Economy and Society

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Neoliberal sermons: European Christian

democracy and neoliberal governmentality

Merijn Oudenampsen

To cite this article: Merijn Oudenampsen (2022): Neoliberal sermons: European

Christian democracy and neoliberal governmentality, Economy and Society, DOI:
10.1080/03085147.2022.1987743

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Economy and Society
https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2022.1987743

Neoliberal sermons:
European Christian
democracy and neoliberal
governmentality

Merijn Oudenampsen

Abstract

Responsibilization is a central theme in the literature on neoliberal governmental-

ity. An underexplored element therein is the role of Christian democracy. The
single most important source for Michel Foucault’s famous lectures on neoliberal
governmentality were the writings of the German ordoliberals, who were allied
with the West-German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and combined neo-
liberal economic doctrine with Christian social ethics. This paper discusses a
similar crossover: the Dutch market-oriented reforms of the 1980s. The Dutch
Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) defended these reforms quite literally as a
strategy of responsibilization, an attempt to create a ‘responsible society’.
While leading scholars have described neoliberal governmentality as economistic,
individualistic and anti-moralistic, here we find that neoliberal reform can go
hand in hand with a moralistic and communitarian discourse.

Merijn Oudenampsen, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,

The Netherlands. E-mail: merijn.oudenampsen@ulb.be

Current affiliation: Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles,
Brussels, Belgium

Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited,

trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article dis-
tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-
Commercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, dis-
tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon
in any way.
2 Economy and Society

Keywords: responsibilization; governmentality; Michel Foucault; neoliberalism;

Christian democracy; the Netherlands.

Introduction

It is argued that we live in an age of responsibilization (Shamir, 2008). There is

a large and growing literature that considers a series of key policy trends - the
restructuring of the welfare state, the economization of the public sector, the
turn to activating labour market policies, the reframing of education as self-
investment and the socialization of care – in terms of a governmental strategy
of responsibilization (Juhila et al., 2016; Liebenberg et al., 2015; Peeters, 2019;
Stonehouse et al., 2015). The concept stems from the neo-Foucauldian litera-
ture on governmentality. Building on Michel Foucault’s (2008) renowned
Collège de France lectures, scholars in the field of governmentality studies con-
sider responsibilization as a central characteristic of neoliberal art of govern-
ment (Dean, 1999; Lemke, 2009; Peeters, 2019; Rose, 1990).
The neo-Foucauldian approach breaks with the somewhat crude view of
neoliberalism as a zero-sum programme of market expansion and state withdra-
wal. Seen from a governmentality perspective, the crisis of the Keynesian
welfare state and the neoliberal agenda of ‘state withdrawal’ does not involve
governing less. It is focused on governing differently, by actively encouraging
and regulating the transformation of state care into the self-care of ‘responsible’
individuals. The term ‘responsibilization’ refers to a strategy that consists of
shifting the responsibility for social risks, such as illness, unemployment, old
age, poverty, unto the private domain. In the words of the sociologist
Nikolas Rose, the aim is ‘that citizens do not devolve responsibilities for
health, welfare, security and mutual care upon “the state”, but take responsi-
bility for their own conduct and its consequences in the name of their own
self-realization’ (Rose, 1990, pp. 263–264; see also Lemke, 2001, p. 201).
There is however, a notable omission in this literature, and that is the role of
Christian democracy. Foucault’s theory of governmentality is construed as a
history of the liberal art of government and devotes little attention to Christian
democracy, the dominant political tradition in large parts of western Europe
(though not in France, where it had been overtaken by Charles de Gaulle and
his ‘Gaullist’ current). European Christian democracy emerged at the end of
the nineteenth century as a centrist political current that sought to bridge the
divide between capital and labour, while promoting (Christian) civil society insti-
tutions as an alternative to centralized state provision. As a result of this anti-
statist position, Christian democrats tended to converge with neoliberals on a
series of points in the post-war period (Accetti, 2019, pp. 149–161).
This absence of Christian democracy is all the more striking, since Foucault
built his theory of governmentality for a large part on an analysis of the writings
of German ordoliberals such as Röpke, Rüstow, Eucken and Müller-Armack,
who developed their ideas in an alliance with the Christian Democratic
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 3

Union (CDU) in West Germany. The ordoliberals forged a compromise between

neoliberal economic theory and Christian social thought with their concept of the
Soziale Marktwirtschaft (social market economy). A central reference is the
German economist and social theorist Wilhelm Röpke. Foucault credits him as
the main exponent of the ordoliberal current, who wrote the ‘kind of bible of
this neoliberalism’ (Foucault, 2008, p. 104). In his book Civitas humana,
Röpke embraced Christian subsidiarity as an organizational principle and
argued that while the welfare state and the centralization of state power resulted
in anomy and ‘a vanishing sense of responsibility’, marketization and decentrali-
zation could restore responsibility and community life (Röpke, 1948, p. 95). As
such, Röpke is an early proponent of responsibilization as a governing strategy.
This paper argues that this historical crossover between neoliberalism and
Christian democracy is of continuing relevance in understanding contemporary
strategies of neoliberal responsibilization. The paper uses the Dutch market-
oriented reforms of the 1980s to make that point. The Dutch Christian demo-
crats relied on a complex combination of neoliberal economic theory and Chris-
tian social doctrine to legitimate free market reform. Not the idea of (market)
freedom, but the notion of responsibility was central to this synthesis. The
paper focuses in particular on the concept of ‘the responsible society’ as an
expression of that crossover and traces its development over time.
What makes the Dutch case particularly relevant, is that there was a pro-
nounced neoliberal shift in the 1980s (Oudenampsen, 2020; Schmidt, 2003),
while in the 1980s in Germany, ‘the neoliberal revolution never happened’
(Prasad, 2006, p. 163); it only took place belatedly under the leadership of
Gerhard Schröder. The Dutch case shows how neoliberal discourse can take a
very different (communitarian and moralizing) form than assumed by leading
neo-Foucauldian scholars. A prominent example is the political theorist
Wendy Brown (2015, p. 17), who defines neoliberalism as the economization
of all spheres of life in her book Undoing the demos (see Brown, 2019 for a qua-
lification of her argument). Or again Nikolas Rose, who depicts responsibilization
as deeply individualistic and anti-moralistic in his classic Governing the soul:

