No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2025
When considering the ideas behind economic and monetary union, most of the scholarly attention has focused on Germany and its ordoliberal tradition. The role of smaller countries such as the Netherlands, however, has yet to be considered. The Netherlands has long been one of Europe's staunchest fiscal hawks. To explain Dutch hawkishness, the international business press has reverted to the cultural trope of Calvinism. In contrast, this article traces this hawkish stance to the Dutch neoliberal turn of the 1980s, in particular the rise of public choice theory. In early 2012, during a meeting in Brussels, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte described the need for fiscal discipline as ‘the lesson of the 1980s’. Building on institutional analysis and intellectual history, this article shows how Dutch policymaking elites conceived of EMU as a response to that lesson.
1 Matthias Matthijs, ‘Powerful Rules Governing the Euro: The Perverse Logic of German Ideas’, Journal of European Public Policy 23, no. 3 (15 Mar. 2016): 375–91; Malte Dold and Tim Krieger, eds., Ordoliberalism and European Economic Policy: Between Realpolitik and Economic Utopia (London: Routledge, 2019); Josef Hien, ‘The Rise and Fall of Ordoliberalism’, Socio-Economic Review 22, no. 4 (Oct. 2024): 1947–66; Sebastian Dullien and Ulrike Guérot, The Long Shadow of Ordoliberalism: Germany's Approach to the Euro Crisis (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, 2012).
2 Ivo Maes and Amy Verdun, ‘Small States and the Creation of EMU: Belgium and the Netherlands, Pace-Setters and Gate-Keepers’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 43, no. 2 (2005): 327–48; Amy Verdun, ‘The Greatest of the Small? The Netherlands, the New Hanseatic League and the Frugal Four’, German Politics 31, no. 2 (3 Apr. 2022): 302–22; Magnus G. Schoeller and Gerda Falkner, ‘Acting in the Shadow of German Hegemony? The Role of Small States in the Economic and Monetary Union (Introduction to the Special Issue)’, German Politics 31, no. 2 (3 Apr. 2022): 197–217; Erik Jones, ‘Hard to Follow: Small States and the Franco-German Relationship’, German Politics 31, no. 2 (3 Apr. 2022): 344–62.
3 Erik Jones, ‘The “Monetarist” Turn in Belgium and the Netherlands’, in Monetary Union in Crisis: The European Union as a Neo-Liberal Construction, ed. Bernard H. Moss (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 247. See also Jelle Visser and Anton Hemerijck, ‘A Dutch Miracle’: Job Growth, Welfare Reform and Corporatism in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997); Erik Jones, Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
4 Kenneth Dyson, ‘Hans Tietmeyer, Ethical Ordo-Liberalism, and the Architecture of EMU’, in Architects of the Euro: Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union, eds. Ivo Maes and Kenneth Dyson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 144.
5 Jouke de Vries and Ton Bestebreur, ‘Budget Reform in The Netherlands: Sadder but Much Wiser Now’, in The Reality of Budgetary Reform in OECD Nations: Trajectories and Consequences, eds. John Wanna, Lotte Jensen, and Jouke de Vries (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010), 221–39.
6 Martin Heipertz and Amy Verdun, Ruling Europe: The Politics of the Stability and Growth Pact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 144.
7 Reuters, ‘Dutch Government Calls for Powerful EU Budget Enforcer: Report’, Reuters, 8 Sept. 2011, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-dutch-idUSTRE78680620110907 (last visited 20 Feb. 2024).
8 BBC News, ‘Fury at Eurozone Chief Dijsselbloem's “racist” Remarks’, BBC News, 22 Mar. 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39350113 (last visited 20 Feb. 2024).
9 Mark Rutte and Jan Kees de Jager, ‘Expulsion from the Eurozone Has to Be the Final Penalty’, Financial Times, 7 Sept. 2011.
10 Matthew Steinglass, ‘Netherlands Vows to Meet EU Budget Target’, Financial Times, 24 Apr. 2012.
11 CPB, Middellange-Termijnverkenning 2018–2021 (Den Haag: CPB, 2016).
12 Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Colin Hay, ‘The “Crisis” of Keynesianism and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Britain: An Ideational Institutionalist Approach’, in The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, eds. John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 193–218.
13 Merijn Oudenampsen, ‘Between Conflict and Consensus: The Dutch Depoliticized Paradigm Shift of the 1980s’, Comparative European Politics 18, no. 5 (2020): 771–92; Uwe Becker, ‘“Miracle” by Consensus? Consensualism and Dominance in Dutch Employment Development’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 22, no. 4 (2001): 453–83.
