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The Dutch model: An Obvious Candidate for the ‘Third Way’?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Anton Hemerijck  and
Jelle Visser
Anton Hemerijck
Affiliation:
Erasmus University, (Rotterdam).
Jelle Visser
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam, (Amsterdam).
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Abstract

While the progressive European politicians are on the lookout for a new model of ‘third way’ capitalism with a human face, after the (temporary?) defeat of the Swedish, Dutch welfare state reform occupies a prominent place in many commentaries.Although it attracted only international attention in the mid- 1990s, the ‘Dutch miracle’ has its basis in policy changes in the early 1980s. For a full explanation of the Dutch experience we must go back at least fifteen years, and study the combination of problem loads, power shifts, institutions, politics and ideas, in three ‘tightly coupled’ policy domains of the Dutch welfare state: industrial relations, social security, and labour market policy. The return to wage moderation took place in the early followed by a series of reforms in the systems of social security in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From the mid-1990s, finally, the adoption of an active labour market policy stance, in order to enhance overall efficiency and create a new domestic balance between wages and social benefits, gained political currency. In this article we present a stylised narrative of these policy changes—what happened, how it happened and what it meant. We demonstrate that these three policy shifts, although embedded in different corporate actors, were interrelated; they created the conditions and the demand for one another, and neither of these policies could have been successful on its own.

Après l'effacement, temporaire peut-être, du modèle suédois, la réforme de l'État providence hollandais occupe une place de choix dans les commentaires pour tous les politiques à la recherche d'un capitalisme à visage humain. Si le «miracle hollandais» attire l'attention depuis 1995, les changements politiques sur lesquels il repose remontent au début des années 1980 dans les trois domaines liés : les relations industrielles, la sécurité sociale et la politique de iutte contre le chômage. Au début des années 80, la mondialisation conduit à décider une modération des salaires. D'autres reformes suivent notamment pour la sécurité sociale. Plus récemment, pour lutter contre le chômage, un nouvel équilibre entre salaires et revenus de transfert a été recherché et est devenu politiquement possible. L'article montre comment les changements, dans les trois domaines, sont liés et ont chacun créé les conditions pour un changement dans les deux autres. Ainsi l'évolution dans l'un ou l'autre seulement aurait été impossible.

Die hollandische Reform des Wohlfahrtsstaates weckt bei alien Politikern, die nach einem neuen Modell des Wohlfahrtsstaates,dem sogenannten »Dritte Weg Kapitalismus«, Ausschau halten, großes lnteresse, besonders seit dem (zeitweiligen?) Scheitern des schwedischen Modells. Das hollandische Wunder geht auf Reformen aus den fruhen 1980er Jahren zurück, selbst wenn die internationale Offentlichkeit erst ab 1995 aufmerksam wurde. Eine genaue Untersuchung zeigt, daß drei eng verknupfte politische Gebiete — industrielle Beziehungen, Gesundheitssystem und Arbeitsmarktpolitik — den hollandischen Wohlfahrtsstaat charakterisieren. Das Gehaltsmoderatorium Anfang 1980 ist eine Reaktion auf die veranderte Weltmarktsituation, gefolgt von einer Serie von Gesundheitsreformeninden 1980 oerund 1980er Jahren. Seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre bildete sich eine Arbeitsmarktpolitik heraus mit dem Ziel allgemeiner Effizienzsteigerung und eines neuen Gleichgewichts zwischen Gehältern und sozialem Gewinn. In diesem Aufsatz beschreiben wir den politischen Werdegang : Auslöser, Entwicklung, Quintessenz. Wir zeigen, daB diese drei politischen Bewegungen, wenn auch aus verschiedenen institutionellen Umfeldern stammend und andere Akteure implizierend, doch in Verbindung stehen : sie haben die Bedingungen und die Nachfrage geschaffen, die alle drei Reformstrange zwingend machte, einen allein aber zum Scheitern verurteih hatte.

Type
Actualité Européenne
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 103 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1999

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References

(1) In Le Monde of 23 January 1997; see also: Le modèle hollandais, Le Monde of 2 December 1996; Le bonheur est dans les tulipes…, the title story of Le Nouvel Observaleur, 3 October 1996; and more critical: Miracle ou Mirage aux Pays-Bas, Le Monde Diplomatique of July 1997.

(2) The expression ‘Großer kleiner Nachbar’ was used by the Cologne-based Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft in its weekly bulletin of 25 July 1996; see also Jagoda, Bernhard, the president of the Federal Labour Market Board, Modell Niederlande-Ein Vor-bild für Deutschland?, Wirtschaftsdienst. Zeitschrift für Wirschaftspolitik (Hamburg, Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung), vol. 77, no. 4 (04 1997)Google Scholar. A detailed Dutch-German comparison of labour market developments and policies is presented by Günther Schmid, one of the directors of the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin, in his ‘Beschäftigungswunder Niederlande. Ein Vergleich der Beschäftigungssysteme in den Niederlanden und in Deutschland’, Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum, discussion paper FS I 96–206 (also in English as ‘The Dutch Employment Miracle’, discussion paper FS I 97–202)

(3) Interviews with Flemish Economics Minister, Eric van Rompuy: ‘We must mirror ourselves to Holland’, and with Belgian Employment Minister Miep Smit, ‘Follow the Dutch example, but not blindly’, De Standaard of 11 October 1996. See also the discussion in Samenleving en Politiek. Tijdschrift voor een democratisch socialisme, which devoted its issue of March 1997 to a comparison between Belgium and the Netherlands.

(4) Too good to be true?, The Economist of 12 October 1996.

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(8) This became later the best-known aspect of ‘the Dutch miracle’ and was first discovered by Jacques Delors who gave it a central place in his call to create a more ‘employment intensive’ growth pattern in Europe in the White Paper on Growth, Competkiveness, and Employment (Brussels: Euroaverage pean Commission, 1993)Google Scholar.

(9) Exports of goods and services accounted for 51% of GDP in 1994, compared with 43% in 1970; the comparable figures for Germany Relaare 23% (1970: 21%), for France, the UK, Sweden, the United States 11%, and Japan 9.5%.

(10) Hemerijck, A. C., Corporatist Immobility in the Netherlands, in Crouch, C., C., and Traxler, F. (eds), Organized Industrial Relaaretions: What Future? (Aldershot: Averbury, 1995), 183–226Google Scholar.

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(15) The Economist, 30 January 1982.