The self it seeks to liberate or restore is the entity able to steer its individual path
through life by means of the act of personal decision and the assumption of per-
sonal responsibility. It is the self freed from all moral obligations but the obli-
gation to construct a life of its own choosing, a life in which it realizes itself.
Life is to be measured by the standards of personal fulfilment rather than com-
munity welfare or moral fidelity, given purpose through the accumulation of
choices and experiences, the accretion of personal pleasures, the triumphs and
tragedies of love, sex, and happiness. (Rose, 1990, p. 258)

This ties in with a broader Polanyian understanding of neoliberalism, as a

deeply individualistic and anti-communitarian logic, that threatens to ‘dis-
embed’ the economy from its social moorings (Beckert, 2009; Dawson, 2012;
Levien & Paret, 2012). In her book Family values, Melinda Cooper (2017)
4 Economy and Society

criticizes that Polanyian framework. She shows that in the American case, neo-
liberalism has always been a more hybrid phenomenon, closely aligned with
social conservatism and the moral imperative of familial responsibility. Neolib-
eral reform was accompanied by attempts to embed the market in a conservative
cultural order. A similar observation, this time centred on the convergence
between Catholic social doctrine and Chicago School neoliberalism, is made
by Andrea Muehlebach (2013, p. 461):

The emphasis in Catholic social doctrine ‘on a new culture of cooperation and
benevolence, while seemingly placing them at the vanguard in the reaction
against market rule, in fact help make persuasive some of contemporary neoli-
beralism’s basic premises: its antistatism, its drive towards third-sector privati-
zation and decentralization, and a generalized intensification of caritas. Certain
strands of Catholicism and neoliberalism thus both unexpectedly share a
common ethical, social and political orientation.

This paper builds on Cooper’s and Muelenbach’s argument and explores the
convergence between neoliberalism and Christian democracy. The first section
expands on German ordoliberalism, and describes this current of thought as a
complex synthesis between neoliberalism and Christian democracy. The paper
then turns to the Dutch political context, in three steps. First, the post-war
political context in the Netherlands is introduced; then the Christian
Democrat-led neoliberal turn in the Netherlands in the 1980s. Finally, the
paper shows how market-oriented reform was legitimized with a moralistic,
communitarian discourse centred on the key concept of the ‘responsible society’.

Ordoliberalism as an ideological hybrid

Recent scholarship on neoliberalism has highlighted the pluriform and eclectic

nature of this current, and warned against assuming a pure neoliberal logic
(Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009, p. 2). In any given political context, neoliberalism
has always manifested itself as an ideological hybrid, present in cohabitation
with other political traditions, such as corporatism, social democracy, commun-
ism, or third world nationalism (Peck, 2010, p. 7). One of these hybrids that has
been underexplored in the existing literature, is the crossover between neoliber-
alism and Christian democracy. It is this hybrid that German ordoliberalism
was articulated around, which assumes such a central role in Foucault’s lectures
on neoliberal governmentality.
Foucault however, is largely silent on the role of Christian democracy. He
briefly mentions in passing that the ordoliberal project was supported by Chris-
tian democrats, Christian social theorists and Christian trade unions, but does
not accord much importance to that. In fact, Foucault implausibly claims that
Christian trade unionists were simply duped by neoliberal sloganeering (Fou-
cault, 2008, pp. 7–88). As recent intellectual histories on Christian democracy
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 5

and German ordoliberalism show, the compromise between these two political
traditions was much more significant than Foucault allowed for (Accetti, 2019,
pp. 149–161; Audier, 2013; Manow, 2020; Nicholls, 2000; Van Kersbergen,
2003).
An important difference with the Anglo-American strands of neoliberalism,
which notably achieved their breakthrough under the right-wing conservative
governments of Reagan and Thatcher, is that German ordoliberals developed
their political ideas in an alliance with Christian democracy, a political
current that traditionally occupies the political centre. As a result, ordoliberals
developed a political language that allowed them to build coalitions, referred to
by Müller-Armack as a ‘social irenic’, a conciliatory formula meant to bridge
socio-economic and religious cleavages (Manow, 2020; Ptak, 2009). In the
post-war years, ordoliberals introduced the concept of the ‘social market
economy’ to promote a West German version of neoliberalism, while accommo-
dating the concerns of potentially hostile groups. Werner Lachmann (2017,
p. 93) describes the social market economy as a deliberate attempt to broker
a compromise between ordoliberals, (Hayekian) neoliberals, the labour move-
ment, and the Protestant and Catholic Church:

None of these four groups could become dominant in West Germany after the
war. The concept of a social market economy sought to accommodate the
demands of all those groups but met none completely. The ORDO-liberals
and neo-liberals got market freedom, the socialists secured recognition of the
social responsibility of the state, while the whole model found support in the
social teaching of the Catholic Church and in Protestant social ethics.

This particular political compromise resulted in a series of distinctive features

of ordoliberal thought, relative to Anglo-American neoliberalism. In their
popular works such as The road to serfdom and Capitalism and freedom, Friedrich
Hayek and Milton Friedman framed politics as a binary choice between oppos-
ing forces of market individualism and collectivist planning (Burgin, 2012,
p. 80; Peck, 2010, p. 105; Turpin, 2011, pp. 60–76). As Friedman (1962,
p. 13) famously argued in Capitalism and freedom, ‘there are only two ways of
coordinating the economic activities of millions’, one is through state ‘coercion’
and ‘central direction’, the other through ‘voluntary co-operation of individuals’
in the marketplace.
While the German ordoliberals shared key ideas with Hayek and Friedman,
they articulated their politics differently. Employing a conceptual triad rather
than a binary, they proposed a ‘third way’ between market individualism and
state collectivism (Davies, 2018; Nicholls, 2000; Röpke, 1948), With this cen-
trist position, they followed in the footsteps of Pope Pius XI, who had warned
against ‘the twin rocks of shipwreck’, ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’, in the
encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (cited in Accetti, 2019, p. 149). With regards to
both poles, the position of ordoliberals diverged. The ordoliberals shared with
Anglo-American neoliberals a principled opposition to Keynesian
6 Economy and Society