14 Merijn Oudenampsen and Bram Mellink, ‘Bureaucrats First: The Leading Role of Policymakers in the Dutch Economic Paradigm Shift of the 1980s’, TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 18, no. 1 (2021): 19–52; Oudenampsen, ‘Between Conflict and Consensus’.
15 Merijn Oudenampsen and Bram Mellink, ‘The Roots of Dutch Frugality: The Role of Public Choice Theory in Dutch Budgetary Policy’, Journal of European Public Policy 29, no. 8 (3 Aug. 2022): 1206–24.
16 Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone, ‘Italy and EMU as a “Vincolo Esterno”: Empowering the Technocrats, Transforming the State’, South European Society and Politics 1, no. 2 (1 June 1996): 272–99.
17 Kathleen R. McNamara, The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 3. See also Peter A. Hall, ‘The Economics and Politics of the Euro Crisis’, German Politics 21, no. 4 (1 Dec. 2012): 355–71.
18 McNamara, The Currency of Ideas, 62.
19 Matthias Matthijs and Kathleen McNamara, ‘The Euro Crisis’ Theory Effect: Northern Saints, Southern Sinners, and the Demise of the Eurobond’, Journal of European Integration 37, no. 2 (23 Feb. 2015): 229–45; Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth, ‘When Is It Rational to Learn the Wrong Lessons? Technocratic Authority, Social Learning, and Euro Fragility’, Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 1 (Mar. 2018): 110–26.
20 Matthijs, ‘Powerful Rules Governing the Euro’; Hien, ‘The Rise and Fall of Ordoliberalism’; Dullien and Guérot, The Long Shadow of Ordoliberalism; Dold and Krieger, Ordoliberalism and European Economic Policy.
21 See Sonja Michelle Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Jacob Jensen, The Marketizers: Public Choice and the Origins of the Neoliberal Order (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023); Melinda Cooper, Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024).
22 G. Tullock, ‘The Vote Motive: An Essay in the Economics of Politics’, in The Economics of Politics, Selected Writings, vol. 4, ed. C. Rowley, 192.
23 James M. Buchanan, ‘The Achievement and the Limits of Public Choice in Diagnosing Government Failure and in Offering Bases for Constructive Reform’, in Anatomy of Government Deficiencies, ed. Hanusch Horst (Berlin: Springer, 1983), 15.
24 Cooper, Counterrevolution.
25 Daniel Stedman Jones, ‘The Neoliberal Origins of the Third Way: How Chicago, Virginia and Bloomington Shaped Clinton and Blair’, in The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism, eds. Damien Cahill, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2018): 167–82.
26 Hay, Why We Hate Politics; Paul Pierson, Beyond the Welfare State: The New Political Economy of Welfare (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1991); Noel Thompson, ‘Hollowing out the State: Public Choice Theory and the Critique of Keynesian Social Democracy,’ Contemporary British History 22, no. 3 (1 Sept. 2008): 355–82.
27 Hay, ‘The “Crisis” of Keynesianism’; Thompson, ‘Hollowing out the State’; Eamonn Butler, Public Choice: A Primer (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2012).
28 John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, ‘Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political Economy’, in Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, eds. Daniel Beland and Robert Henry Cox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14; Petrus Willem Zuidhof, ‘Imagining Markets: The Discursive Politics of Neoliberalism’ (PhD, Erasmus Universiteit, 2012), 210.
29 Christopher S. Allen, ‘The Underdevelopment of Keynesianism in the Federal Republic of Germany’, in The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism Across Nations, ed. Peter A. Hall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 263–89.
30 For a more extensive description of the history of Dutch public choice, see Oudenampsen and Mellink, ‘The Roots of Dutch Frugality’.
31 Lenze Koopmans, Beheersing van de Overheidsuitgaven (Deventer: Kluwer, 1973).
32 Jones, Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States, 135–69; Jan L. Van Zanden, The Economic History of the Netherlands 1914–1995: A Small Open Economy in the ‘Long’ Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2005), 161.
