, and to superficial resemblances between France and the Netherlands in such matters as central government supervision of provincial and municipal government (including in the Netherlands the central appointment of provincial governors and mayors which continues to exist to this day), gave an exaggerated impression of the extent of bureaucratization and centralization after 1795. In fact, the number of central government officials remained very small.^29. Appointments to official positions were largely a matter of patronage rather than competitive entry on merit. The actual as distinct from the legal autonomy of municipalities remained very strong indeed. There is no doubt that French and German legal doctrines had an important influence on conceptions about government authority and on jurisprudence (even though the Dutch term Overheid never assumed the full force of the German Obrigkeit). But even so, older traditions, notably the view that many government tasks were the responsibility of holders of offices with inherent autonomy rather than of central government officials, retained a strong influence. In practice, a combination of ancient particularism and inherent right deflected therefore much of the unitary forces of a deliberate establishment of central government agencies and central government supervision of lower levels of government.

Here again one meets with potentially rival interpretations. Those who insist, with reason, on the clear break with the institutions of the Republic which the establishment of a new unitary state after 1795 implied, see on the whole little continuity with older conceptions of public authority. In their view modern administration is a far cry indeed from Althusius' attempt to establish all government authority on the principle of consociationes, corporations freely arrived at

29. Cf. data in P.G. van IJsselmuiden, Binnenlandse Zaken en het Ontstaan van de Moderne Overheidsbureaucratie in Nederland 1813-1940. Kampen: Kok, passim.

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by interested parties which attribute to such bodies preferably minimal authority. On closer analysis, however, there is rather more continuity than a ‘French’ or ‘German’ view of government as essentially hierarchical and bureaucratic would imply. In actual practice, the Dutch ‘state’ has remained brokkelig (multifarious). One finds a perennial resistance against one man authority, and a strong reliance on collegial forms of decision-making. Holders of independent offices (provincial and local magistrates including notably mayors, judges, professors, professional men in general) retain a much higher social prestige than even high-ranking departmental officials. As regards the bureaucracy proper there still is a great deal of particularism. There is indeed a high degree of independence in both government policy-making and civil service recruitment. The Dutch administration remains therefore very different from a Weberian bureaucracy. The borderline separating politicians and officials, too, has remained rather indefinite.

What is true within the administration, and between different levels of central and local government, tends also to be true in the relation between government and private actors. Many government tasks are in practice left to private groups working under government authorization and with government funds. The borderline between public and private has become so blurred that experts on public administration spoke of ‘osmosis’^30. long before neophytes in political science taught them to speak rather of neocorporatism.

30. The term ‘osmosis’ was used as early as the 1930s by the pioneer of the discipline of public administration in the Netherlands, G.A. van Poelje.

Political elites

Ancient pluralism, finally, has also left clear traces on the recruitment and behavior of political elites. Both our ‘Whigs’ and our ‘Radicals’ tend to concur in describing Dutch society as being emphatically ‘bourgeois’ and ‘mercantile’ in character. Although there is truth in such characterizations, it does tend to obscure certain important facts, notably the long-lasting influence of more aristocratic milieus in the Dutch elite, the limited share of persons with direct involvement in industry or commerce, and the entry of new social strata mainly at the hands of the mobilizing religious groups of Calvinists and Catholics and later the Socialists.

Studies of Dutch Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament make it clear that the share of members belonging either to the nobility or to the traditional Patriciaat remained very strong in what Italians would call the classe politica, until well into the 20th century.^31. On the contrary, the recruitment of persons with direct experience in banking, commerce or manufacturing remained very low. Government remained for very long in the hands of families whose ancestors had occupied public office of one sort or another. This factor contributed substantially to the continuity of a rather traditional elite political culture which could maintain itself in a society which in a comparative European perspective remained rather static in the 19th century. It also may have contributed to a certain degree of dissociation between the realities of government, and the realities of economic enterprise. Although the latter might be regarded as the nervus rerum by all, ‘business’ has on the whole remained remarkably aloof from direct involvement in government, and so have government and administration from business.

The break with older ‘patrician’ styles has tended to come mainly from the

31. See notably J.Th.J. van den Berg, De Toegang tot het Binnenhof: De Maatschappelijke Herkomst van de Tweede Kamerleden tussen 1849 and 1970. Weesp: Unieboek, 1983.

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effective mobilization of the later minority cultures of Calvinists, Catholics and Socialists, generally representing the world of what the Dutch have called ‘smaller men’ (kleyne luyden) in cities and rural areas, rather than large scale economic units which anyhow developed comparatively late in the Netherlands.

The successful entry of new milieus has added to the diversity and pluralism of Dutch government and administration. Perhaps, then, Althusius should after all be regarded as more in consonance with Dutch traditions than either a French ‘Napoleonic’ or a German ‘Weberian’ view would make us think.

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Lecture II: the Netherlands: prototype of consociationalism?

Introduction

In the fall of 1966 I was asked by the University of California Press to read a manuscript entitled The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. It was written by a young Dutch-bom, American-trained political scientist, Arend Lijphart, then an Assistant Professor at Berkeley. The manuscript contained not so much a monograph on the Netherlands as what the author called ‘an extended theoretical argument based on a single case of particular significance to pluralist theory’.^32. It seemed to me to contain an exceptionally lucid and intelligent book. I recommended publication with enthusiasm. Fortunately, my advice prevailed over that of a second reader who did not think much of it. Neither of us probably realized at the time, how influential Lijphart's book was to be, both in its analysis of Dutch politics and as a catalyst in a revision of prevailing typologies of European political systems. Such typologies had traditionally been formed in the light of a cross-channel comparison between a stylized Britain on the one hand, and a rather less virtuous ‘continent’ on the other - the latter mainly reflecting the image of the unstable and immobilist politics of Weimar Germany and the French Third and Fourth Republic, with post-1945 Italy being thrown in for good measure.^33. Lijphart's book provided a succinct analysis of a system which had generally been passed over by analysts of comparative politics. Its fate was to be written off as a small state which unlike larger European countries did not have to face the ‘real’ problems of international politics,^34. one of the ‘sober parliamentary monarchies’ of North-Western Europe,^35. a ‘mixed’ case combining features of what Gabriel Almond had termed the Anglo-Saxon systems on the one hand, and the European Continental system on the other.^36. Let me add that the usual Dutch reaction in contacts with foreign observers, too, has been one of belittlement, of an apologetic and jocular embarrassment. More than any other Dutchman writing then or now, Lijphart was steeped in the writings of American political scientists. He had studied at Yale University, choosing Gabriel Almond and Karl Deutsch as members of his Thesis Committee,^37. and being fully aware of the writings of David Truman, Robert Dahl and others in a ‘pluralist’ mould. He knew therefore at first hand the force of a well-known theorem in pluralist theory: that political moderation owes much to cross-cutting cleavages in a society, in contrast to a situation where different cleavages run parallel and reinforce one another - the latter being a condition likely to lead to explosive tensions. The Netherlands seemed to present a clear case where society was deeply divided, split among distinct subcultures of Calvinists, Catholics and Socialists in addition to the rather less organized Liberals. The country would therefore seem to be a candidate for great political strife and instability. I had been exposed myself to the full force of the pluralist argument, when a leading American colleague had once said to me, only half-jokingly: ‘You realize your country theoretically cannot exist!’ Lijphart had set out to answer that dilemma, and had come up with his famous ‘self-denying prophecy’. Political elites, con-

32. Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968, p. 15, n. 42.

33. For a review of the chequered development of typologies of European political systems, see H. Daalder, ‘Countries in Comparative European Politics,’ European Journal of Political Research, vol. 15, no. 1 (1987), pp. 3-21 (reprinted in this volume Chapter 2). This article contains the text of my Stein Rokkan Lecture, spoken in 1986 in tribute of the man who did more than anyone to develop a realistic ‘typological-topological map’ of Europe. See in particular his Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget/New York: McKay, 1970.

34. One might note this element in the work of F.A. Hermens, C.J. Friedrich, Barrington Moore and others.

35. For a comparative analysis see R. Fusilier, Les Monarchies Parlementaires: Étude sur les Systèmes de Gouvernements de Suède, Norvège, Pays-Bas, Danemark, Belgique, Luxembourg. Paris: Editions Ouvrières, 1960.

36. Cf. Gabriel A. Almond, ‘Comparative Political Systems,’ Journal of Politics, vol. 18 (August 1956), pp. 391-409.

37. The thesis concerned was not his book The Politics of Accommodation, but a case study of Dutch decision-making regarding the decolonization of New Guinea. It was published under the title The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch and West New Guinea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

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scious of the dangers inherent in the simultaneous presence in one country of potentially hostile subcultures, could act to contain conflict provided they acted according to certain definite rules. In the Dutch case, Lijphart had listed as many as seven such rules: government as ‘business’ (instead of a ‘game’), agreement to disagree, summit diplomacy, proportionality, depoliticization, secrecy, and the Government's right to govern.^38. While he developed the model originally as a footnote to prevailing pluralist theory, the consociational model soon became both an ideal type in comparative analysis and a prescriptive theory, deliberately challenging the assumptions of ‘majoritarian’ democracy developed from a British and to a lesser extent an American prototype.

38. The Politics of Accommodation, chapter 7. In his later elaboration of what he soon came to call the ‘consociational democracy model’ Lijphart reduced this list to four properties: grand coalitions, autonomy, proportionality and mutual veto. For a fuller exposition of the model see Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

The problems at issue

I shall not try to follow the full ramifications of the ensuing debate about consociational democracy for which there are other forums and other sources.^39. My subject is rather whether the Netherlands does (or more accurately, did) fit the model through which so many foreign observers have learnt to see and interpret the country.

To do so we should first agree on the time-period under consideration. This cannot be the present. For many of the features of a segmented society^40. which the Netherlands still showed when Lijphart analyzed the country in the mid-1960s have now become history. Lijphart had of course recognized this. Already in the first edition of The Politics of Accommodation he had added a chapter 11 entitled: ‘Dutch Politics in Transition;’ and in the later, manifold Dutch editions of his book he deliberately turned present tenses into past ones whenever relevant to mark the fact that his model really fitted Dutch politics until the 1960s rather than the period since then.^41. The heyday of Verzuiling (the Dutch term for the process of the formation of strong ideological subcultures) has generally been placed either in the 1920s and 1930s, or in the two decades 1945-1965 which followed the Second World War But at the same time Lijphart lays particular emphasis on conditions before World War I. To quote Lijphart directly:

Around 1910 the political situation looked quite serious. The three major issues [i.e. conflicts over education, the extension of the franchise, and the role of labor in society] had reached a peak of tension, and the lines between the rivals were sharply drawn. Especially the issues of the schools and the right to vote remained fundamentally unresolved with all of the contending groups hardening in their intention not to yield (p. 110).