interventionism and the emerging welfare state, but their opposition was less
absolute. In fact, the West German social market economy would come to
accommodate a certain amount of Keynesian conjunctural policy and welfare
state spending. On the other hand, ordoliberals such as Müller-Armack,
Röpke and Rüstow were more sceptical of market individualism. While they
agreed that individual self-interest was at the basis of hard work and thrift, it
also seduced men to manipulate market competition in their favour. Ordolib-
erals were more sceptical of ‘the self-regulation of society through the self-
interest of the individual’ (Hien, 2019, p. 189, see also Audier, 2013) and incor-
porated a communitarian element in their philosophy.
The cardinal fault of individualist laissez faire liberalism, according to Röpke,
was to overlook the fact that the market is dependent on a larger social sphere
where men are not self-interested competitors, but rather community crea-
tures: ‘men as members of their family, as neighbours, as members of their
churches, as colleagues, as citizens of the community’. The ordoliberals
wedded the free market to a communitarian ethic, ‘which must balance the
principle of individualism in the core of the market economy’ (Röpke, 1948,
p. 32). Using a rather clunky term, Röpke (1948, p. 33) called this the
‘anthropo-sociological framework’:

Both market economy and uncommercialised society mutually complete and

support one another. Both have a relationship to each other of hollow space
and frame or of convex and a concave lens which together form the camera’s
eye. What has had to be said about these critics counts just as much for the
others who approve our economic programme but who on the other hand
reject the socio-political one. These unregenerate Liberals of the old school
are the precise opposite of the unregenerate illiberals. Both are blind in one
eye. Both misunderstand the necessary inter-dependence of these two aspects
of the matter.

This focus on community led also to a more conservative focus on the cultural
preconditions of economic order. In the eyes of Röpke and Rüstow, the societal
degeneration and disintegration of the Weimar Republic was above all the
result of a spiritual-moral crisis. Processes of modernization had led to centra-
lization, urbanization and massification, with the cultural disembedding of
capitalism as a result. As part of that development, an all-powerful centralized
welfare state was emerging, taking responsibility and freedom away from
people:

The fast and perhaps the worst danger of all is the overburdening of the nation-
something which in itself is already a characteristic feature of the modern inter-
ventionist ‘welfare’ state, and which has been multiplied many times over within
a single generation through the immense efforts and expense of two world wars.
In a collectivist state it reaches a degree which utterly destroys all hope of a
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 7

legitimate (associative) democratic and decentralised type of government. […]

Bureaucracy, mechanisation, centralisation and autocracy become unavoidable
and with these things comes increasing hostility between government and gov-
erned. This endangers the moral foundations of legitimate government and
finally annihilates it. (Röpke, 1948, p. 92)

In this way, ordoliberal thought combined economic theory with conservative

cultural critique. The ordoliberal solution was an active policy of decentraliza-
tion to re-embed capitalism, reinvigorating both the free market and the social
framework. Here, ordoliberals appealed to Christian social doctrine. On the one
hand, there is the notion of responsibility, the idea that man is endowed by God
with a unique responsibility for the stewardship of the earth, which implies the
right, privilege and obligation to provide for oneself and for one’s neighbour.
Röpke (1948, p. 95) argued in Civitas humana that the ‘dangers and symptoms
of decay’, could all be traced to a ‘common root, the vanishing sense of respon-
sibility’. The tendency towards centralization weakened responsibility, ‘until
the fully collectivized state would administer the coup-de-grace’. Only in com-
munity could a ‘genuine sense of responsibility’ thrive, and therefore a deliber-
ate policy of decentralization was needed to restore responsibility.
On the other hand, ordoliberals appealed to the Christian democratic prin-
ciple of subsidiarity, and argued that it ‘contained the germ of Liberalism’ in
limiting the power of the state (Röpke, 1948, p. 90). Individuals were to be
responsible for their own destiny, and only when they were not able to
provide for themselves should a proximate body support them, from the
family to the parish, the district and the local state, with the federal level inter-
vening last. As such, the principle of subsidiarity further reinforced the empha-
sis on personal freedom and devolved responsibility (Lachmann, 2017, p. 94).
Thus, the ordoliberals simultaneously demonstrated the value of neoliberal
economic views for Christian democrats, and the value of Christian faith for
the neoliberal agenda. This is not to say that all Christian democrats had
been won over by the ordoliberal camp, or that all neoliberals were satisfied
with the compromise that the social market economy represented. The relation
between Christian democracy and neoliberalism can best be visualized in terms
of two spheres that partly overlap, but remain incongruent. The CDU contin-
ued to be divided on socio-economic policy, with socialist Christian democrats
favouring a more extensive welfare state, while again others supported the
ordoliberal worldview and helped build the synthesis between economic
theory and religious ethics.
In sum, we have identified five distinct particularities of ordoliberal dis-
course: (1), the presentation of market-oriented reform as a centrist ‘third
way’ in between market individualism and state collectivism; (2) a communitar-
ian critique of market individualism; (3) a conservative critique of moderniz-
ation, centralization and the rise of the welfare state, described as processes
that risked morally disembedding the economy, leading to a collectivized
state; (4) the focus on an ethics of social responsibility as an alternative to
8 Economy and Society

state provision, made possible by state-facilitated communitarianism and

decentralization; and (5) the defence of a non-commercial sphere as crucial
to the functioning of the market sphere. As we will see, the same elements
recur in the Dutch market-oriented reforms of the 1980s, and the way these
were defended by the Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal. But before we
turn to the 1980s, it is necessary to first introduce the Dutch post-war political
context.

