Contested reform in the European Monetary Union Lessons from the Netherlands

The case for structural reforms has been made recurrently on the European continent. Yet, political elites that pursue economic reforms face a delicate task. Structural reforms come with fundamental questions about the desired direction and the practical design of reform. Reform proposals may also face opposition by powerful groups that stand to lose from these reforms or, often, by the public at large who may not appreciate that reforms are necessary. Drawing on the experiences with structural reform in the Netherlands over several decades, this thesis aims to shed light on some particularly controversial reforms that have featured high on the agenda of European policymakers.
The first part of the thesis (chapters 2 to 4) focuses on public opinion toward fiscal reform. Most notably, it traces the attitudes of Dutch households towards an increase in the age of retirement, a reform that was debated for decades and was finally adopted in 2012. Because the increase in the retirement age has been challenged prominently by so-called populist parties, also in other European countries, in chapter 3 and 4 I also study the role of anti-elite sentiment of households as a driver of their attitudes towards reform.
The second part of the thesis focuses on another policy area that has been subject to fundamental reform, namely collective bargaining. In recent decades, in various countries bargaining over wages was moved to the level of the firm. While facilitating the alignment of wages to local conditions, it has as a disadvantage that the bargaining power of workers may be weakened. In the Netherlands, bargaining is still predominantly organised at the sector level and in chapters 5 and 6 I provide some lessons on how sector-level bargaining can deal with challenging economic conditions, such as the large shock that hit the economy at the end of 2008.