This project analyses parliamentary debates about the principles of legitimate politics in the Netherlands in the 1880s, 1930s, and 1960s. It aims to understand how ideas on legitimacy took shape in a political system that – over time – came to view itself as a democratic one. It investigates both the history of the commitment to the idea of popular rule and that of alternative views on the political good, and questions how these were valued in relation to one another.

• dutch history
• political history