Dutch Christian democracy and the Dutch model

While the Netherlands lacks an explicit ordoliberal tradition, the context in

which Dutch Christian democrats had to operate contained some obvious par-
allels. As in West Germany, Dutch Christian democrats were the dominant
political force in the Netherlands for most of the post-war period, until the
mid-1990s. The main Protestant (ARP, CHU) and Catholic (KVP) parties
occupied the centre ground of Dutch politics, and were the crucial brokers
in government coalitions with either the leftist social democrats (PvdA) or
the right-wing liberals (VVD). Although rapid secularization led to the elec-
toral decline of the Christian parties in the 1970s, the merger of the three
parties into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), finalized in 1980, length-
ened the Christian Democrat dominance in Dutch politics for another 15 years.
Due to the fact that Christian parties aimed to accommodate Christian workers
and employers (and from 1980 onwards, sought to reconcile Protestants and
Catholics) it relied on a similar ‘irenic’ strategy of dampening socio-economic
and socio-religious cleavages. As in West Germany, Dutch Christian democrats
positioned themselves in between market individualism and state collectivism.
German neoliberalism and the concept of the social market economy clearly
resonated in the Netherlands, but failed to fully win over the Christian parties.
Wilhelm Röpke was repeatedly invited to visit the Netherlands on lecture tours
and Dutch translations of his books were widely read (Mellink, 2020).
Especially the Protestant Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) ‘opted for something
very near to the neoliberalism of the CDU in economic policy’, Van Kersbergen
(2003, p. 74) notes in his comparative study of European Christian democracy.
But the ordoliberal formula of the strong state breaking up concentrations of
power sat uneasily with Dutch corporatism and pillarization.
As the Catholic leader Romme commented in 1952: ‘We believe that also
neo-liberalism is an aberration’. Like socialism, ‘neo-liberalism builds society
on the two pillars of individual and state’ (Romme, 1952). Romme believed
that only corporatism and Christian civil society could hold the ‘collectivist’
state in check. In a similar vein, Jelle Zijlstra, the Protestant Minister of Econ-
omic Affairs and later president of the Dutch Central Bank, criticized German
neoliberalism in a landmark lecture at the Christian Employers Federation in
1952 (Zijlstra, 1956, pp. 61–79). He concluded that the neoliberal solution of
combatting concentrations of power required massive state intervention.
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 9

Relative to the social market economy, Zijlstra remarked, ‘the Dutch model’
was ‘more social and provided more market freedom’ (De Telegraaf, 1953).
Ludwig Erhard, the German ordoliberal and Minister of Economic Affairs
responded in kind. In a keynote lecture at an international Christian Democrat
congress held in The Hague in 1958, Erhard criticized the Dutch model as vul-
nerable to cartels and the fomenting of ‘group egoism’ (De Telegraaf, 1958;
Trouw, 1958).
Notwithstanding these differences, advocates of neoliberalism formed influ-
ential minorities within the Dutch Christian parties, functioning as advocacy
groups that sought to contain the perceived drift to socialism and corporatism
(Mellink, 2020). One of the early victories of this neoliberal lobby had been the
appointment of the predecessor of Zijlstra, the Catholic Minister of Economic
Affairs Jan van den Brink, a staunch proponent of a market-oriented approach.
Van den Brink had been the architect of the post-war industrialization policy,
which relied on an eclectic mix of corporatist and neoliberal ideas. Van den
Brink had met with Ludwig Erhard, and attested to inspiration from the
German model. While Van den Brink distinguished the more corporatist
Dutch industrialization policy from the more ‘individualist’ policy of Erhard,
they shared a preference for a market-oriented policy and a distaste for Keyne-
sian demand-management (Oudenampsen & Mellink, 2021). The basic prin-
ciple of Dutch post-war industrialization policy was to boost the economy
from the supply-side by means of deregulation, lowering taxes and fixing
wages below the market price through corporatist wage moderation, so as to
secure the competitiveness of Dutch exports on the world market (Jones,
2008, p. 100; Van Zanden, 2005, p. 92). With this corporatist supply-side
model, the Netherlands could be counted with Germany as one of the initial
exceptions to the post-war Keynesian settlement (Allen, 1989; Oudenampsen
& Mellink, 2021).
This supply-side industrialization policy was accompanied by relatively
sober social services (Jones, 2008, pp. 93–94; Van Zanden, 2005, p. 62). The
strategy of the Christian parties with regards to the welfare state was to
channel state funding through a series of intermediate civil society organiz-
ations, to provide public amenities such as education, housing, social care,
culture, sports clubs and so on. This model of pillarization, in which every pol-
itical denomination – Catholics, Protestants, social democrats, liberals – had
their own ‘pillars’ providing subsidized public services to their electorates,
remained functional until the late 1960s. The Dutch sociologist Van Doorn
called it the ‘welfare-society’, a peculiar welfare state based on subsidized
private initiative, organized in societal pillars claiming autonomy from the
state, legitimized through Christian social thought such as the Catholic prin-
ciple of subsidiarity and the Protestant concept of ‘sphere sovereignty’. Some-
what sarcastically, Van Doorn described it as ‘an almost brilliant formula:
master of one’s own house, and the house provided by the public purse’
(Van Doorn & Schuyt, 1978, p. 29). One could argue that this larger post-
war framework represented a similar compromise as the social market
10 Economy and Society

economy in West Germany: the Dutch neoliberals got a market-oriented econ-

omic policy, the Christian parties achieved dominance in corporatist and civil
society institutions, while social democrats and trade unions were granted
their full employment ambitions, although with relatively low wages, frugal
social services and high levels of social inequality (Jones, 2008, p. 92).
When the Dutch economy started booming and the labour market tightened
in the early 1960s, the wage moderation strategy collapsed. Wages rose steeply
and private consumption, which had been deliberately repressed in the 1950s,
now provided a major boost to the Dutch economy. At the same time, ongoing
secularization undermined the old pillarized system and the newfound power of
labour forced the Christian parties to make more effort to appeal to Christian
workers, strengthening the progressive forces within these parties. A major
shift in welfare policies ensued. From 1963 onwards, subsequent Christian
Democrat-led governments rapidly expanded and centralized Dutch welfare
state provision (Van Zanden, 2005, p. 64). Somewhat reluctantly, the Christian
parties became the main political force behind the expansion of the Dutch
welfare state. Despite the impressive economic growth figures in the late
1960s, these economic developments soon aroused anxieties concerning
increased public ‘profligacy’ and lagging Dutch competitiveness. The stagfla-
tion crisis of the 1970s lead to a broad rethinking of both economic policy
and the Dutch welfare state.