33 See Laurent Warlouzet, Governing Europe in a Globalizing World: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives Following the 1973 Oil Crisis (London: Routledge, 2017), 144–5; Judith Clifton and Daniel Díaz-Fuentes, ‘The OECD and Phases in the International Political Economy, 1961–2011’, Review of International Political Economy 18, no. 5 (2011): 552–69; Matthieu Leimgruber and Matthias Schmelzer, The OECD and the International Political Economy Since 1948 (Berlin: Springer, 2017); see also E. Bini, G. Garavini and F. Romero, eds., Oil Shock: The 1973 Crisis and Its Economic Legacy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016).
34 Bruno de Haas and Cees van Lotringen, Wim Duisenberg: Van Friese Volksjongen Tot Mr. Euro (Amsterdam: Business Contact, 2003), 89.
35 Milton Friedman, ‘The Fragility of Freedom’, BYU Studies Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1 Oct. 1976): 561–74.
36 NRC Handelsblad, ‘Publieke Discussie Instituut Onderzoek Overheidsuitgaven over Miljoenennota Symposium “De Overheid in de Klem”’, NRC Handelsblad, 1 Oct. 1976.
37 Theo Stevers, ‘Daling Werkloosheid Vrome Wens’, De Volkskrant, 22 Sept. 1976; Theo Stevers, ‘Is het Overheidsbeleid Endogeen?’, Economisch-Statistische Berichten 61, no. 3076 (27 Oct. 1976): 1037–40.
38 Theo Stevers, ‘Waar Staat de Staat?’, in Waar Staat de Staat? Een Conferentie van Het Convent van Christelijk-Sociale Organisaties, Zomer 1983 (Den Haag: Boekencentrum B.V., 1984), 9–33.
39 Anthonie Knoester, Economische Politiek in Nederland (Leiden: Stenfert Kroese, 1989), 153; Van Zanden, The Economic History of the Netherlands 1914–1995: A Small Open Economy in the ‘Long’ Twentieth Century, 66.
40 Jones, Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States, 141.
41 P. Korteweg, ed., Beheersing Van De Overheidsuitgaven (Den Haag: Teldersstichting, 1981).
42 Lenze Koopmans, Dick Meys, and Cees Oort, ‘Herziening van Besluitvormingsprocedures,’ in Beheersing van de Overheidsuitgaven, ed. P. Korteweg (Den Haag: Teldersstichting, 1981), 15–26.
43 Henk Brons, ‘Dr. Bart Le Blanc, Bezuinigingsideoloog,’ Het Vrije Volk, 30 July 1983.
44 Knoester, Economische Politiek in Nederland, 159; Van Zanden, ‘The Economic History of the Netherlands 1914–1995’, 69–70.
45 Oudenampsen, ‘Between Conflict and Consensus’; ‘The Netherlands: Ruud Shock’, Time Magazine, 23 Jan. 1984.
46 R. A. Andeweg, ‘From Dutch Disease to Dutch Model? Consensus Government in Practice’, Parliamentary Affairs 53, no. 4 (1 Oct. 2000): 697–709; Oudenampsen, ‘Between Conflict and Consensus’.
47 Bram De Swaan, ‘Collectieve Schuld’, NRC Handelsblad, 19 Jan. 1985; Andreas Kinneging, ‘Collectieve Schuld’, NRC Handelsblad, 2 Sept. 1985; Stan Huygens, ‘Economie Aan Tafel’, De Telegraaf, 17 Jan. 1985; NRC Handelsblad, ‘Geld Lenen Overheid Moet Aan Banden Gelegd’, NRC Handelsblad, 16 Jan. 1985; Kees De Vré, ‘Mag de Staat Rood Staan?’, Trouw, 22 Feb. 1985.
48 Huygens, ‘Economie Aan Tafel’.
49 Jan Pen, ‘Keynes in Nederland’, Maandschrift Economie 50 (1986): 451.
50 Onno Ruding, Staatsschuld Als Morele Last (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1989), 14.
51 H. Daalder, Van Oude En Nieuwe Regenten: Politiek in Nederland (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1995), 99–100.
52 Nico van Grieken and Cees van Duuren, ‘Wat heb je eraan als je niets met je verdiende geld doet?’, Elsevier Weekblad, 27 Apr. 1985.
53 R. Gerritse, ed., Europa Zonder Grenzen, Begroting Zonder Grenzen? (Den Haag: Instituut voor Onderzoek van Overheidsuitgaven, 1988).