In Lijphart's interpretation both the perils to the system, and the deliberate action of elites to meet these, predated therefore the period which most observers have regarded as the high tide of social segmentation in the Netherlands. On closer inspection we are faced therefore with a number of complex questions: we should first indicate the nature of social cleavages in Dutch society; we must then ask ourselves whether such cleavages were cross-cutting one another or not, and to what extent they jeopardized the system; we should then analyze the reasons why political leaders of different subcultures could resort to what Lijphart explicitly calls their ‘courageous’ decision to seek an accommodation, without endangering

39. See for particularly useful surveys the extensive treatment and bibliographies in Arend Lijphart, Power-Sharing in South Africa. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1984 (notably chapter 4) and M.P.C.M. van Schendelen (cd.), Consociationalism, Pillarization and Conflict Management in the Low Countries. Meppel: Boom, 1984 (special issue of Acta Politica, vol. 19, No. 1 (January 1984), pp. 161-175). For my own evaluation, see H. Daalder, ‘The Consociational Democracy Theme,’ World Politics, vol. 26, No. 4 (July 1974), pp. 604-621, reprinted in this volume as Chapter 11.

40. For the term ‘segmented society’ see notably V.R. Lorwin, ‘Segmented Pluralism: Ideological Cleavages and Political Cohesion in Smaller European Democracies,’ Comparative Politics, vol. 3 (1971), pp. 141-157. Cf. H. Daalder, ‘The Netherlands: Opposition in a Segmented Society,’ in: R.A. Dahl (ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966, pp. 188-236. In what follows I shall use the terms ‘segments,’ ‘subcultures’ and the Dutch term zuilen interchangeably.

41. This somewhat different version of his original English manuscript was published in Dutch under the title Verzuiling, Pacificatie en Kentering in de Nederlandse Politiek. Amsterdam, DeBussy, 1968; 6th ed. 1986. He also explicitly noted the changes which were occurring in the Netherlands in the second edition of The Politics of Accommodation. Berkeley, 1975. At the same time, however, he has shown elsewhere how little the Netherlands really shifted on the dimensions which he has since then developed for comparative analysis in his Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984; see his ‘From the Politics of Accommodation to Adversarial Politics in the Netherlands: A Reassessment,’ in H. Daalder and G.A. Irwin (eds.), Politics in the Netherlands: How Much Change? London: Cass, 1989, pp. 139-153 which was also published as a special issue of West European Politics, vol. 12, no. 1 (January 1989).

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their own position as regards possibly competing elites in their subcultures; this analysis will automatically make us inquire into the historical sequence of events, notably into the issue whether the conditions of 1910 did imperil the system, and whether the ‘consociational’ solution was therefore a response to a real challenge or rather, as I shall argue, the major reason why such a challenge never did assume the perilous nature which Lijphart ascribed to it; this implies that we must investigate the relationship between ‘consociational elite behavior’ on the one hand, and social segmentation (verzuiling) on the other. To the extent that we must conclude that the Lijphart analysis tends to portray too mechanistic a picture of closed rival blocs pitted against one another, we should restore history to its rightful place, as the only discipline which can do justice to the rather substantial differences which actually existed among the different social movements and subcultures, including differences in their relations to one another and to the nation of which they formed apart.

Which social cleavages?

Pared to its essentials the Lijphart model of Dutch politics is very simple: it is based on the simultaneous existence of two cleavages, religion and social class. On the religious dimension the distinction is between the latitudinarian, indifferent and agnostic groups on the left, the church-going Calvinists and Catholics on the right. The latter division accounted for two subcultures: a Calvinist one consisting of orthodox members of the Dutch Reformed Church and smaller Calvinist denominations (Gereformeerden) which together accounted for some 25% of the population, and a larger Catholic one of one-third of the population or more. Jointly, the two religious minority groups therefore represented a majority of the population. On the secular-left side, class made for a split between Liberals and Socialists. Of these two groups, the latter were the larger and more organized (eventually incorporating somewhere between a quarter and a third of the population), leaving the Liberals in a real minority position of little more than 10%. Using only the two criteria of social class and religion (the latter checked for church attendance), Lijphart showed that for the mid-1950s, one could account for as much as 72% of the variance in Dutch voting behavior.^42.

Of course social cleavages were relevant much beyond voting. On the basis of existing and new research data Lijphart showed the relevance of the two major cleavages for many social spheres, including patterns of marriage, the schools system (including eventually also the higher levels of education such as the universities), unions of employers and workers, the media, and a host of new welfare organizations including hospitals and organizations for family help, etc, and many leisure time activities.^43. In fact ‘a Roman Catholic goat breeders’ association' has now become as much a Standard feature of Dutch folklore as the mythical Hans Brinkers or the boy with his finger on the dyke. The extent of social segmentation might differ according to particular sectors of society. (Not unimportantly: the workplace, the bureaucracy or the printed press were generally less, or differently, divided than other sectors.) This did not affect the conclusion that Dutch society showed strong divisions, and that indeed such divisions tended to reinforce one

42. Lijphart presented these figures based on a 1956 survey in ‘The Netherlands: Continuity and Change in Voting Behavior,’ in R. Rose (ed.), Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook. New York: Free Press, 1974, p. 258. A replication of this analysis for later years shows a strong decline in the variance explained by these two factors, i.e. 60% in 1968, 56% in 1977, 47% in 1986, see G.A. Irwin and J.J.M. van Holsteyn, ‘The Decline of the Structured Model of Electoral Competition,’ in H. Daalder and G.A. Irwin (eds.), Politics in the Netherlands: How Much Change? London: Frank Cass, p. 21-41 (figures on p. 39).

43. The unrivalled pioneer of empirical studies of segmentation in the Netherlands was J.P. Kruijt. See in particular ‘Verzuiling en Ontzuiling als Sociologisch Proces,’ in A.N.J. den Hollander et al., Drift en Koers: Een Halve Eeuw Sociale Verandering in Nederland. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961, pp. 227-263.

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another to such an extent that many people seemed to live in separate subcultures from the cradle to the grave. Lijphart also looked into the background and associations of leadership groups, and documented the fact that they, too, fitted the ideological divisions just described. So far, so good.

Cross-cutting cleavages or not?

Did this imply that there were no cross-cutting cleavages in Dutch society? Lijphart denied that statement (although a superficial reading of his book could convey that impression). He spoke explicitly of ‘the fact that the basic cleavages in Dutch society - religion and class - do cut across each other at an almost perfectly straight angle,’ adding:

The Catholic and Calvinist blocs are true cross-sections of the Dutch people, resembling the class composition of the population as a whole very closely and differing only in religion. Moreover, in these two blocs the religious commitment is sufficiently strong to override class differences to a large extent (p. 205).

And he specifically concluded that the heterogeneous class composition of the religious parties (in casu the Catholic Party) implies that:

The party leaders are under constant cross-pressures from the different wings of the party, which predispose them to moderation and compromises, both in intraparty and interparty relations. It is impossible to account for Holland's stable democracy without reference to the crucial political role of the religious parties, particularly the Catholic party (ibidem).

But such cross-cutting cleavages did not gainsay, in his view, that the overriding importance of religion as the most salient cleavage kept groups fundamentally separate, with class only playing a dominant and decisive role in the secular parts of society.

Hence, the coexistence of separate subcultures is not invalidated by the effect of cross-cutting cleavages. The Netherlands typically was a ‘plural’ society with little communication between the different segments, not a ‘pluralist’ society in which each individual was exposed to many cross-pressures and in which social groups were specialized and autonomous rather than part of an overriding ideological community. The very separateness of different ideological blocs thus necessitated conscious elite accommodation to offset the dangers inherent in the sharp cleavages between them.

The grand compromise of 1917: how much peril?

The ‘center piece’ in Lijphart's portrayal of Dutch society was very much the so-called Pacificatie,^44. the grand compromise of 1917 during the first World War, when all major groups agreed to meet each other's demands: the wish for Liberals and Socialists for universal suffrage, the desires of Calvinists and Catholics for their own fully subsidized schools; all this to be based on a deliberate principle of proportionality: proportionality in the counting of votes by the introduction of an extreme system of national proportional representation; and proportionality in the

44. The term Pacificatie had old roots in the Netherlands, notably having been used at the time of the Pacificatie van Gent in 1576 when for a short time the seventeen Provinces seemed to agree on a common stand on the basis of a mutual recognition of diversity. The term was revived for the agreement which the major Dutch parties reached on the schools issue in combination with universal suffrage and proportional representation, passed into law by the constitutional revision of 1917. Lijphart has used the general term Pacificatiedemocratie as the Dutch equivalent of the English ‘consociational democracy.’

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granting of subsidies to private schools on a par with public schools - subsidies which were to be based simply on the numbers of pupils pledged for a particular type of school.

Lijphart's description of this ‘grand compromise’ has been so persuasive that we at Leiden have received a constant flux of letters by Ph.D. students from all over the globe who in their search for a suitable dissertation topic thought the subject worthy of detailed study. Alas, we have tended to disappoint them, suggesting that this miracle Hollandais really was somewhat of a mirage.

Why? For two specific historical reasons: first, the process of mobilization of different ideological subcultures had not yet reached the level of political mobilization by 1910 which makes it appropriate to speak of rival blocs confronting one another; and second, the elite behavior which Lijphart explained above all in terms of a ‘self-denying prophecy’, as a reaction to a genuine fear for a break-up of the nation, would on closer analysis appear to be the major reason why such political mobilization was never fraught with the dangers which Lijphart tended to ascribe to it.

Let us look more closely at each of these two issues: the challenge of blocs and elite behavior.

If one reads Lijphart's analysis of the Dutch case, most of the empirical data he presents are taken from the 1950s or 1960. This is, in itself, understandable, as social science research had only then begun to prosper, and to offer evidence from new research methods (notably social survey analysis) which had not been available in earlier days. The system Lijphart studied was therefore the system as it had developed after 1917. He studied the consequences of social segmentation, not its origins or the manner in which had developed. And this led him to get the sequence of events wrong. For by 1910 none of the indicators of social divisions along ideological lines had reached such strength that one could legitimately speak of conflicting blocs.^45. Party organizations had not yet crystallized into strong movements nationally, with only two parties (the major party of the Calvinists, and the Socialist party) beginning to show some features of a mass party. There had been some important strike actions, and mass demonstrations, notably in support of suffrage extension. Yet, industrialization had not yet reached levels anywhere near those of more advanced industrial countries in Europe. Unionization of workers only affected limited numbers. Notwithstanding decades of agitation for religious schools and a beginning of subsidies to such schools, which were introduced already in 1889 by the first coalition government of Calvinists and Catholics, the great majority of the children at elementary school still went to the same public schools. Lijphart's portrayal of a society with strong mass cleavages and mutually exclusive ideological organizations reflects, in other words, the eventual results of the 1917 settlement, rather than the challenge which that settlement was supposed to counter. With some exaggeration, therefore, one might say that Lijphart found a solution for a problem which did not exist. He was, I suggest, in that respect a victim of the determinist canons of pluralist theorizing which had brought him to his analysis in the first place, even if his analysis would lead him to propose an ‘elitist’ amendment to it.