The two faces of the Dutch neoliberal turn: Technocratic and

moralistic

The Keynesian economic recipes provided no clear answer to the stagflation

crisis of the 1970s. Attempts to reflate the economy failed to curb rising unem-
ployment. Dutch competitiveness had eroded due to relatively high wages, vul-
nerable industry with low value-added production, low labour participation of
women, a generous welfare state and an overvalued currency. The definite pol-
itical breakthrough was the First Lubbers cabinet (1982–1986), a centre-right
government formed by the CDA (29 per cent of the vote) and its junior
coalition partner, the VVD (23 per cent of the vote). The new government
was widely seen as an illustration of the newfound power of Dutch business,
with key ministers coming from Dutch industry, banks, legal and consultancy
firms (van Weezel & van Tijn, 1986, p. 7). The defining mission of the govern-
ment was to roll back the state and reinstate the primacy of business, after a
decade defined by leftist idealism and labour militancy. In what was referred
to as ‘the new business-like style’, the Lubbers cabinet set out to restore profit-
ability, referring to the country as a corporation and to parliament as its ‘board
of directors’ (van Weezel & van Tijn, 1986, p. 10; see also Oudenampsen, 2020).
Through a ‘three-tack policy’ of state retrenchment, supply side measures
and wage moderation, the Lubbers government forcefully broke with the Key-
nesian policies of the 1970s and embraced what it called a ‘moderate supply-
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 11

side policy’ (Rutten, 1993). As the economist Anton Knoester wrote in his over-
view of Dutch economic policy, it was ‘the first government in the post-war
period to make a wholesale break with the Keynesian ideas that have long
been such an important influence on economic policy’ (Knoester, 1989,
p. 159). It formed the beginning of a sustained programme of wage moderation,
labour market flexibilization, state cutbacks, privatization of state enterprises,
lowering of corporate taxes, deregulation and decentralization, under the over-
arching motto ‘more market, less government’ (Oudenampsen, 2020; Scholten,
1987; Touwen, 2008). By 1984, Time Magazine (1984, p. 29) portrayed prime
minister Ruud Lubbers glowingly as ‘Ruud Shock’, who had ‘transformed the
Netherlands from one of Western Europe’s freest-spending welfare states into
its leading belt tightener’.
The Dutch neoliberal turn formed part of the international breakthrough of a
new set of economic theories, with at its heart the Chicago School of Economics
(Blyth, 2002; Fourcade-Gourinchas & Babb, 2002; Hay, 2006; Prasad, 2006).
Chicago School laureates were central to the rise to prominence of new classical
economics (or rational expectations), public choice theory, monetarism, and (to
a lesser degree) supply-side economics. These new economic theories were
warmly received by Dutch economic policymakers and played an important
role in underpinning the Dutch neoliberal turn (Oudenampsen, 2020; Raes
et al., 2002; Rutten, 1993). Senior civil servants at the Dutch ministries
defended the market-oriented reforms with reference to Milton Friedman,
and pointed to the latest developments in American economics to legitimate
their economic policy (Oudenampsen, 2020; van Sinderen & van Ravenstein,
1987). Under the first Lubbers cabinet, a major process of the economization
of government policymaking was initiated. In the government policy statement,
prime minister Ruud Lubbers (Official parliamentary records II, 1982/83, p.
635) announced that from now on, all new laws would be reviewed for their
economic impact, while the Christian Democrat finance minister Onno
Ruding declared that ‘all government services and activities had to be reviewed
for possibilities for privatization’ (Parliamentary papers II, 1982-1983, 17 938,
nr. 1).
Due to its centrist position however, the CDA struggled to find an ideologi-
cal legitimation for the reforms. The party risked losing voters to the left-wing
opposition when it was seen as drifting too much rightwards, while at the same
time, it had to beat back rising right-wing competition from the VVD. This
required a delicate balancing act. The policies of Reagan and Thatcher were
seen as polarizing and highly controversial, and that also applied to the ideas
of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. With the market-oriented
reforms, the Christian democrats were partly confronting their own electorate,
Christian trade unions, Christian civil society organizations, and the progress-
ive wing of their party. They had little to gain by enforcing a polarizing break.
On the one hand, this led the CDA to pursue a conscious strategy of depo-
liticization. While Reagan and Thatcher engaged in a politicized ‘war of ideas’
with their Keynesian opponents, Ruud Lubbers carefully downplayed the
12 Economy and Society

ideological nature of his agenda and presented his policies under the unassum-
ing label of ‘no-nonsense politics’ (Daalder, 1990, pp. 249–250; Oudenampsen,
2020). Journalists observed that the 1960s ideal of ‘power to the imagination’
had been replaced by the more sober motto of ‘power to the bookkeepers’
(van Weezel & van Tijn, 1986, p. 11).
On the other hand, the market-oriented shift formed the occasion for a funda-
mental reworking of Christian democratic ideology. The concern was that if the
electorate and the party base were not actively convinced of the need for ‘more
market, less government’, then the change in policy would not be politically sus-
tainable in the long run. Herman Wijffels, a prominent Christian democrat and
CEO of the second largest Dutch bank (Rabobank), criticized his fellow Chris-
tian democrats on this count: ‘If your central argument for austerity is “people, it
is a shame, but the money has run out”, you are on dangerous territory. Then the
implication is that when there is money again, we can reverse all the austerity
measures’ (van Weezel & van Tijn, 1986, p. 74). Wijffels insisted on the need
for a new conception of the relation between state and society, and a fundamental
change in people’s perception of their rights and duties.
At a party congress in 1982, Wijffels argued that ‘due to the strong expansion
of state care on a large series of terrains, the personal sense of responsibility has
been eroded. Structures have been created in such a way that responsibilities
have become unclear and can be easily offloaded, especially unto the state’
(Smit, 2014, p. 182). ‘Responsibility’ had long been a central concept in Chris-
tian social thought. According to the personalist philosophy that is central to
the Christian democratic creed, ‘man is a responsible being, appointed and
equipped to be God’s co-worker in His creation. People receive a calling as
individuals and as members of organised groups, to help build and develop cre-
ation’ (CDA, 1978, p. 22). This idea of God-given personal ‘responsibility’ and
more specifically that of the ‘responsible society’ became a touchstone for the
re-articulation of Christian democratic ideology in a neoliberal direction.
This took shape in a series of reports – Devolved Responsibility (CDA,
1978); From Welfare State to Welfare Society (CDA, 1983); Unemployment
and the Crisis in our Society (CDA, 1984); and Discussion Paper on the
Responsible Society (CDA, 1987) in which Christian social thought was
given a market-oriented interpretation.
As a result, the Dutch neoliberal turn was realized through a complex com-
bination of a technocratic (Chicago School) neoliberal policy discourse
espoused by the economists at the ministries, and a more normative public dis-
course based on Christian social thought, as articulated by Christian democratic
politicians.