54 Ibid., 45.
55 Paul Friese, ‘De EG Als onbeheersbare kostenpost’, NRC Handelsblad, 3 June 1988.
56 Onno Ruding, Balans: Het Ging Om Meer Dan Geld Alleen (Amsterdam: Boom, 2020), 284.
57 Lans Bovenberg, Jeroen J. M. Kremers, and Paul R. Masson, ‘Economic and Monetary Union in Europe and Constraints on National Budgetary Policies’, IMF Staff Papers 1991, no. 001 (1 Jan. 1991): 387. For the Dutch debate on public choice, fiscal norms and budget discipline see also: Harrie Verbon and Frans van Winden, The Political Economy of Government Debt (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1993); J. de Haan, De noodzaak van normen: een beschouwing over begrotingsbeleid (‘s-Gravenhage: Prof. Mr. B.M. Teldersstichting, 1987); J. de Haan, Towards Budget Discipline: An Economic Assessment of the Possibilities for Reducing National Deficits in the Run-up to EMU (Brussels: Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, Commission of the European Communities, 1992); Roel M. W. J. Beetsma and A. Lans Bovenberg, The Optimality of a Monetary Union without a Fiscal Union, Discussienota 9802 (The Hague: Ministry of Economic Affairs, 1998). Ministerie van Financiën.
58 J. A. J. Alders, ed., Begrotingsbeleid en financiering Nederlandse staatsschuld: op weg naar de EMU (Amsterdam: NIBE, 1992), 8.
59 James M. Buchanan, ‘An American Perspective on Europe's Constitutional Opportunity’, Cato Journal 10 (1990): 624.
60 Buchanan, ‘An American Perspective on Europe's Constitutional Opportunity’, 628. For the Mont Pèlerin conference, see Roberto Ventresca, ‘Neoliberal Thinkers and European Integration in the 1980s and the Early 1990s’, Contemporary European History 31, no. 1 (2022): 31–47; see also Quinn Slobodian and Dieter Plehwe, ‘Neoliberals against Europe’, in Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture, eds. Zachary Manfredi and William Callison (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019): 89–111.
61 Jan Postma, ‘Europese Integratie Dwingt tot Budgetdiscipline en Normering’, Nederlandse Staatscourant, 18 Jan. 1989.
62 Onno Ruding, ‘Er moet meer gebeuren’, in Het Sociaaleconomisch Beleid in de Tweede Helft van de Twintigste Eeuw, ed. Jarig van Sinderen (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1990), 60.
63 Frans Rutten, Zeven Kabinetten Wijzer: De Nieuwe Zakelijkheid bij het Economische Beleid (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1993), 32–3.
64 Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone, ‘Framing EMU as a New Vincolo Esterno: Policy Entrepreneurs, Co-Ordination, and Reflection in Italy, 1988–1990’, in The Road To Maastricht: Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union, eds. Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 485–507.
65 Kevin Featherstone, ‘The Political Dynamics of External Empowerment: The Emergence of EMU and the Challenge to the European Social Model’, in Euros and Europeans: Monetary Integration and the European Model of Society, eds. Andrew Martin and George Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 226–47.
66 Featherstone, ‘The Political Dynamics of External Empowerment’.
67 Andrew Moravcsik, Why the European Community Strengthens the State: Domestic Politics and International Cooperation (Cambridge, MA: Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 1994).
68 Dyson and Featherstone, ‘Framing EMU as a New Vincolo Esterno’; Dyson and Featherstone, ‘Italy and EMU as a “Vincolo Esterno”’.
69 Featherstone, ‘The Political Dynamics of External Empowerment: The Emergence of EMU and the Challenge to the European Social Model’, 241.
70 Of course, an external anchor was not new, because the Dutch guilder had long been pegged to the Deutschmark. But the peg to the Deutschmark never became an object of debate – and argument for domestic reform – in the way that EMU did.
71 This is a recurring pattern in the Dutch neoliberal turn. See: Oudenampsen and Mellink, ‘Bureaucrats First’. For the absent political debate on EMU, see Jos De Beus, ‘Dutch Social Democracy and EMU’, in Social Democracy and Monetary Union, ed. Ton Notermans (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 225–52.
72 OECD, ‘Economic Outlook’ (Paris: OECD, 1988), 122, 166.
73 ‘Marktdenker Ad Geelhoed’, De Groene Amsterdammer, 15 Jan. 1997.
74 ‘Geen plek voor politieke folklore’, Het Parool, 12 Dec. 1991.
75 ‘EMU dwingt ons arbeidskosten te verlagen’, De Volkskrant, 16 Dec. 1991.