45. The following passage is almost literally taken from my earlier summary in ‘Consociationalism, Center and Periphery in the Netherlands’, in: Per Torsvik (ed.), Mobilization, Center-Periphery Structures and Nation-Building: A Volume in Commemoration of Stein Rokkan, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1981, pp. 227-228.

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Yet, that ‘elitist’ amendment itself would seem to be in need of explanation. For if centrifugal forces were so strong as Lijphart implied, why would elites be as sagacious as he portrayed them? Or assuming that top leaders were; why were they able to carry their followers along? As another expert on ‘segmented societies’, the historian Val Lorwin once exclaimed in a conference debate: what about the Lumpenelites who would presumably not have that sharp eye for the need to contain ideological strife which their betters must have had when they resorted to their ‘self-denying prophecy’ to save the nation?

To discuss this question we should first turn to a short sketch of different interpretations of the Dutch verzuiling phenomenon as developed by Dutch historians and social scientists.^46. In addition to Lijphart's explanation one finds at least three other interpretations in the literature on verzuiling: (1) an emancipationist perspective; (2) an analysis in terms of social control; and, (3) an explanation through traditional pluralism.

46. In passing we should note that such theories were developed on the whole post factum. This is not unimportant. For it implies that one reads from the present back into history, starts from the assumption that the development of different ideological subcultures was a foregone conclusion, and implicitly accepts their moral right and success. In fact, the very metaphor of verzuiling, of separate pillars which supported an overarching common roof, could only develop in a climate of successful mobilization of all and mutual forbearance of each. This has not always been so. Notably in the 1930s there were vociferous critics (mainly of a liberal or ultranationalist persuasion) who spoke of schotjes, partitions, divisions which weakened unity and endangered the nation.

The emancipationist approach

The ‘emancipationist’ approach sees verzuiling not as a problem but as a triumph. As Calvinists, Catholics and Socialists came to develop their own full-blown subcultural organizations in the 1920s and 1930s an elaborate literature sprang up within each of these subcultures describing the heroic struggle for freedom and emancipation which their pioneers had fought. Many books appeared under titles such as: When We Became Free, In Freedom Reborn, To the Good of the Nation, The Dawn of Liberation, That Which Awakened Our Strength, etc. Such books sought to portray the particular subculture's repression of yesterday, they chronicled past struggles and extolled present achievements. One should note that I have taken these titles from the writings of different ideological families, suggesting at a minimum a parallel perspective. Being written from the inside, on the basis of hindsight, this literature can be read as a sign that each subculture accepted its status as an autonomous part of one nation, whatever its past grievances.

The social control perspective

The second body of literature has stressed social control rather than emancipation. Sympathizers of the religious movements have emphasized the overwhelming importance of a secular climate in the 19th century which dominated all sectors of society, including the then still dominant Dutch Reformed Church. Only a powerful ‘Antirevolutionary’ movement (to use the title which the Calvinists were to choose for their major political party) could stem this baneful influence. Left observers have interpreted this same drive of Calvinists and Catholics to form well-organized subcultures as motivated above all by a wish of elite groups to insulate their potential followers from the siren songs of secularism and socialism. They saw the formation of Calvinist and Catholic subcultures as parts of a deliberate attempt by ‘fractions’ of capitalist ‘ruling class’ to encapsulate religious workers. In essence, they have echoed the hoarse cry of early socialists who spoke of the conspiracy of Koning, Kapitaal, Kerk, Kroeg, and Kazerne - the Dutch alliteration of the 5 Ks is more telling than the English translation as King, Capital, Church, Pub

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and Barracks - with the single goal of combating the emancipation of workers.

The whole process of verzuiling, in other words, is seen as consisting above all in attempts to ensure exclusive group Controls, to the detriment of mutual recognition and individual freedom. The social control perspective has found particular favor with sociologists and left-oriented writers.^47. They have emphasized the importance of deliberate organizational action as an independent power resource. If the emancipationist writers saw whole groups moving to self-awareness and eventual mutual recognition, the social control writers might even explain elite action as above all motivated by self-interest. Thus, one writer has sought to put Lijphart on his head: rather than elites seeking to contain the dangers of social divisions in order to retain a peaceful society, he has argued, elites have deliberately exaggerated social cleavages in order to secure their own profitable leadership positions.^48. Similarly, another writer has equally stressed the importance of verzuiling as instruments for aspiring elites to acquire monopolistic control positions in society.^49.

47. E.g. J.A.A. van Doom, ‘Verzuiling: Een Eigentijds Systeem van Sociale Controle,’ Sociologische Gids, Vol. 3 (1956), pp. 41-49; S. Stuurman, Verzuiling, Kapitalisme en Patriarchaat. Nijmegen: Sun, 1983. Stuurman interprets the successful mobilization of Calvinists and Catholics in Dutch society not so much in terms of emancipation of deprived strata, or autonomous ideological values, but as a deliberate attempt on the part of ‘fractions’ of a capitalist ruling class to forestall the organization of an effective working-class movement. He defines the term zuilen (segments or pillars) in a manner which eo ipso excludes the Socialists. Zuilen are according to his definition: ‘a hierarchically structured complex of socio-political and ideological apparatuses with the following characteristics: (a) the social basis cuts across all classes; (b) each pillar comprehends more than one social activity; (c) its integrating ideology is religious, aiming at class cooperation and of patriarchy [read: male dominance] as basic characteristics; (4) the pillar has a political component, operates on the level of the state’ (Ibidem, p. 71, translation HD).

48. See M.P.C.M. van Schendelen, ‘Verzuiling en Restauratie in de Nederlandse Politiek,’ Beleid en Maatschappij, vol. 5 (1978), pp. 42-64; Idem, ‘The Views of Arend Lijphart and Collected Criticisms’ in Idem (ed.), Consociationalism, Pillarization and Conflict-Management in the Low Countries, pp. 19-55.

49. I. Scholten, ‘Does Consociationalism Exist? A Critique of the Dutch Experience,’ in: R. Rose (ed.), Electoral Participation. London: Sage, 1980, pp. 329-355; Idem, Political Stability and Neo-Corporatism: Corporatist Integration and Societal Cleavages in Western Europe. London/Beverly Hills: Sage, 1987.

The perspective of persistent pluralism

A third perspective (which is in fact rather close to the ‘Whig’ approach which I discussed in my first lecture, and which I have myself tended to present at least as far as the process of verzuiling is concerned) takes neither ‘emancipation’, nor ‘social control’ as its main lead,^50. but the traditional pluralism of Dutch society and the political culture at the elite level which it created.

The starting-point of such an analysis is the strong regional and religious diversity which existed of old in Dutch society, the latter to some extent being the consequence of the first.^51. Regional diversity had required constant accommodation and acceptance of autonomy, two features singled out by Lijphart as typical and vital for consociational elite behavior.

A second characteristic was the stepwise ‘pluralization’ of Dutch society in religious terms. During the Republic the Dutch Reformed Church had occupied a privileged position, becoming the church of the majority of the population. Even then there had been considerable differences between more latitudinarian and more militant Calvinist Protestants within the Church, and there had been practical recognition of the reality of massive numbers of Catholics in Dutch society, just as there had been an awareness of the role of smaller groups of protestants which I shall lump together under the label of ‘Dissenters’. Catholics, ‘Dissenters’ and Jews were given formal equal rights after 1795. This did not imply that their place in Dutch society was one of immediate recognition or emancipation. For, the dominant elites remained heavily Dutch Reformed even if divided between what would become Liberals on the one hand, and more fundamentalist Protestants on the other. But it did imply that once definitely discriminated minorities were increasingly free to organize openly.

A third element of the explanation is the very traditional - not to say, stagnant - nature which characterized Dutch society into very late in the 19th century. This could account for the circumstance that traditional political elites (whether national or local, Protestant or Catholic) were hardly challenged, however restricted the pays légal remained. It also meant that responsible parliamentary government

50. One wonders, in fact, whether not both the ‘emancipationist’ and the ‘social control’ approach show somewhat teleological features: if the first deems the emancipation of any particular subculture, and in the end that of all, as justified seeing all preceding history in that light, the latter regards the formation of the religious subcultures as obstacles to the emancipation of workers and women which for long prevented the latter from taking their rightful position in society.

51. Regional factors - notably the incidents of warfare at the end of the 16th century - were to determine to a substantial extent which religion a particular city or province would eventually have. Thus, many erstwhile Catholics had been converted to Protestantism under the pressures of the twin forces of public authority and the privileged position of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Northern provinces. In contrast, the southern areas of Brabant and Limburg had been re-won fully for Catholicism during the Counterreformation before they were conquered in the 1620s and 1630s by the Northern Provinces. They then retained their homogeneously Catholic character. But the heavy concentration of Catholics in what remained the Generaliteitslanden (dependent territories administered by the seven United Provinces jointly) did much to instil attitudes of inferiority in the Catholic population. It should be added, however, that many areas of the North (most notably in the populous province of Holland) retained substantial pockets of Catholics. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio was never applied fully in the case of the Netherlands. This tends to differentiate the Dutch case from that of Switzerland, for instance.

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existed before modern mass organizations were formed.

This leads to a fourth point. Once modern mass organizations did come about, they tended to show two characteristic features: in the composition of their leadership, elements close to traditional elite circles played a dominant role; and within each subcultural group there was considerable difference of opinion on the extent to which a militant course should be chosen to promote its interests. Hence, the challenge they represented to the system remained on the whole moderate. Each group demanded the recognition of minority rights rather than that it sought to capture undivided political power.

As a result, in the fifth place, the process of verzuiling was basically gradual: although subcultures developed increasingly dense networks of their own, these did not destroy existing patterns of elite cooperation. Lijphart's picture of separate elites coming together ad hoc in the second decade of the 20th century to save the system, does insufficient justice to the pre-existence of a pragmatic, pluralist elite culture which provided common forums, which had long arranged partial compromises,^52. and which did much to socialize newcomers in traditional modes of decision-making.