The responsible society

Originally, the term ‘responsible society’ had been coined at the World Council
of Churches in 1948 (Böhm, 1958; Borst, 1958). Following in the footsteps of
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 13

Christian personalism, the notion of responsibility could be interpreted as a

form of Christian engagement towards one’s social surroundings. It was
based on the Christian vision of man, not the disembedded individual of bour-
geois liberal thought, but rather of men as naturally inclined towards one
another, as active members of an ethical community. The precise political
meaning of this engagement however, was left deliberately polysemous and
could be interpreted in a more progressive or conservative direction (Esveld,
1956; Lange, 1966). Perhaps due to its very indeterminacy and its potential
as a social irenic, the concept of the responsible society was central to the
first document drafted by the Catholic and Protestant parties to develop a
shared Christian democratic ideology. The joint 1972 document Towards a
Responsible Society still expressed the progressive sentiment of the time and
called for more democratization, development aid, environmental protection,
personal development and reconciliation of the Cold War conflict. It referred
back to the World Council of Churches and pleaded for a government that
allowed ‘people, in their families, in their work and in all their social relations,
to express their responsibility towards one another’ (CDA Contactraad, 1972,
p. 7).
A decided market-oriented shift in the use of the term could be noted in the
1978 report Devolved Responsibility, written jointly by the three Christian
parties, in anticipation of their merger. The report opened by observing ‘alarm-
ing tendencies’ that called for a fundamental rethinking of the economic order:
the government was in danger of becoming ‘a plaything of all sorts of societal
pressure groups’ (CDA, 1978, p. 6). According to the report, state intervention
in the economy encouraged workers and companies to offload their personal
responsibility towards the state, an approach that ‘cannot be expected to
offer much resistance against an encroaching totalitarian state, to the contrary,
it elicits it, even if unintended and undesired’ (CDA, 1978, p. 87). The lead
author of the report was the Catholic law professor Piet Steenkamp, widely
considered as the (spiritual) founding father of the Christian Democratic
Appeal. Steenkamp had been politically formed in the debates on Christian
social thought and economic order of the 1950s, and referred in his work to
German Catholic thinkers, such as Oswald van Nell-Breuning, Göetz Briefs
and Anton Rauscher (Steenkamp, 1960, p. 20), who were important influences
on the West German social market economy.
The 1978 report reverted back to the discussions on ‘economic order’ in the
1950s, by describing the ideological landscape in Röpkian fashion as divided
between state collectivism and market individualism. With the Christian
social ethic of responsibility as its compass, the report sought to chart a third
way: ‘The responsibility model diverges from the prevalent socialist ideas
that, in our view, cannot prevent government intervention from eventually
encompassing the whole of society’ (CDA, 1978, p. 88). At the other end,
responsibility distinguished the Christian Democrat view from the liberal
notion of individual freedom, which had ‘no ethical framework to guide that
freedom’. In fact, the right-wing liberals of the VVD ‘failed to acknowledge
14 Economy and Society

the experiences with the free market economy from the history of the industrial
era’ (CDA, 1978, p. 88). Due to its lack of an ethical framework, the free market
in itself had no answer to unemployment and environmental degradation. The
relevant question was not more or less intervention, but rather the specific form
that government intervention took.
The socialists had assumed that all problems could be resolved at the macro-
level, through targeted state intervention and the nationalization of industries.
In this way however, companies and workers were prevented from taking
proper action themselves at the micro-level. Due to the law of unintended con-
sequences, every state intervention eventually called forth another, leading ulti-
mately to a totalitarian state (CDA, 1978, p. 87). Instead, in ordoliberal fashion,
the Christian democrats pleaded for a strong state that created a macro-frame-
work in which companies and workers could take on their ethical responsibility
at the micro-level. For business, the concept of responsibility implied deregu-
lation, the end of state-enforced wage and price controls, the cutting of industry
subsidies and the lowering of taxes. For workers, responsibility meant welfare
state retrenchment and more trade union autonomy in decentralized wage
negotiations. In this way, responsible businesses and workers would self-regu-
late and correct the excesses of free market capitalism from the inside, as an
alternative to state regulation from the outside (CDA, 1978, p. 89). The
subject of Christian democratic thought is therefore not the homo economicus
of the Chicago School but rather the homo responsabilis, whose actions are
informed by an ethical calling based on Christian social thought. Since that
ethic can only be maintained in (both business and private) community, it is
necessarily a communitarian philosophy.
This communitarian ‘third way’ between state collectivism and market indi-
vidualism was clearly articulated by the Christian democratic prime minister
Ruud Lubbers. In a parliament speech in 1982, he observed a ‘rising tide’
for economic liberalism. As far as criticism of the state was concerned, he
saw this as a welcome development. But ascendant liberalism threatened to
‘further the already rising normlessness’ and intensify the process of individua-
lization. In his speech, Lubbers contended that man cannot live in ‘the anon-
ymity caused by a central government that takes away their responsibility’.
But individualism wasn’t an alternative: ‘Nor can people live by themselves,
they will become rebellious when the government aims towards that’. The
Christian democratic alternative, according to Lubbers, was a government
that would actively ‘elicit and promote’ a ‘carry each-other’s burdens’ approach
(Lubbers, 1991, pp. 42–50). State intervention, in other words, should be
oriented at promoting a communitarian ethic. In the government policy state-
ment, read to parliament at the beginning of the first Lubbers cabinet in
November 1982, Lubbers (Official parliamentary records II, 1982/83, p. 647)
declared that the Netherlands would transform its welfare state, ‘that threatens
to become unaffordable and overburdened, to a “caring society” in which
people look out for each other’.
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 15

