The Evolving Dutch Welfare State

This chapter sketches the development of the Dutch welfare state in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It shows how the Dutch welfare state went from being a laggard in comparative perspective in the early twentieth century to one of the frontrunners in the decades after the Second World War. While the welfare state subsequently kept some of its main features, there were also significant reforms characterized by the privatization of risks, the marketization of services, and the activation of benefit recipients. The chapter zooms in on the insights derived from recent scholarship on the politics of welfare reform and gendered critiques of welfare state research. These explain some of the puzzles around the timing and shape of Dutch welfare state development and reform. The chapter highlights how the importance of confessional forces in party politics contributed to a welfare state firmly built on the Christian ideal of a male breadwinner model, explores explanations for reform and retrenchment of popular social policies, and identifies a gap in terms of intersectional and postcolonial welfare state analysis. The final section points at digitalization as a key topic for future welfare state research.