Lecture
Book Presentation ‘No Nonsense: A History of the Dutch Neoliberal Turn’
- Date
- Thursday 15 October 2026
- Time
- Location
- T.B.A.
Merijn Oudenampsen will present his book No Nonsense: A History of the Dutch Neoliberal Turn (Verso Books, 2026). The book builds on institutional analysis as developed by political scientists such as Peter Hall, Colin Hay, Mark Blyth, Vivien Schmidt.
The long shadow of neoliberalism
In the sixties and seventies, Dutch politicians built one of Europe’s most generous welfare states. The nation enjoyed high wages and a large social housing stock with an infrastructure funded by high taxes. In the 1980s, however, Dutch politics underwent a neoliberal turn. The Christian Democrat Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers presented himself as ‘a manager in politics’ and the country as an ailing business in need of restructuring.
In marked contrast to the Anglophone world however, Lubbers depoliticised his controversial reforms and sold them to the public as a suite of ‘no-nonsense’ policies. With the rise of the Dutch Third Way in the mid-1990s, the neoliberal agenda became increasingly consensual, ushering in the famed Dutch ‘polder model’. The polarised fights over economic policy of the 1980s were largely forgotten. In this compelling study of Holland’s neoliberal turn, Merijn Oudenampsen traces the long shadow it has cast over Dutch politics, showing how neoliberalism fed into Dutch right-wing populism and the Dutch response to the eurocrisis.
About the author/speaker
Merijn Oudenampsen is a political scientist and sociologist, specialised in the study of political ideas. He presently teaches political science at the University of Amsterdam.
Before that, he formed part of the NWO-funded research project Market Makers on Dutch neoliberalism, and worked as a Marie Curie fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His PhD-thesis on the ideas behind the rise of right-wing populism, The Rise of the Dutch New Right (Routledge, 2021) received the 2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles Award.