76 ‘Niet klaar voor EMU. Topambtenaar: aanpassen verzorgingsstaat voor Europa’, Trouw, 3 Jan. 1992.
77 ‘Prof Geelhoed: Europese wedloop naar laagste belastingen’, De Telegraaf, 3 Jan. 1992.
78 Robert Harmsen, ‘Euroscepticism in the Netherlands: Stirrings of Dissent’, in Euroscepticism, eds. Joachim Schild and Robert Harmsen (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 99–126.
79 Roel Janssen, ‘Nederland gidsland’, NRC, 1 May 1998.
80 De Beus, ‘Dutch Social Democracy and EMU’, 237.
81 Ibid., 245.
82 Willem Breedveld and Marcel Ten Hooven, ‘Frits Bolkestein: Lubbers zit nu op de blaren’, Trouw, 19 Sept. 1990.
83 Frits Bolkestein, ‘The EU's Economic Test: Meeting the Challenges of the Lisbon Strategy’ (19 Nov. 2001). Robert Schuettinger, ‘Washington, D.C. 1998 Golden Anniversary Meeting’, The Mont Pelerin Society Newsletter 51, no. 1 (Feb. 1999).
84 Frits Bolkestein, ‘Europa Zal Liberaal Zijn of Niet Zijn’, NRC, 14 June 1996.
85 Frits Bolkestein, ‘Herijking van het Buitenlands Beleid’, in Boren in hard hout, ed. Frits Bolkestein (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998), 163–71. See also Samuel Rozemond, Bolkestein en de Euroscepsis, Clingendael-notitie (Den Haag: Clingendael, 1996); Hans Vollaard, ‘Dutch Discourses of a Small Nation in an Inefficient Europe: Cosmopolitanism, Pragmatism, and Nationalism’, in The 2009 European Parliament Elections and Beyond (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2011), 85–104; Harmsen, ‘Euroscepticism in the Netherlands’.
86 Werkgroep van Aardenne, Europa: Een Volgende Akte, Geschrift 76 (Den Haag: Teldersstichting, 1992), 70.
87 Friedrich A. Hayek, ‘The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism’, New Commonwealth Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1939): 131–49.
88 Ad Geelhoed, ‘Het Europese Integratieproces en het Coördinatievraagstuk’, in Inspelen op Europa: Uitdagingen voor het Financieel-Economisch Beleid van Nederland, ed. Jeroen J. M. Kremers (Schoonhoven: Academic Service, 1993), 181–82.
89 Dyson and Featherstone, ‘Italy and EMU as a “Vincolo Esterno”’.
90 Martin Heipertz and Amy Verdun, Ruling Europe: The Politics of the Stability and Growth Pact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 144.
91 Mathieu Segers and Femke Van Esch, ‘Behind the Veil of Budgetary Discipline: The Political Logic of the Budgetary Rules in EMU and the SGP*,’ JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 45, no. 5 (2007): 1090.
92 Heipertz and Verdun, Ruling Europe, 135.
93 Lans Bovenberg, ‘Nederland moet het Stabiliteitspact redden’, NRC, 10 Sept. 2003.
94 Ibid., 4 Dec. 2003.
95 Cited in Teulings, ‘Over de Dijken’, 103.
96 Kamerstukken II, 2010–2011, 32 500, nr. 1, 37.
97 Ibid., 38.
98 Coen Teulings et al., Europa in Crisis: Het Centraal Planbureau over Schulden en de Toekomst van de Eurozone (Amsterdam: Balans, 2011), 147.
99 Kamerstukken II, 2009/2010, TK 34, 3324.
100 Studiegroep Begrotingsruimte, Risico's en Zekerheden: Dertiende Rapport Studiegroep Begrotingsruimte (Den Haag: Ministerie van Financiën, 2010), 11. For a critique see: Bas Jacobs, ‘Studiegroep Begrotingsruimte is de Kluts Kwijt’, Politieke Economie – Bas Jacobs (blog), 2 Apr. 2010, https://basjacobs.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/studiegroep-begrotingsruimte/.
101 Ministerie van Algemene Zaken, ‘Regeringsverklaring 2010 minister-president Rutte’ (Kamerstuk, 26 Oct. 2010), 3.
102 Fleur de Bruijn, ‘“Nederland moest beste jongetje zijn”’, Business News Radio, 8 May 2012, https://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/10192187/nederland-moet-beste-jongetje-zijn.