No Nonsense

Long viewed as a model of consensus and moderation, the Netherlands has in recent decades been rocked by waves of right-wing radicalism. In this highly engaging book, Merijn Oudenampsen makes that shift comprehensible by showing how neoliberalism took hold of Dutch politics and how it drove a decimation of the social safety net while expanding the privileges and subsidies enjoyed by corporations and asset owners. The definitive history of economic politics and policy in the Netherlands since the seventies, and a major contribution to the neoliberalism literature. – Martijn Konings, author of The Bailout State: Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not PeopleIn this careful and insightful book Oudenampsen shows that, in the Netherlands, the greatest trick neoliberalism ever pulled was convincing us that it doesn’t exist. How does a deeply political ideology mask itself as technocratic, consensual, pragmatic, and inevitable? Here we find answers that wind through Dutch politics, government, and intellectual history, in which technocrats, economists, and social scientists take center-stage. No Nonsense is necessary reading for anyone interested in the forms, reach, and effects of Western neoliberalism. – Stephanie L. Mudge, author of Leftism Revisited: Western Parties from Socialism to NeoliberalismA master class in myth-busting, this book lays bare the triangulation and self-serving politicking that turned a social democracy into the Netherlands Inc. – Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

Merijn Oudenampsen is a political scientist specializing in the study of political ideas. He earned his PhD for research into the ideas underpinning the rise of right-wing populism in the Netherlands, which was published as The Rise of the Dutch New Right (Routledge, 2021) and received the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles Award.

In collaboration with historian Bram Mellink, he authored Neoliberalisme: Een Nederlandse Geschiedenis, a book that traces the history of neoliberalism in the Netherlands from the 1930s onwards. Merijn Oudenampsen also writes a regular column for the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer and is based in Amsterdam.