Sixth, the building of separate subcultures proceeded at a rather different pace for different ideological groupings. The earliest and most self-confident organization had been that of the militant Calvinists but their efforts at organization had never led to a unified bloc of all fundamentalist Protestants. Whereas some preferred not too move too far from earlier established elite positions, others chose to organize in outspoken minority organizations, characterized by the ringing phrase of their first intellectual leader, G. Groen van Prinsterer: ‘in our isolation lies our strength!’^53. The Catholics succeeded eventually in bringing together a proportionally very much higher percentage of their nominal followers. But not least because of the discrimination Catholics had experienced for centuries, their action had remained deliberately introvert, with the Church rather than political organizations providing the guiding element. Catholic politicians had generally accepted the practical leadership of Calvinist politicians in the Coalition of Calvinists and Catholics which eventually formed on the basis of common but separate subcultural interests.^54. In fact, a genuine Catholic Party was formed only very late, and it remained a very much weaker actor in comparison to the re-established Church Hierarchy than the two major protestant parties - the Antirevolutionary Party (established in 1879) and the Christian-Historical Union (1908) - were in relation to the church organizations in which these parties found their followers.

If the major religious parties jointly rose to a majority position, albeit as a Coalition of distinct minorities, this left only a modest terrain to Liberals and Socialists. Their response was to be rather different. The Liberals having been used to being a dominant force in 19th century politics without much formal political organization organized too little and too late to weather effectively what development theorists call ‘the crisis of participation’. The Socialists, on the other hand - given the late social and economic modernization in the Netherlands - were late in forming effective mass organizations. Their potential market was substantially restricted by the early mobilization of Calvinists and a revitalized Roman

52. Some examples: long before the advent of mass working-class unions the article of the Code Pénal banning the association of working-class associations had been scrapped (1872); the Left had, however grudgingly, recognized that nothing in the Constitution prevented the principle of subsidizing religious education (1887); a Cabinet of Calvinists and Catholics (1888-1891) arranged for the first government subsidies to religious elementary schools long before full financial parity was granted to them in the 1917 Compromise (Pacificatie).

53. Calvinist mobilization went as follows: in the course of the 19th century both elite groups and lower class believers became increasingly restless about developments within the Dutch Reformed Church. Tolerating as the Church did many different beliefs ranging all the way from a near-secular modernism to an otherworldly fundamentalist pietism, it had become, in the words of the great Calvinist leader and demagogue, Abraham Kuyper, a ‘Caesaro-papistic monster,’ a true ‘synagogue of Satan.’ Using increased possibilities for congregational decision-making, Kuyper and others mounted a strong fight for local control of particular churches at a time that most of his followers did not yet enjoy the right to vote in the political arena. In a massive organizational drive Kuyper and his followers founded successively an Anti-School Law League (consciously modelled on the British Anti-Com Law League (1872), a Calvinist newspaper De Standaard (1872), a Calvinist working-class organization Patrimonium (1876), a massive petition asking the King not to sign a Liberal Education Act which strengthened the position of the secular public schools (1878), the Antirevolutionary Party (1879) and a separate Calvinist Free University (1880), finally to break away in substantial numbers from the Dutch Reformed Church (the Doleantie of 1886) who formed a new Calvinist denomination consciously called the Gereformeerde Kerken (Reformed Churches in the plural) to denote the need for autonomy for true believers. What one should note about this organizational drive are at least three features: it took place before the suffrage was extended: Calvinist leaders therefore consciously spoke of the need to mobilize ‘the people beyond the electorate;’ it did not embrace all orthodox elements: many of them notably among traditional elite groups saw in Kuyper's militancy a danger to the unity of the Dutch Reformed Church and preferred to work for reform from within the Church or were satisfied with personal orthodoxy. These groups eventually organized politically in the Christian-Historical Union which never assumed the character of a strong mass party unlike the more militant Antirevolutionary Party.

54. As compared to the Calvinists, the formation of a Catholic subculture took a very different path. Although substantially more numerous than Kuyper's Calvinists, Catholics were much more hesitant to organize. They supported the separation of Church and State, as advocated notably by the Liberals at the time of the Constitutional Revision in 1848, and obtained in 1853 the re-establishment of the Church Hierarchy under an Archbishop in Utrecht and four other dioceses which had disappeared since the Dutch Revolt. Such organization as took place was mainly directed towards rebuilding the Church. Clerics were notably important in all new Catholic organizations.

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Catholic Church. For a time before World War I Liberals and Socialists entered into electoral pacts for joint secular causes, but such pacts faced serious problems. No lasting ‘left’ majority was secured. The cooperation was hardly popular with conservative Liberals. Socialists proved eventually to be rather more hesitant than the Liberals had been to confront the religious parties as this was likely to alienate Calvinist and Catholic workers whom they set out to woo. They hoped for an independent majority mandate once universal suffrage was achieved. But when universal suffrage and proportional representation came, their hopes were dashed. They remained in a virtual ghetto position of under a quarter of the national vote, and were not admitted to cabinet government until 1939. In the meantime they had to be satisfied with the formation of a subculture of their own which some have dubbed a ‘Church for the churchless’.

Finally, one should note that differences occurred not only in the formation of the different ideological blocs, but also in their eventual demise. The Liberals being little organized had also little to lose. The Socialists consciously began to divest themselves of ideological barriers which severed them from the Nation and other parties as early as the 1930s. They came out of the Second World War with the clear intent to break through barriers which had for so long separated religious groups on the one hand, and Socialists on the other. While Calvinists and Catholics continued to build, or at least husband, their separate organizations in the 1950s and 1960s, the Socialists shed what had remained of them. A clear difference was to mark the later development of the Calvinist and the Catholic subcultures, moreover. The Catholic bloc broke down earlier and much more drastically than the Calvinist one. Its effects will concern us in the next lecture when we must face the problem whatever happened to the ostentatiously ‘sober’ Dutch.

The acceptance of prudent leadership

Having discussed three alternative approaches to the phenomenon of Dutch verzuiling: an emancipationist view, a social control view, and an historical-pluralist view, let us return to the question why prudent leadership was so readily accepted in Dutch society, the problem summarily indicated as Lorwin's problem of the Lumpenelites.

There is little in Lijphart to explain this, although he emphasizes the conscious wish to save the system on the part of elites, a widespread element of deference to authority in Dutch society, and the functional importance of insulating organizations to keep potentially conflicting social groups apart - a view tellingly summarized in his statement: ‘good fences make good neighbors!’

In the emancipationist literature there is not much recognition of the problem: for all their colorful descriptions of past injustices and their blaming of others, their satisfaction with the end results generally prevented them from raising issues of internal dissension. If all good men are seen to have worked for the same cause, why would moderating leaders have had difficulties in restraining potential militants?

The view is hardly so rosy in the social control literature. Their emphasis is on the repressive nature of leadership. If there is cooperation between elites, this

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is explained by the common interests of a presumed ruling class whatever the differences of religion.^55. Logically speaking, the increasingly moderate position of Socialist leaders can similarly be explained: their tendency to exchange Socialist ideologies for comfortable positions in government and the economy is little more than an adjustment for personal gain, not unknown in the history of Labor. While social control theorists can explain the development of accommodation and political stability, their heart is not in it.^56. Whether in the form of a Stamokap version, or one of neocorporatism, the real interests of the working class are deemed to have been sacrificed. As we shall see, such sentiments led many of them to greet the demise of the religious subculture with glee, just as they saw in the apparent weakening of institutional structures new opportunities for politicization and polarization, so as to bring the real issues out into the open and have ‘democracy’ and the ‘people’ triumph at last.

The historical-pluralist theory remains: as compared to Lijphart's elites who appear as dei ex machina to offer a consociational solution for a society that pluralist theory would not otherwise deem feasible, elite strength would seem to offer few problems of explanation. Elites were in place, on the basis of traditional pluralism. In fact, all Lijphart's ‘rules of the game’ were present in Dutch society before the different ideological groups organized. Do we really need a ‘self-denying prophecy’ to believe that the Dutch regarded politics as business, that they were prepared to agree to disagree, that they excelled in collegial decision-making (including summit diplomacy), that they saw much merit in proportionality, that secrecy and depoliticization were used as appropriate devices of government, and that governments (not only the cabinet, but also authorities at all lower levels) claimed a virtual right to govern?

55. This statement begs an important question: when did the religious subcultures organize, and in what regions and which social groups were they successful? There is some ambivalence in the view of left critics. On the one hand, they have generally argued that the impetus for the political and social organization of the religious groups was mainly reactive: they organized when and where Socialists began to pose a threat. On the other hand, they seek part of the reason for the limited success of the Socialists in the existence of religious subcultures which presumably means that they were in place before Socialists could successfully challenge them. I suggest that this dilemma can only be solved by detailed historical, regionally-specific inquiry. Such data as are available would seem to offer only limited confirmation of the view that the efforts of the religious subcultures was mainly one of defense, rather than the promotion of their own ideological interests. See for some interesting case studies J.C.H. Blom and C.J. Misset eds., Broeders Sluit U Aan! Aspecten van Verzuiling in Zeven Hollandse Steden. Bergen: Bataafse Leeuw, 1985.

56. This statement obviously does not hold for those social control theorists who would seem to embrace the elitist theory that elites exaggerate cleavages to keep or gain positions for them. Perhaps one should describe this position as one of the inevitability of the circulation of Lumpenelites?

Conclusion

Let us try to summarize where this second lecture on the pluralism of Dutch society has led us. There is agreement on the strong degree of social organization along ideological lines which developed in the 19th and the 20th century, which has made the Dutch speak of verzuiling, and foreign observers of segmentation.

There is disagreement on two fundamental issues. One is the reason for the initial formation of separate blocs, and the other is the degree of danger which the degree of separate subcultures actually posed.

On the first of these two issues, social control writers explain the formation of the religious subcultures as on the whole a defensive movement successfully organized by ‘fractions’ of the ruling class to prevent workers from falling for the temptations of secularism and socialism. Such a view meets with problems in the actual historical record: notably the Calvinists organized before we can speak of a genuine challenge by Socialists, and the Catholics lived for a large part in regions which still remained traditional for decades after the Socialists had mounted an effective challenge in other, more modern areas in the country. The social control view would also seem to do too little justice to the authentic ‘emancipationist’ and ‘democratizing’ elements which the mobilization of the religious subcultures represented. One would be far off the mark in one's interpretation of Dutch history,

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or of contemporary politics for that matter, if one were to treat the organization of Calvinists and Catholics in the Netherlands as one of a kind with that of a Catholic right in France, for instance.