These market-oriented communitarian themes were further developed in the

reports From Welfare State to Welfare Society (CDA, 1983), Unemployment
and the Crisis in our Society (CDA, 1984), and the Discussion Paper on the
Responsible Society (CDA, 1987). It was received by commentators in the
Dutch press as a fundamental ideological reorientation (Smeets, 1987). While
in Anglo-American neoliberal discourse, the welfare state was associated with
collectivism and the market with individualism, Dutch Christian democratic
discourse worked according to an opposite logic. The welfare state had been
a driver of individualization in the 1960s and 1970s. It had undermined the
social ethics of Christian civil society, and replaced that with an immoral, con-
sumption-oriented individualism. Therefore, a retrenchment of the welfare
state could bolster community spirit and personal responsibility.
An important reference in these Christian democratic reports was the work
of Anton Zijderveld, a leading conservative sociologist and Christian Democrat
intellectual. In a series of acclaimed books, Zijderveld had developed a Weber-
ian critique of the welfare state, in a Dutch parallel to Daniel Bells classic The
cultural contradictions of capitalism. The process of rationalization and modern-
ization, Zijderveld argued, gave rise to the modern bureaucratic welfare state.
This had eroded traditional institutions such as the family, the church and pil-
larized civil society (Zijderveld, 1970, 1979). Without these intermediating
institutions reproducing religious morality, the government turned into an
abstraction and the social tissue dissolved into atomistic individuals. The
absence of meaning that followed made the youth susceptible to the protest
movements of the 1960s and 1970s, depicted by Zijderveld as a totalitarian
threat to democracy (Zijderveld, 1972, p. 36). In the book Voluntary initiative
and the welfare state (Zijderveld & Adriaansens, 1981, pp. 126–127), Zijderveld
argued that the welfare state facilitated a decadent ‘immoralist ethos’, only con-
cerned with ‘consumption in the here and now’:

Not only products are consumed, also human relations, ideas, theories, experi-
ences: people use them until they get bored, after which they are exchanged for
other consumption articles. The consequence in everyday life, is that loyalty and
responsibility aren’t highly valued: when a relationship (marriage, friendship)
does not ‘fit’, it is traded for another, whatever the consequences might be.
[…] In the immoralist ethos, community spirit is very poorly developed. The
concept of ‘community’ is actually incomprehensible for the immoralist.
Where the moralist speaks of his ‘community’ that he feels connected with
and responsible for, the immoralist will speak of ‘society’ or ‘structures’ and con-
ceive of these as forms of alienation. […] In the immoralist ethos, authority is
lowly esteemed, while equality is seen as the central value.

Zijderveld’s critique was cited extensively in the Christian democratic reports.

The 1983 report From Welfare State to Welfare Society traced the mass unem-
ployment of the 1980s back to the ‘social-cultural changes since the 1960s’. Pro-
cesses of ‘democratization, subjectivation, and individualization’ had led to a
16 Economy and Society

‘consumptive lifestyle’, an egotistical ‘me-culture’ (CDA, 1983, p. 33). This

‘me-culture’ had ‘strongly encouraged the economic stagnation of this
moment’: ‘entrepreneurship, making profits, hard work, and accepting risks
have gone out of favour with large groups’ (CDA, 1983, p. 38). The report pro-
posed ‘a politics of confrontation’: the state should actively confront people
with their social responsibility, as much as possible in their local, daily living
environments (CDA, 1983, p. 37). It called on the government to develop a
policy ‘in which society itself to the utmost degree – can take responsibility
for caring for each other’. It described this policy in very Röpkian terms as a
‘facilitative social framework policy’ (voorwaardenscheppend maatschappelijk
toerustingsbeleid) (CDA, 1983, p. 47). Practically, this took the form of an
extensive programme of decentralization of welfare state provision in the
1980s and 1990s, which was combined with a series of deep cutbacks. While
the government had a role in providing a ‘floor’ of social security, it should
refrain from further redistribution and interference in the wage structure, to
allow ‘a diversity of motivations to flourish’.
A more extensive philosophical background was supplied in Unemployment
and the Crisis in our Society (CDA, 1984), co-authored by Herman Wijffels,
and welcomed by Lubbers as ‘the undisputed ideological basis’ for his no-non-
sense austerity policies (Smit, 2014, p. 186). The report argued that the econ-
omic crisis was not simply a technical financial matter, but rather the result of a
deep cultural and spiritual crisis. ‘It is not just a matter of redressing the numbers,
an irresponsible and – in a very literal sense – spoiled society, has to be called to
order, because its behaviour is leading society to ruin’ (CDA, 1984, p. 11). Due to
the processes of modernization, in particular the scaling-up, acceleration and
segmentation of society, the moral framework that structured society had been
eroded. In other words, Dutch capitalism had become morally disembedded.
According to the report, the welfare state had supplanted organized religion as
the primary mental and institutional framework. With its promise to supply
happiness, the welfare state had taken over the religious role that the pillarized
structures provided before. But bureaucracy, Christian democrats insisted,
cannot supply meaning. Cutting back and decentralizing welfare state provision
could restore the sense of community that had been lost.
A closely connected problematic trend, the report argued, was the professio-
nalization and economization of what used to be voluntary care. In this way
non-commercial society, once infused with moral and religious values, had
been transformed. Particular to social care, Christian democrats believed, is
that it cannot be bought off by ‘an anonymous, collective and bureaucratic
system’ (CDA, 1984, p. 37). It required a communitarian and religious orien-
tation. Sparking public controversy, the report proposed a policy of ‘selective
discouragement’, and offered a series of measures to disincentivize women
from entering the labour market: encouraging family care for the elderly,
increasing taxes for two-earner households, cutting child-care funding for
two-earner households, and disincentivizing professional care over voluntary
care. It defended these measures with the remark that resistance could be
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 17

