The Netherlands and the Polder Model: Questioning the Polder Model Concept

Prak and Van Zanden’s book Nederland en het poldermodel offers a succinct and vigorous account of a millennium of Dutch political economy by organising its development around the concept of the ‘polder model’. This assessment finds much to admire in the book, but subjects the polder model concept to critical questioning, among which: Does the polder model foster economic growth or does it simply require a rich society in order to function? Is the polder model specifically Dutch or broadly European? Is its modern form truly a linear descendant of the corporate bodies of earlier times? Is it really a ‘nursery of democracy’ or simply a ‘hothouse of rent seeking’? As an historical concept the polder model is a moreelusive term than appears at first sight. Nederland en het poldermodel Het boek Nederland en het poldermodel van Prak en Van Zanden biedt een beknopt doch krachtig overzicht van maar liefst een millennium Nederlandse volkshuishoudkunde, door de ontwikkeling daarvan te beschrijven aan de hand van het begrip ‘poldermodel’. Er staat veel bewonderenswaardigs in het boek, maar dit stuk richt zich op een aantal kritische vragen: bevordert het poldermodel de economische groei of is dat afhankelijk van een hoog welvaartsniveau? Is het poldermodel iets specifiek Nederlands of een variant op een breed Europees verschijnsel? Is het poldermodel in moderne gedaante echt een lineaire afstammeling van de corporatieve instellingen van vroegere tijden? Functioneert het poldermodel als een ‘leerschool voor de democratie’ of als een ‘broeikas van kartelvorming’? Het poldermodel als historisch begrip lijkt uiteindelijk bijna ongrijpbaar te zijn.

The book Nederland en het poldermodel [The Netherlands and the Polder Model] by Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden covers a lot of ground. 1 In a brief compass, its authors offer the reader an account of the broad lines of Dutch economic development, of the evolution of its political institutions, and of the interaction between economics and politics over the past millennium.
This can only be achieved by adopting a particular point of view and sticking to it rigorously. A distinctive theoretical perspective that is rigorous and illuminating to one reader might seem obsessive and sadly distorting to another. The lever by which Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden propose to lift the whole history of Dutch political economy and expose the main lines of its development is the 'polder model'. This is a term that has come into fashion among the commentariat in the past two decades to describe a distinctively Dutch style of policy making in the social and economic sphere: consultation-intensive and consensus-seeking. It is exemplified by the 'Wassenaar Accord' of 1982, which established a grand bargain among trade unions, employer associations and a new coalition government to conduct a coordinated policy of economic renewal that required concessions by all parties and trust that each would (and could) honour its part of the accord.
This polder model did not emerge de novo onto the political scene in 1982; it had an obvious antecedent in the corporatist organisation of Dutch economic life constructed at the end of World War II. Then, too, labour, capital and the state -the social partners -were embedded in comprehensive planning and consultative bodies that guided post-war reconstruction, industrialisation, agricultural rationalisation and economic development generally for the next thirty years. 2 The Wassenaar Accord was an effort to revive that policy tradition, which had run aground in the difficult economic environment of the 1970s, and to adapt it to the pressing need for flexibility and restructuring in a new international economic setting.
As historians, Prak and Van Zanden recognize that the polder model refers to practices and institutions that stretch back farther than 1982, but also much farther than 1945. Their claim -and it is the premise that organises their interpretation of the whole of Dutch economic history and the longterm development of Dutch political institutions -is that the modern polder model is only the latest manifestation of a much older societal form. This is  1973) 191-202. characterised by organised and autonomous social groups that are embedded in political structures that recognise -even depend upon -the legitimacy of these particularistic institutions and provide a political space for negotiation and compromise between sovereign authority and subsidiary institutions.
How much older? A thousand years older -it goes back to the very origins of a recognisably 'Dutch' polity. More correctly, it defines a recognisably 'Dutch' polity.
The authors' claim that the practices of broad consultation and the capacity to achieve compromise among a multitude of organised bodies (such as rural open-field communities, polder boards, merchant and craft guilds, endowed charitable institutions, investment partnerships, town militias, town governments and provincial estates) emerged during the Middle Ages and established an 'open-access' institutional framework that endured for many centuries. They are at pains to note that such inclusive institutions and the consultative practices they encouraged were not strictly a Dutch invention, but they do claim that 'they were applied more consistently in the Low Countries and above all in the Northern Netherlands than in many [any?, JdV] other regions of medieval and early modern Europe' (17).
They attribute this uniquely intensive development of autonomous, interest-based corporate bodies to the physical and political environment of Holland in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Politically, Holland stood at the boundary of classical feudal institutions spreading from the Carolingian heartlands to the south, and of the individualist, small-scale, proto-democratic polities of local clans defending the realm of the 'Frisian freedom' to the north. In much of this transitional region, manorialism and serfdom were but weakly rooted. However, outside the Frisian lands themselves, feudal lords -especially the counts of Holland and the bishops of Utrecht -functioned as institutional 'dealmakers' in this uniquely free environment, as revealed by the drainage and settlement of the vast peat bogs, the chartering of town and the protection of infrastructural investments for navigation and drainage. Thus the region was neither too feudal (with labour immobilised on manors) nor too free (with insufficiently large concentrations of resources); it was an ideal environment for the proliferation of subsidiary institutions, self-financing, self-governing, and capable of negotiation with other such entities to solve common problems. 3 By Prak and Van Zanden's account the later medieval history of the region, the Revolt, and Republic that followed from it all rested on this institutional template. The Batavian Revolution was truly revolutionary, in their estimation, for it destroyed and discarded this the netherlands and the polder model: questioning the polder model concept de vries discussion -discussiedossier legacy. During the centralising era of Batavian and French rule 'the entire civil society of the Republic was destroyed' (208 There is a great deal in this book's argumentation with which I firmly agree, and I very much admire the vigour and boldness with which they make their claims. Clearly, this is a book intended for a broad reading public and it succeeds both in making its historical material readable and in giving it a contemporary resonance. However I will devote the remainder of this essay not to the praise of its virtues, substantial though they are, but to a further exploration of several important aspects of the polder model that, to my tastes, the authors do not develop sufficiently or that are given a more benign interpretation that they deserve.