On the second issue, that of the danger which segmentation in the Netherlands might have presented to the nation as a stable political system, it is suggested that Lijphart fell victim to the theories which prompted him to bring the Dutch case forward as a deviant case. There were important cross-cutting cleavages as he himself recognized. Yet by 1910 there was neither the full organization of blocs, nor were there the real challenges to the system which he tended to see. The consociational ‘solution’ he saw adopted, and the ‘rules of the game’ which he described were not developed as an answer to real dangers, but consisted mainly of elements of a traditional elite culture of accommodation. Older pluralism proved fully compatible with the increasing pluralization and organization which occurred in Dutch society, and was a major reason why each group was satisfied in achieving recognition as minorities rather than that it strove for majoritarian power. Lijphart offered a solution, I have suggested, for a problem which was partly of his own making. To the extent that consociationalism in the Netherlands is deemed to offer possible lessons for other countries one would do well to take into account that it was not a feat of successful political engineering, but the outcome of centuries of pluralism and accommodation.

Finally, one should remain aware of the dangers of an analysis in terms of interchangeable blocs. For there were very real differences between Calvinists, Catholics and Socialists, not to speak of the Liberals, in the timing and manner of initial organization, the particular groups they organized, the different place they occupied with regard to one another and the nation, and the circumstances by which they would eventually enter as fully recognized participants in national decision-making. History, in other words, contains rather more variety than simple models tend to portray. Some of us might find that a profoundly satisfactory thought.

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Lecture III: ‘hollanditis’ and other Dutch diseases: myths and realities

Introduction

So far the main theme of my lectures has been the evolution of the Netherlands as a highly pluralist society, governed by what Lijphart termed ‘prudent elites’. The picture I have presented was one of gradual evolution and persistent diversity. That picture may have been convincing until as late as the 1960s. But then a series of parallel changes occurred which to many seemed to imply a fundamental break with the past. The once rock-like structures of the two major religious subcultures crumbled. In a society in which compromise and depoliticization was ingrained, new groups suddenly spoke of the need for politicization and polarization. In the name of democracy prevailing institutions and accommodationist practices were challenged. Direct democracy was held to legitimate all manner of direct action. Traditional styles of secluded leadership (nurtured by centuries of regenten rule) gave way to demands for open government and populist posturing. In short, Dutch politics seemed in a few years to have changed from dull administration to conflict galore.

Occasionally, the country would now even reach the foreign press. There was Provo in Amsterdam before students marched in Berlin or Paris. There was rumor around the Royal Household, with two disputed marriages (one a ‘smoke-bomb wedding’ of the then Crown Princess Beatrix in March 1966). Amsterdam suddenly became the alleged ‘drug capital’ of Europe, to an extent that even those who were aware of its libertarian traditions had not been fully prepared. The Dutch Catholic Church became known the world over for its near-heretical New Catechism and Progressive utterances on controversial issues such as marriage of priests and birth control. From being a faithful ally in NATO, the country seemed to move towards neutralist stances, meriting a new brand name of ‘Hollanditis.’^57. Nowhere else had so many (proportionately) marched in the 1980s against the decision of stationing Pershings and Cruise missiles in Europe. These mass actions were organized by an Inter-Church Peace Council in which all major churches had their own representatives. Decision-making in the Netherlands acquired such importance that for once Washington deemed it necessary to send a capable ambassador to its Hague Embassy.

Whatever, then, happened to the once sober Dutch? One might evade that question by either of two escapist answers. One answer would be that the media are the message: sober Dutch are hardly newsworthy; if only the antics are reported, this does not imply that not much remains ‘normal’ in the Netherlands. A second way out is to argue that the Dutch never were that sober. Already Montesquieu complained bitterly of Amsterdam youth, spitting from the bridges when passenger barges passed through Amsterdam canals. One could easily collect a volume of negative portraits of the Dutch by foreign visitors, decrying ill manners over the ages.^58. The very circumstance that Dutch is associated with so many unfavorable

57. See Walter Laqueur, ‘Hollanditis: A New Stage of European Neutralism,’ Commentary, 19 (August 1981), pp. 19-26. For a criticism of this notion, on the basis of an empirical study of actual attitudes and policies in the Netherlands, see Richard C. Eichenberg, ‘The Myth of Hollanditis,’ International Security, vol. 8, no. 2 (Fall 1983), pp. 143-159.

58. For an interesting compilation of analyses of the Dutch national character, see B. van Heerikhuizen, ‘Het Nederlandse Volkskarakter,’ Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, vol. 6 (February 1980) pp. 643-675.

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expressions in the English language might be explained as much in terms of a centuries-old rudeness and crudeness of the ‘natives’ as through ancient rivalry felt in England towards the Dutch Republic.

Escapist answers make no lecture. We should face the issue whether our traditional understanding of the Netherlands as a well-governed pluralist country is becoming dated. To the extent that there have been structural political and social changes these should be explained. And one should inquire whether there now is something like a new political system and a ‘new politics’ that represents a real break with past institutions, past alignments, and customary political behavior - unless there is after all more continuity than meets the eye.

General structural changes^59.

Of course, many of the changes which have occurred in the Netherlands are not peculiar to it. As in other countries of Western-Europe the ravages of war and the efforts of reconstruction gave way to economic affluence. The country became for the first time a fully industrialized economy. Urbanization and suburbanization fundamentally changed the balance between cities and rural areas. New systems of social security and welfare were built up (if these were to reach one of the highest levels in the world, it should be noted that this happened in periods when Christian-Democrats and Liberals normally formed the government and the Socialists were in opposition.) Youth gained a new prominence, due to a combination of much higher levels of education and their increased buying power. From an early moment the Netherlands was involved in new international structures, ranging from Benelux to the United Nations, from the Marshall Plan organization which became the OECD, to the original European Communities of the Six and NATO. New means of communication including television, cars and air travel challenged domestic self-sufficiency. And so forth and so on.

Although such processes did reflect developments elsewhere in Europe, they nevertheless often took on a rather special form in the Netherlands. This should become clear by a short analysis of five areas of change: the special role of television, the changes in the ideological subcultures of Catholics and Calvinists, the challenge to existing authority, attitudes towards international affairs, and changes in political discourse and behavior.

59. For a general survey in Dutch see H. Daalder, ‘Zestig Jaar Nederland (1926-1986),’ in J.H.J. van den Heuvel et al., Een Vrij Zinnige Verhouding: De VPRO en Nederland 1926-1986. Baarn Ambo, 1986, pp. 11-71.

The coming of television

Television came relatively late in the Netherlands. In the 1920s the principle of segmentation had created a licensing system under which radio was controlled by membership associations of the different ideological families. That principle was extended in the 1950s and 1960s to the new electronic media: a challenge of commercial television interests, which appealed in 1964 in vain to Grotius Mare Liberum in an attempt to broadcast from a platform in the seas, was foiled. But the licensed broadcasters, of Calvinists, Catholics, Socialists and one other more ‘general’ organization originally had to share one channel between them, so that viewers of all groups of the population looked in at each other's programs. This increased cross-cultural communication greatly. As a new medium, moreover,

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television tended for some time to be disproportionately the province of younger television makers. In mutual competition with one another, egged on by a special public of rival journalists and other broadcasters concentrated in the libertarian climate of Amsterdam and Hilversum, they deliberately wished to break with many of the staid habits of traditional social life in the Netherlands. One element of this was a deliberate challenge to political leaders who were increasingly subjected to so-called ‘hard’ interviews. Dutch regenten, not normally used to publicity and direct challenge, initially found it difficult to react adequately. Thus, traditional authority patterns came increasingly under fire. What happened in the electronic media had an immediate effect on the printed press. The pace of political debate quickened and became more nervous as politicians and journalists of different persuasion came to react to one another in increasingly eager, competing media. Some observers began to talk of a ‘parliamentary-media complex.’^60.

Television grew fastest in the early sixties. This meant that it coincided with the quickening Vietnam War. American forms of protest (pioneered in student protest on American campuses as well as freedom rides in the South) had an immediate impact in the Netherlands where they found ready imitation. At least for a time, colorful youth protest provided much better ‘pictures’ than the routine of institutionalized decision-making. Publicity thus fed a resorting to direct action tactics. To the extent that leaders overreacted to such protests - magnified as direct actions temporarily were by their newness and by unprecedented levels of reporting - this helped to erode existing understandings about political action and policy-making.

60. This term was coined by J.J. Vis, see his ‘Parlementaire Pretenties, Praktijken en Problemen’, in H. Daalder (ed.), Parlement en Politieke Besluitvorming in Nederland. Alphen: Samsom, 1975, pp. 24-45.

The weakening of subcultural bonds

Also in the 1960s the seemingly ‘closed’ ideological communities began to show visible strains.^61. At least three distinct factors were responsible for the process of ontzuiling (desegmentation).

One was the paradoxical result of success. Ideological subcultures had formed to obtain recognition for special demands. Once the principle of such demands had been agreed on, meeting them in practice became a matter of increasingly routinized allocation procedures, covering a growing array of government policies. The normal pattern became that there were at least three types of organizations for any given social activity: Calvinist, Catholic, and ‘general’, the latter term standing in practice for Socialist, Liberal, or both combined depending on the sector at stake. Such ‘sectoral’ organizations became increasingly interwoven with specialized sections of the government bureaucracy - the chief linkage being advisory agencies and public subsidies to private organizations for fulfilling semi-public functions. As a result each of the specialized sector organizations developed a growing autonomy from the subcultures within which they had originally developed. Having secured routine access they were no longer dependent on general subcultural organizations, such as the related party organizations, for legitimation or support. As sectoral organizations formed increasingly tighter forms of cooperation with opposite numbers in other subcultures, the salience of ideological boundaries and the cohesion of ideological blocs declined.^62.

Secondly, these blocs at the same time also experienced the effects of a grow-

61. The reasons for this are complex, and provide fertile debating grounds for historians and social scientists alike. For some publications in English see J.M.G. Thurlings, ‘Pluralism and Assimilation in the Netherlands, with special reference to Dutch Catholicism,’ The International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 20, No. 1/2, pp. 82-100; W. Goddijn, The Deferred Revolution: A Social Experiment in Church Innovation in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1975; J.A. Coleman, The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1938-1974. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978; H. Bakvis, Catholic Power in the Netherlands. Kingston and Montreal: McGill and Queen's University Press, 1981; R.B. Andeweg, Dutch Voters Adrift: On Explanations of Electoral Change 1967-1977. Ph.D. dissertation, Leiden University, 1983; J.J. Houska. Influencing Mass Political Behavior: Elites and Political Subcultures in the Netherlands 1970-1985. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1985.

62. For a very interesting study showing the rapid decline of what Lijphart once called the ‘interlocking directorates’ of (in this case) the Catholic subculture, see T. Duffhues et al., Bewegende Patronen: Een Analyse van het Landelijk Netwerk van Katholieke Organisaties en Bestuurders 1945-1980. Baarn: Ambo, 1985.

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ing individualization, secularization and indifference on the part of their membership. Church attendance dropped massively. So did the circulation of a number of specifically ideology-based newspapers which found it increasingly hard to compete with more ‘general’, commercial newspapers at local and national level. There was a substantial increase in electoral volatility, and notably the Catholic party and one Calvinist party (the Christian-Historical Union) lost many voters they had once regarded as certain.

But thirdly, and most important of all, there were increasing signs of doubt and dissension among the elites of the different ideological families. This affected different groups differently. Liberals had generally been averse to the idea of segmentation altogether. Many Socialists had found their partly imposed apartheid already uncomfortable since the 1930s. They had attempted a deliberate breakthrough of political and social alignments in 1945-46, and had generally de-emphasized links with sectoral groups which had once formed part of the Rode Familie. In the years after 1945 Calvinists and Catholics had, on the contrary, substantially extended their organizational hold on society, pari passu with increased government action in particular sectors. But behind their successful organizational actions there was growing uncertainty and disagreement about the precise role of church and religion in temporal affairs.

Such doubts may be traced back at least as far as the 1930s, when the misery of the depression and the threat of the two new totalitarianisms of communism and Nazism seemed to earnest believers to challenge the hitherto existing separation between the mainly otherworldly concerns of religion and the inevitable imperfections of a ‘worldly’ order. Such doubts had been sharpened by the experiences of occupation, and were strengthened by the horrors of nuclear war and the growing poverty of the Third World which seemed to require a more active involvement than missionary work alone. But a tuming to the world also led to growing disagreements about practical political choices. Such disagreements became increasingly bitter and divisive as all might appeal to the Lord and the teachings of the Church. Of course, such developments were not unique to the Netherlands. But to the extent that churches had developed as more important social structures in the Netherlands than in comparable European countries - intimately tied in as they had been with the general zuil structures - the effect of the new turn to the world was proportionally stronger. Beliefs in destiny and mission by the elect hardly died when the churches shifted from theology to mundane politics. Disagreements became passionate. Dissension weakened authority and social control. If some wished to move into revolutionary new ways, others reacted in the name of traditional doctrine, leaving many less active proponents in a process of drift and uncertainty which fed a growing abstention and indifference among ordinary folk.

A general weakening of authority

Authority became weaker over a wide field. In fact, we have already singled out three factors leading to such developments: the new challenges of regenten by the media which probed persons behind political authorities; the decline of the social control function of the churches by a combination of self-doubt and dissension;

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and clear processes of individualization due to the breakup of traditional community life and the increasing independence of sectoral organizations.

A very important aspect of such changes consisted in changes in family structure and parental authority. Both had been strong in Dutch social life. Paternal authority was not easily questioned, and especially the religious groups had done everything possible to keep women at home applying in addition to moral pressures legal measures (e.g. compulsory dismissal of women from the public service on marriage) and financial incentives (such as generous children allowances and taking the family unit as the basis of taxation). Once the challenge to such long-standing arrangements came, it took often particularly strong forms. Youth rebelled on all fronts - a very substantial amount of modern Dutch literature has such conflicts as its main theme. Notably students in tertiary education - for the first time ‘free’ from home, and if not already sons and daughters of present elite groups part of the spes patriae - were particularly visible. The measure of student success is well illustrated by the very radical reforms in the governance of the universities which Dutch politicians of all walks of life were prepared to grant at the first sign of student rebellion (which, one should note, was particularly noteworthy in two Catholic universities).^63.

Women followed suit, marking their entry into direct action with a well-publicized invasion by women into a gynecological conference where they performed a belly-dance, baring the inscription: ‘Boss in own Belly.’ On the long mn neither the women's movement, nor the youth movement, proved particularly numerous, but this did not prevent either group to assume a new categorical importance in government policy. One response consisted of a deliberate policy of women's emancipation facilitated by an individualization of the base of taxation and social security.

Attitudes of protest against family authority were carried over easily in a Wholesale rejection of authority in politics and society. A call for more democracy was heard in all manner of organizations, often leading to a large-scale replacement of existing elites by aspiring newcomers disproportionately drawn from what some have called the ‘new class’ of the service sector. If Harry Eckstein is right that stable democracy requires a congruence of authority structures,^64. this would explain why developments in Netherlands seemed to some particularly promising and to others particularly unsettling.

63. For an extensive survey see H. Daalder, ‘The Dutch Universities between the “New Management” and the “New Democracy,”’ in H. Daalder and E. Shils (eds.), Universities, Politicians & Bureaucrats: Europe & America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 173-232.

64. See H. Eckstein, A Theory of Stable Democracy. Princeton, 1961, reprinted in Idem, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, pp. 225-287.

The new internationalism

Social changes were also influenced by processes of internationalization. I mentioned already two examples of the impact of foreign developments on social life in the Netherlands: the domestic application of anti-Vietnam protest methods; and the new involvement of churches with war and the Third World. One should generalize the argument further.

Traditionally, there had been an apparent paradox in Dutch attitudes regarding international affairs. On the one hand the country had been involved from the very beginning of its national existence in international commerce and intellectual exchange; it had been correspondingly open to foreign ideas and foreign migrants.

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On the other hand, there had also been a tendency to contract out of international politics, a withdrawal as far as possible into a policy of neutrality and non-committal comment on the strange world outside Dutch borders.^65. Such traditional attitudes were not easily broken, even after 1940 when the realities of power politics and the increasing density of international organizations imposed a more active stance in international affairs. The assumption that the Netherlands had much to offer in matters of peace and international law persisted. The country seemed still destined to be a Gidsland, a ‘pilot country,’ brandishing the promises of peace and altruistic behavior on the international scene. Such attitudes remained conspicuous in at least three ways: the feeling that the Netherlands were a particularly reliable and honorable member in international alliances; a belief in the country's special mission for peace; and an outspoken Tiersmondisme. All three have a strong moral element in common; hence, the tendency for many ideological groupings to participate in debates on international politics, with the churches often taking prominent stands. It has led to the development of new ‘attentive publics’ in foreign policy-making, often suspicious of ‘official’ government policies as being too much tied to vested economic and political interests to live up to the ‘moral’ necessities of the age. Such policy makers might themselves be split between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’, with different divisions of the ministry of Foreign Affairs and different parliamentary committees talking different languages. In groups proclaiming the need for alternative policies, persons with church associations often take a prominent role. In fact, both the Catholic Church and the Synods of the major Protestant Churches have come out with a specific rejection of nuclear arms, and detailed policy stands on other armament issues. They committed representatives to an Inter-Church Peace Council (IKV)^66. which took the leadership in the fight against the 1979 decision to station new missiles in Europe. Formally, the actions of the IKV did not represent the position of the churches as such, and there was constant controversy within the churches about particular actions taken. Even so, the actions of the IKV against the stationing of intermediate nuclear missiles on Dutch soil posed special problems for the government, not only because it staged massively attended rallies and organized the greatest petition of Dutch history, but because movements within the churches posed special problems for Christian-Democratic politicians. Their effect was eventually countered by a combination of two tactics: deliberate delays in the making of final decisions, and a conscious posturing of bridge-building to Eastern Europe: in August 1984 the Cabinet indicated that it would decide in favor of stationing missiles on Dutch soil in November 1985 unless the USSR would have frozen the number of INFs at its present level: a kind of ‘Russia be good as we are or else!’ In November 1985, the Cabinet and Parliament (although the latter with narrow margins) concluded that the special peace efforts of the Dutch had failed and decided to allow the stationing of missiles, only to be overtaken by international events shortly afterwards.^67.

65. Three useful publications outlining the background of the Netherlands in foreign affairs are: J.H. Leurdijk (ed.), The Foreign Policy of the Netherlands. Alphen: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1978; J.J.C. Voorhoeve, Peace, Profits and Principles: A Study of Dutch Foreign Policy. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979; C.B. Wels, Aloofness & Neutrality: Studies on Dutch Foreign Relations and Policy-Making Institutions. Utrecht: Hes, 1982.

66. See notably Philip P. Everts, Public Opinion, the Churches and Foreign Policy: Studies of Domestic Factors in the Making of Dutch Foreign Policy. Ph.D. Dissertation, Institute of International Studies, Leiden University, 1983.

67. For an extensive inside report on Dutch decision-making see B.J. van Eenennaam, Achtenveertig Kruisraketten: Hoogspanning in de Lage Landen. The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1988; for data disproving the suggestion that the Dutch public was particularly ailing from ‘Hollanditis’, see the studies by Eichenberg in note 57 and Everts in note 66.

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Democracy and Democratization^68.

The different social changes - most notably the apparent waning of traditional authority and the rapid changes in the religious groups which showed up also in large-scale electoral losses for two of the three religious parties - seemed to make a wholly new politics possible. Never did a call for ‘democratization’ sound louder in the Netherlands than in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Under the label of ‘democratization’ very different notions existed, however. There was, as elsewhere in the western world, a revival of the hope for small scale, communitarian groups replacing authoritarian and bureaucratic organizations. Tellingly, one vociferous anarchist group grown from the ranks of the original Provo proclaimed an independent Republic in Amsterdam named with some deliberate irony the Oranjevrijstaat; its citizens appropriately presented themselves in Amsterdam municipal elections in 1970 as the Kabouterpartij: a party of pygmies, which obtained a substantial vote.

Demands for ‘democratization’ were made in a host of social organizations, notably in educational and social welfare institutions; some were rent for years by bitter struggles.

There was also, as mentioned, a widespread resort to direct action. Actions of protest easily led to a deliberate provocation of existing authorities and a conscious overstepping of legal rules. Lest it be thought that all such protest actions were rooted in student activities and ‘Left’ circles and ideologies only, one should note that direct action spread rapidly to entirely different groups of society, ranging from such different groups as barge shippers and lorry drivers, to peasants, firemen, policemen, medical specialists, nurses and others. Two factors explain such developments: imitation and considerations of cost-effectiveness. For confrontation could mean a short-cut to rewards as long as authorities preferred compromise to contestation and did not know how to cope adequately with publicity.

Yet, neither the experiments with small-scale forms of group organization, nor the resort to direct action, could be the basis of a democratic polity nationally. In fact, the whole political system seemed to be in crisis. In the 1967 elections virtually all system parties lost votes, the Catholics and the Socialists as the two largest parties the most. New political parties appeared on the scene, finding an easy entry into Parliament through the extremely low electoral threshold which exists in the Netherlands.^69. A Poujadist Peasant Party (Boerenpartij) scored remarkable successes in 1963 and 1967. In the latter year it was joined by a radical reform party, Democrats '66 which propagated an institutional overhaul of the existing parliamentary regime and declared all existing ideological divisions outdated. One year later (1968) disappointed radical ‘Christians’ walked out of their parties to establish a new Politieke Partij Radicalen which optimist observers on the Left hailed as the end of the religious parties as the dominant center of Dutch politics. Such new developments seemed to spell possibilities for a new Left majority, provided all forces of reform and protest could be combined in a direct challenge of the parties of yesterday. Given their size the Socialists would have to provide the basis for such a combination of all Left forces. Such a development was not unlikely, as New Left groups acquired increasing influence within the Socialist Labor Party.