What is a spelverdeler state?
This term is important to Park and Van Zanden's account of how the polder model, in its broadest, most general sense, could be preserved for so long, and how it was 'restored' in the past century. How might one translate this term?
A spelverdeler is not simply a referee (scheidsrechter), who arbitrates between the parties in a game or dispute. The spelverdeler plays an active part in the game, as, say, a market maker at a stock exchange, or the house dealer at the blackjack tables of a casino. Yet the spelverdeler is not the overwhelmingly dominant player at the stock exchange or casino, since this would remove any incentive for others to participate. This leads us to the conclusion that a spelverdeler state is one that is neither too strong, nor too weak, but exercises powers that suffice -just suffice -to lubricate the processes of interest group negotiation and decision-making. I wish the authors had pursued this matter further than they did since it raises the critical matter of the long-term viability of the polder model.

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In much of Europe the autonomy of cities and the privileges of estates

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This absence is of particular importance to the plausibility of their argument about the uniqueness of the polder model in the twentieth century. Netherlands. This seemed necessary in order to convey the authors' rigorous focus on an institutional development they believe to be unique to the north.
Theirs is a history that anticipates the emergence of the Republic five hundred years before the fact and that finds little of interest in the political economy of The Dutch are proud of their polder model (although many were rather embarrassed by the institutions of verzuiling from which it sprouted). Peaceful discussion to reach consensus among competing interests is preferable to most alternatives, and the confidence-building, trust-creating processes of repeated rounds of consultation might reasonably be thought to constitute a veritable training school for democracy (leerschool voor de democratie). The authors appear to share this general good opinion of corporatist organisation and make only a few critical observations. They note that the polder model is not generally capable of making decisive reforms. Indeed, the Dutch verb polderen may have caught on because of its similarity to ploeteren -to plod along. In addition, they note that it appears to need a growing economy in order to function properly.
The 'deal-making' state must have the resources to force consensus, and this is unlikely in a stagnant economy. Indeed, they claim that there was no way the eighteenth-century Republic could negotiate itself out of its terminal crisis.

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the netherlands and the polder model: questioning the polder model concept de vries They might have gone further in discussing the negative aspects of a society composed of extensive corporatist institutions, both historically and in contemporary society. No one wants to live in a society in which everyone must go 'bowling alone'. 10 Surely it is better that individuals learn to associate with each other, form organisations to pursue their common interests, such as sport leagues, book clubs, lending libraries -the list goes on. But the polder model is concerned with organisations in which individuals band together to advance their common economic and political interests.
The economist Mancur Olson called them 'distributional coalitions', and devoted his career to theorising about how they worked, whom they benefited and how they affected the larger economy and society. 11 When individuals combine in collective action the costs and benefits are such that narrow interests are more easily organised than broad, encompassing ones.
The resulting organisations are called distributional coalitions because they are primarily oriented to struggles over the distribution of income and wealth rather than with the production of additional output. They engage in rentseeking more readily than productive activity. Private interest organisations are hard to form, but once formed they tend to live on, protecting their achieved privileges. Over time society comes to be smothered in the embrace of protected interests, complex understandings, cartels et cetera that leads to social sclerosis and economic uncompetitiveness.
Historically, the autonomous corporate bodies of pre-industrial society offer many examples of the sort of problems that Olson took such pleasure in calling to our attention. It must suffice here simply to note that the urban communes, which to Max Weber and Henri Pirenne were sources of a unique and refreshing dynamism within the feudal world, were also distinctive power centres seeking coercive powers with which to subordinate others.
Stephan R. (Larry) Epstein argued that the best predictor of high levels of urbanisation in late medieval Europe was not high economic productivity, or high trade volumes, but high levels of coercive power in the hands of cities. 12 Cities used their autonomy not only to nurture commercial and industrial activity, but also to extend jurisdictional control over their hinterlands. 13 The towns' monopoly powers sometimes gave urban investors the security they needed to invest in infrastructure and land improvements that raised regional economic performance, but the price for this was high: forced deliveries to urban markets (Marktzwang), forced sale of merchant goods (staple rights) and If the Netherlands prospered more and longer than other parts of Europe, was it because of its long attachment to the polder model, as the authors seem to suggest, or was it because of its particular success ( Amsterdam owed a great deal to the precedents of Antwerp and Bruges, and the competitive urban system that checked the tendencies toward merchant exclusiveness that tended to prevail elsewhere. 14 Overall, the economic dynamism of cities in the Netherlands was not inherent in their institutions, but the result of a larger process of competition and interaction that draws our attention back to the authors' elusive term -the spelverdeler state.