68. For a critical survey of various aspects of political change in the Netherlands see the essays in H. Daalder and Galen A. Irwin (eds.), Politics in the Netherlands: How Much Change? London: Frank Cass, 1989 (also published as a special issue of West European Politics, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 1989)). Appendix 4 contains a relatively extensive survey of English language sources for the Study of Dutch Politics (pp. 162-185).

69. This is 1/150 or two thirds of 1% of the national valid vote.

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Not all Socialists were equally happy about such developments, which implied an exchange of traditional coalition politics for a new politics of polarization, in which only smaller traditional Left and neophyte parties (such as the Christian Radicals and Democrats '66) were available as unproven allies. Some eventually walked out of the party to form a Democrat-Socialist '70 party which wished to preserve traditional Socialist politics as well as the traditional coalition practices.^70.

In this climate of fragmentation and eager ‘democratization’ two major reform proposals of Dutch political life came to the fore.

One, most actively canvassed by the new Democrats '66 party, pleaded for drastic institutional reforms, inspired no doubt by a combination of American examples and recent events in the French Fifth Republic (which had led to the introduction in 1962 of a directly elected President). They criticized the existing political system for its highly divisive form of proportional representation which implied that multiparty coalitions in Parliament were formed only after elections had taken place, hence in interparty bargaining without direct voter decision. They wished to replace the existing arrangements by a new system in which the voters would be given an opportunity to elect a Prime Minister in a direct national vote, and to vote separately for Parliament preferably in single-member district systems.^71. Admittedly, such a direct mandate for an executive prime minister would do away with the existing parliamentary system. Yet, a Parliament which no longer needed to sustain a Cabinet, and which was not tied by coalition pacts, might well be the stronger by gaining a new independence. The early success of D'66 in the polls in 1967 led to the establishment of a Staatscommissie (comparable to a British Royal Commission) composed of experts from all major parties.^72. It soon became clear that the proposal to do away with the parliamentary system found little support in the new Staatscommissie. The original proposal for a directly elected Prime Minister was watered down to one for the election of a cabinet formateur who - if given an absolute majority at the polls - would be entrusted with forming a government. That proposal (which had obtained only a bare majority in the Staatscommissie) was dismissed by the existing government of the major religious parties and the Liberals, and was voted down in Parliament in 1971 when three Left parties introduced it as a parliamentary initiative. Basically institutional reform was a closed route in the Netherlands from then onwards.^73.

Another attempt at forcing a deliberate dichotomy in the Dutch Party system - and hence to substitute coalition building by parties after an election by the possibility for the electorate to make a clear choice before an election - concentrated on a change in party strategies. Such strategies were given a new rationale by an influential young political scientist working in the research division of the Dutch Socialist Labor Party, Ed van Thijn, who was soon to become a leading practicing politician - for a time leader of their parliamentary group when other front bench Socialists entered a Left-Center cabinet between 1973 and 1977, for a short while in 1981-1982 himself a Minister of the Interior, and at the time of this lecture the (appointed) mayor of the City of Amsterdam. Van Thijn had read most international party theorists in the 1960s,^74. notably Giovanni Sartori and Otto Kirchheimer.^75. He was particularly concerned with the dangers of an increased fragmentation in

70. Having won eight seats in 1971 it was to provide the declining Christian Parties and the Liberals with a margin of strength necessary to retain a parliamentary majority. One year later an internal conflict in the Biesheuvel Cabinet led the two DS'70 Cabinet ministers to resign. The DS'70 party shrunk to six seats in the ensuing 1972 elections and only 1 seat in 1977. It was officially dissolved after it failed to win a seat in 1981.

71. The rationale for such proposals had been developed before the party was formed in two influential articles by a Leiden Law Professor, J. Glastra van Loon, ‘Kiezen of Delen,’ Nederlands Juristenblad, (1964), pp. 1135-1142; 1161-1167. Van Loon later became a junior minister and then chairman of D'66.

72. Staatscommissie inzake de Grondwet en de Kieswet (generally known by the name of its two chairmen as the Cals-Donner Commission) which published several reports between 1968 and 1970 (The Hague, Staatsuitgeverij).

73. Drastic reforms would anyhow have been difficult to pass, given the circumstance that a revision of the constitution would have required a two-thirds reading after dissolution of Parliament which gave a veto power to any grouping making up at least one third of either House of Parliament. Some smaller reforms were introduced, notably an end to compulsory appearance at the ballot-box, and the scrapping of a clause which had forbidden electoral pacts between different party lists. The latter decision was intended to increase the chances of combined groupings in the allocation of seats. After a long preparation an entirely new constitution was voted in 1983 which contained mainly technical revisions. Perhaps the most important political reform in that revision was a change in the election of the Upper Chamber, which would no longer be chosen in staggered elections, one half being renewed every three years, but would henceforth be renewed every four years immediately following provincial elections. Being the product of more recent elections potentially increased the political weight of the Upper Chamber.

74. He wrote a particularly clear and influential essay ‘Van Partijen naar Stembusaccoorden,’ in E.C.M. Jurgens et al., Partijvernieuwing? Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1967, pp. 54-73.

75. See in particular Giovanni Sartori, ‘European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism,’ and Otto Kirchheimer, ‘The Transformation of the Western European Party System,’ in J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, pp. 137-176 and 177-200.

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the Dutch party politics. He distinguished between three different party systems. In a good ‘pendulum democracy’ voters could choose between alternative teams; they would thus have a real choice and could hold governments accountable. He opposed to such a democracy a waaierdemocratie, a system having a large number of parties ‘fanning’ out. In such a system voters lacked a direct choice, the formation of government being left to varying and possibly instable coalitions formed only after elections. Being unable to deliver a very effective vote, dissatisfied voters might well turn towards protest parties and strengthen extremist parties. This then could lead to a tangdemocratie, a ‘pincer democracy’ in which parties on the extreme end would maul the democratic center. To stop such potential threats, parties should change their strategies. Rather than each party fighting on its own, and competing mostly with parties nearest to it on the political spectrum, parties close to one another should enter into an electoral pact seeking a clear mandate from the electorate to govern on the basis of a joint electoral manifesto and a list of possible ministers. In that manner a system of alternating blocs might arise which would ensure both effective electoral choice and truly accountable government, much as the simpler two-party system was thought to provide.^76.

Van Thijn's analysis was heeded. The Socialists entered into a pre-election compact with D'66 and the PPR-radicals, and when all religious parties refused an invitation to join such a bloc (they formed the government at the time in coalition with the Liberals), the Left parties began a conscious policy of polarization.

The effects of this policy form a complicated story, covering almost twenty years of Dutch parliamentary history. Rather than trying to tell it in detail,^77. let me try to make up the balance sheet, using Figure 1 to make the story as clear as possible for anyone not familiar with the complexities of a multiparty system.

The figure shows parties arranged roughly along a left-right axis. The numbers indicate the number of seats each party had in the Lower House of Parliament (which until 1956 had 100 members, since then 150 members). The shaded areas indicate parties which had ministers in any given cabinet.

The figure indicates the participation of Socialists in all governments since 1958, the constant presence of religious parties in all cabinets, and the much more frequent share of the Liberals in governments after 1959.

The bar for the 1967-1971 Parliament shows the process of party fragmentation on the left, the left-center with the arrival of D'66, and the right.

The deliberate policy of Left polarization started in 1971, the steps descending to the right of D'66 from left to right indicating the increase in the combined seats for all Left parties including D'66.

The policy of polarization seemed at first sight successful. The total seats of the Left grew in numbers. The three religious parties and the Liberals lost their parliamentary majority in 1971 and more so in 1972, In the latter year a cabinet was eventually formed under a Socialist Prime Minister, Joop den Uyl, in which the Left parties had ten of the sixteen seats, and the two religious parties had only six ministers, finding themselves in an unwonted minority in the cabinet, and enjoying only passive support from their own parties. The 1977 election seemed a clear

76. One might add that Van Thijn thought that the days of traditional membership parties were over. Given that parties had to win votes in an increasingly open market, new forms of electioneering were necessary, as was a new strategy towards political groups: parties should form linkages with such groups, and profit from their mobilization potential not so much through enduring institutional cooperation as had been the case within the former ideological families, but by promoting their interests ad hoc and by remaining alert to political demands in the actuality of political debate and decision-making.

77. I have offered somewhat more extensive surveys in English in: ‘Changing Procedures and Changing Strategies in Dutch Coalition-Building,’ Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4, (1986), pp. 507-531, and ‘The Dutch Party System: From Segmentation to Polarization - And then?’ in: H. Daalder (ed.), The Party Systems of Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium. London: Pinter, 1987, pp. 193-284. For an incisive survey of the issue of institutional reform see R.B. Andeweg, ‘Institutional Conservatism in the Netherlands: Proposals for and Resistance to Change,’ in H. Daalder and G.A. Irwin (eds.), op. cit., pp. 42-60.

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Figure 12.1: Distribution of parliamentary seats and composition of cabinets in the Netherlands, 1946-1986.

success for the Socialist Partij van de Arbeid in that it made a large advance of no less than 10 out of 150 seats, while becoming the clearly dominant party within the Left bloc.

Yet, certain weaknesses of the Left position can also be seen. At no time did the aggregate Left gain an independent majority. The closest they came to this was in 1981 when they obtained jointly 70 seats. But by that time the D'66 party had deliberately removed itself from the Left bloc, posturing as the ‘reasonable’ alternative to the Left, religious parties and Liberals alike. The aggregate strength of the Left parties minus D'66 did not show much of a secular increase - and this in a period when the religious parties lost heavily at least in the elections of 1967, 1971 and 1972. Also, the gains of the Socialists in 1977 were clearly at the expense of their coalition partners, the smaller Left parties losing as many seats as the Socialists won.

As important were changes in the position of the religious parties and the Liberals. The religious parties eventually countered polarization by the Left with the presentation of one joint electoral list in 1977, followed by a merger of the three parties into one party, the Christian-Democratic Appeal (CDA) in 1980. This strategy largely stopped the hemorrhage they had suffered in preceding elections. The Liberals which had traditionally been a rather weak party until the 1970s prof-

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ited from a deliberate anti-Socialist vote, and consciously chose a more populist stance which made the Liberal Party for the first time into something of a mass party in the 1970s. As Figure 1 shows, they substantially increased their vote and share in parliament, the steps on the right descending to the left making them apparently a more important winner of votes lost by the religious parties than the Left bloc notably in 1977 and 1982.

In fact, since 1977, the CDA and the Liberals formed all governments, except a short-lived cabinet in 1981 which fell almost as soon as it was formed by bitter, sometimes personal conflicts between the CDA premier Van Agt and his Socialist deputy Den Uyl. In fact, the cooperation between the CDA and the Liberals became so close and powerful that it seemed that they were the ones who successfully applied Van Thijn's lesson of dichotomous politics, not the Left parties. As the latter were not able to oppose the combination of CDA and Liberals with an alternative majority, a two-bloc system would seem to develop without any real chance of political alternation.

The new coalition led since 1982 by an increasingly powerful and popular Christian-Democrat Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers (often unwittingly called by the BBC ‘Rude Lubbers’) provided stable government. It chose a policy of deliberate financial retrenchment and a governing style which was both plebiscitary and managerial in tone. The new course was upheld in the new 1986 elections when the Christian-Democrats scored great electoral gains, albeit at the expense of their smaller Liberal ally.

Being locked out of power (effectively since 1977 as the short interlude of the Van Agt II Cabinet from 1981-1982 proved a traumatic disaster for Socialists and D'66 alike) the Left parties fell into a position of considerable disarray and malaise. The Radical Christian PPR became virtually undistinguishable from other small Left parties (such as the older Pacifist-Socialist Party). The Communist Party was taken over to a substantial extent by radical feminists, and lost so many votes that it disappeared from Parliament in 1986 for the first time since 1918. The weak position of all and any one of the smaller Left parties eventually led them to merge their differences and to present one common ‘Green-Left’ electoral list in the elections of September 1989. If they doubled their seats from 3 to 6, this was due as much to the advantage which a larger group gains under the d'Hondt system of proportional representation as to a clear gain in votes. Meanwhile, D'66 maneuvered back into a position of a non-aligned party in the center without wishing to enter into durable pacts with any one. The Socialists, feeling increasingly frustrated in opposition, entered a stage of internal debate and revision which eventually led to a jettisoning of even the last vestiges of their erstwhile belief in the promises of ‘democratic polarization’. Having returned to being a party which accepts the normal practices of coalition politics in a multiparty system, they became once more an acceptable coalition party for the Christian-Democrats when in 1989 the Christian-Democrat-cum-Liberal coalition broke up. Dutch politics, so it seems, had come full circle.

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How ‘old’ or how ‘new’ is Dutch politics?

If we seek to summarize the changes which have taken place in Dutch politics and society, we face conflicting views and at first sight contradictory evidence. There is the image of an increased democratization on the one hand, one of restoration and neo-conformism on the other.

Let us review each of these images in turn. There is no denying the substantial changes which have taken place in Dutch society, notably the rather fundamental changes in the churches and the religious subcultures, the much greater sectoralization of organizational networks, a far-going individualization of human relations, and a decline in traditional authority patterns. As we saw, the traditional rules of the game were deliberately challenged and an attempt was made to replace coalition politics by a politics of polarization and direct electoral choice.^78. At the same time there was a rapid increase in confrontationist politics also outside the political arena, when more and more groups resorted to direct action tactics. Both the politics of polarization and direct actions presented a clear challenge to existing authority, and were hailed by some as clear indications of a general process of democratization. Their impact of polarization and direct actions seemed all the stronger because Dutch elites were not - or more accurately, were no longer^79. - used to a policy of confrontation. Hence they acted often nervously, wavering between allowing expression and repression. Such uncertainties, magnified for a time by television which made both the challenges to authority and the hesitancy of politicians visible in an unprecedented manner, seemed for a time to create a crisis of legitimacy. To the extent that direct actions also provided shortcuts to favorable decisions as compared to the more laborious institutionalized procedures set up for ‘normal’ ways of consultation and decision-making, the process seemed self-reinforcing. All this might point to a picture of lasting and fundamental change.

But the same coin has also another side. Generally speaking, the strong drive for democracy and democratization in Dutch society eventually proved abortive. There is little left of communitarian hopes. Experiments in democratic self-government in a large number of institutions and organizations generally ended mostly in malaise and the establishment of new external or internal bureaucratic Controls. Once elites and mass publics got used to a new confrontationist politics, direct action lost much of its initial democratic ‘luster’. Resorting to direct actions has become to some extent routinized.^80. Having become at most one way of advancing particular interests, they are no longer regarded as offering a lasting ‘democratic’ substitute for the persisting requirements of organized and institutionalized politics. In fact, many democrats of yesterday have become the managers of today. The few who have not become persuaded of the merits of new management have now become the butt of ridicule: they represent a vanishing group of oude jongeren (old youth) who, to use a term of the 1960s, are no longer ‘with it’. More importantly, the wider-ranging, deliberate attempt to remake the Dutch system one of dichotomous politics, whether through a change in political institutions or through a change in the strategy of parties, has failed.

Does this imply full restoration? Those who like to think in such terms can

78. I have not referred in this lecture to one later attempt at changing institutional arrangements in the Netherlands. During the short time he was Minister of the Interior in 1981-1982 Van Thijn charged a new Staatscommissie van Advies inzake de Relatie Kiezer-Beleidsvorming (the Biesheuvel Commission) with the task to offer new proposals on the procedure of the formation of cabinets and the possibility to increase direct voter choice. The Biesheuvel Commission offered mainly technical suggestions on the earlier matter, and recommended the introduction of a referendum under which voters could challenge an act passed by Parliament, provided some 10,000 voters submitted a request that within six weeks would be supported by 300,000 signatures. The referendum proposal was dutifully discussed by the major parties but soon died, having met with lukewarm support if not clear opposition. Proposals for strengthening direct voter choice in other matters, e.g. a revived proposal for a directly elected Cabinet formateur, of the direct election of provincial governors or municipal mayors, have remained equally abortive.

79. Both in the time of the Republic, and throughout the latter half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th centuries, mass actions (whether organized or not) have been frequent. Sometimes those took on the form of rebellious eruptions, sometimes of well-organized mass actions (as in large-scale petition movements such as a protestant movement in 1853 seeking to stop the return of a Catholic Hierarchy in 1853, petitions by Calvinists and Catholics to the King not to countersign a Liberal school law in 1878, mass demonstrations for universal suffrage at the time of the Opening of Parliament before World War I, and repeated mass actions on matters of armament, e.g. one very large one in 1923 protesting a government plan for a naval expansion which provoked the largest mass demonstration, and the greatest petition movement in Dutch politics, until the mass demonstrations against the INF missiles in the early 1980s.

80. It is now possible to arrange for mass demonstrations at the courtyard of the Binnenhof (which houses the two Chambers of Parliament) in direct consultation with the information services of Parliament which will find Members of Parliament ready to receive a petition and arranges for the presence of television cameras whenever appropriate.

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point to various attempts at increasing social control. One of the strongest examples of this is the deliberate attempt on the part of the Vatican, aided and abetted by not overly numerous conservative Catholic groupings in the Netherlands, to re-establish ‘order’ in the Dutch Catholic Church by the appointment of outright conservative bishops. Another would consist in a greater emphasis on issues of law and order. A third would point to the more general tendency towards a more ‘managerial’ type of control in both government and private enterprise. One can see this in various reforms in the social security system. In the area of industrial relations the power of employers seems to have grown, that of the unions to have weakened. Considerations of cost and efficiency seem to outweigh those of code-termination and sometimes of social justice.

Does this trend towards more management and bureaucracy also affect the traditional pluralism of Dutch society? It would be too early to say, not least because the situation is somewhat paradoxical.

There is on the one hand an inclination to settle matters at central government level, while on the other there is a growing belief in the need for deregulation and privatization. The latter would logically presume a decrease in central government intervention and greater freedom for private groups and organizations. At least in theory and ideology there is some convergence among all major ideological groups on the need for less direct government and a wish to leave more to lower levels of government and to private groups. No definite balance would seem to have been found, however. The relations between state and social groups remain close and complex, in a manner which defies any simple definition in terms of ‘pluralism’ or ‘corporatism’.

What has all this done to political interest and citizen participation? On that the evidence seems clear. Time-series data show no, or hardly any, increase in overt political interest or active political involvement as the picture of massive unrest or a massive wish for ‘democratization’ presumably should make one expect.^81. What survey evidence does show, on the other hand, is a much greater tolerance for unconventional political behavior as well as deviant personal behavior and beliefs. That has perhaps been the most lasting development in Dutch politics and society. Social surveys reveal a constant growth in permissiveness regarding all aspects of private behavior, such as the position of women and minors, interreligious and intercommunal living, all manner of sexual behavior including homosexuality, abortion, new lifestyles of cohabitation, drug use, etc.^82. Such permissiveness was made easier, I suggest, by older pluralist traditions in the Netherlands which made it possible for people to continue their own preferred life, leaving others well alone in theirs.^83.

In fact, much of daily life proceeds, as before, in limited circles of work, family or alternative lifestyle communities, and smaller social groups. Political decision-making remains rather prudent but distant, with complex compromises even now often preferred to once-for-all majority decisions.

Perhaps, then, the Dutch have remained much as they have always been: secure in their own groups, prepared to bargain (notably for specific interests), at times heavily ideological but on the whole not overly political except for occa-

81. For a general survey of the evidence, see J.J.A. Thomassen and J.W. van Deth, ‘How New is Dutch Politics?’ in H. Daalder and G.A. Irwin (eds.), op. cit., pp. 61-78.

82. A particularly rich source is the biennial report of the Sociaal Cultureel Planbueau (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij) which has appeared since 1974. See also P. Castenmiller, Participatie in Beweging: Ontwikkelingen in Politieke Participatie in Nederland. The Hague, Sociaal en Cultureel Planbueau, Cahier 1988/nr. 59, which contains a useful survey and analysis of Dutch studies on participation and political attitudes.

83. For an analysis along these lines, applied to race relations in the Netherlands, see C. Bagley, The Dutch Plural Society: A Comparative Study in Race Relations. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations, 1973.

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sional emotional eruptions?

The picture is not very exciting perhaps. It is made all the more remarkable in that Eurobarometer surveys reveal the Dutch to be according to their own indications invariably the happiest citizens in the European Communities, with only mild dissatisfaction on the manner in which democracy works in the Netherlands.

Early in my professional life I always began any lecture to foreigners on the Netherlands with a simple phrase: let me try to make Dutch politics interesting by explaining why it can be so dull. Perhaps that has not changed, after all, for all the noise which the last decades have occasionally produced.