expected, since ‘the addict experiences the attempts to relieve him of his addic-
tion as disagreeable’ (CDA, 1984, p. 38). The report concluded that it was
imperative to distinguish the commercial sphere from the non-commercial
sphere. The economic sphere needed to be liberated from non-commercial
motives, and become fully competitive again, while the non-commercial
sphere should be shielded from commodification. This controversial policy
failed to fully pass however, due to a lack of support from coalition partner
VVD.
The Discussion Paper on the Responsible Society (1987) finalized the shift in
Christian democratic philosophy. The document defended the austerity
measures of the Lubbers cabinets as an attempt to create a ‘responsible
society’. ‘Alleged government tasks’ had to be devolved to societal organizations
(CDA, 1987, p. 7). Van Velzen, the president of the Christian Democratic
Appeal, proclaimed a ‘complete transformation of society to reach the ideal
of the responsible society’. It led to a heated debate at a party meeting in
1988 with Bert de Vries, then-Minister of Social Affairs and representative
of the progressive wing of the party. He protested that the power of Christian
democrat thought resided in its flexibility, and warned that the ‘responsible
society’ should not become an ideological dogma, a model used to reshape
society (NRC Handelsblad, 1988). Despite these internal disagreements, the
basic framework of market-oriented policy combined with Christian-communi-
tarian ethics, remained the guideline of Christian democratic politics in the
decades after. In a series of distinct policy areas, such as health care, housing
and social security, state retrenchment and privatization have gone hand in
hand with a discourse and policy strategy of responsibilization (Peeters & Dros-
terij, 2011; Trappenburg, 2019).
Taking a step back, we see that the five distinctive features of the German
crossover (the third way; anti-individualism; anti-modernism; the stress on
responsibility; and the defense of a non-commercial sphere), are clearly
present in Dutch Christian democratic discourse of the 1980s. To be clear,
this does not necessarily mean that Dutch Christian democrats were directly
inspired by German ordoliberalism. While there are significant references to
the German formula of the ‘social market economy’ to be found in Dutch
Christian democratic publications, these remain rather superficial. The prime
minister Ruud Lubbers described the reformed Dutch welfare state as a
‘social market economy’ in interviews and lectures. ‘The balance between inter-
vention and laissez faire is delicate’, he argued. ‘We have to further develop our
social market economy, in the sense that we use the benefits of the market
economy for social ends’ (Trouw, 1990). And in a retrospective on the policies
of the Lubbers cabinets, his Catholic finance minister Onno Ruding described
its policies in terms of Catholic social doctrine, which had as a practical model
the German ‘social market economy’, ‘a mixed economic order’ within a ‘social
framework that prevents the laisser-faire variant’ (Ruding, 2003, p. 236).
However, there are few references to ordoliberal thinkers, making it hard to
speak of a direct ordoliberal influence. Instead, the argument of this paper is
18 Economy and Society

broader in nature: the complex synthesis between neoliberalism and Christian

democracy gave rise to these distinctive features and ideas, and that crossover
continues to be in evidence in countries with strong Christian democratic tra-
ditions, such as the Netherlands.
In fact, even after the decline of Dutch Christian democracy, the legacy of
this communitarian defence of austerity still resonates strongly in the Nether-
lands. When the right-wing-liberal prime minister Mark Rutte (VVD)
defended his austerity measures in the aftermath of the financial crisis as an
attempt to create a ‘participation society’, he referred back to the policies of
Ruud Lubbers. In the Dutch society that Rutte (2013) envisioned, ‘the inhabi-
tants organize the things they are able to do as much as possible by themselves,
together with the people in their surroundings. That is good for people them-
selves, but it also provides for a more closely-knit society, in which the moral
order is provided by people themselves’. In that same year, in the Speech from
the Throne, the Dutch king Willem Alexander announced the transformation
of the Dutch welfare state to a participation society:

It is undeniable that in our current network and information society people are
more empowered and more independent than before. Combined with the need
to reduce the government deficit, this leads the traditional welfare state to slowly
but surely change into a participation society. Everyone who is able to, is asked
to take responsibility for his or her own life and surroundings. (King Willem-
Alexander, 2013)

It has prompted an extensive literature on the responsibilization of citizens in

the Netherlands, discussed in terms of ‘neoliberal communitarianism’, ‘a new
governmentality’ or a ‘new interventionism’, drawing on Michel Foucault
and Nikolas Rose (Peeters, 2013, 2019; Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010). As the
discourse of responsibilization has secularized in recent decades, the Christian
democratic origins of this strategy however, have increasingly faded from view.

Conclusion

It is now common to think of neoliberalism as a hybrid in terms of both political

philosophy and political practice. This paper extends this argument to the lit-
erature on governmentality and responsibilization, and argues that neoliberal
governmentality as analysed by Foucault should in similar fashion be con-
sidered as an ideological hybrid. More specifically, there is a distinct Christian
democratic dimension that is still underexplored in the existing literature.
The argument unfolds in two steps. First, the paper points out that the
German ordoliberals that Foucault based his analysis on were allied to the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in West Germany. This convergence
between neoliberalism and Christian democracy led to a series of distinctive
features of ordoliberal thought, which can be summarized in five points: (1)
 Merijn Oudenampsen: Neoliberal sermons 19

the presentation of market-oriented reform as a ‘third way’ in between market

individualism and state collectivism; (2) a conservative critique of laissez faire
liberalism as overly individualistic; (3) a conservative critique of modernization
and the rise of the welfare state, described as processes that risked morally dis-
embedding the economy, ultimately leading to a collectivized state; (4) the
focus on an ethics of social responsibility as an alternative to state provision
and the embrace of state-fostered communitarianism and decentralization as
key to the restoration of that responsibility; and (5) the defence of an uncom-
mercialized sphere as crucial to the functioning of the market sphere.
Subsequently, the paper turns to the Dutch neoliberal turn of the 1980s, to
show that this particular crossover between neoliberalism and Christian democ-
racy is of continuing relevance. The Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal
(CDA) defended the Dutch neoliberal turn quite literally as a strategy of
responsibilization, an attempt to create a ‘responsible society’. We see all of
the distinctive features of the German crossover returning in Dutch Christian
democratic discourse. Not market freedom, but (ethical) responsibility was the
core concept used by Christian democrats to defend the Dutch market turn of
the 1980s. For business, responsibility was largely synonymous with more
market freedom: it meant the abolition of wage and price controls, the end of
Keynesian planning, the cutting of subsidies and the lowering of taxes. For
workers, responsibility meant welfare state retrenchment, familial responsibil-
ity and more trade union autonomy in cutting deals with business, exemplified
by the renowned 1982 Wassenaar agreement.
In a still prevalent image of neoliberal governmentality, it is associated with a
disembedded individualism and the generalization of the amoral figure of the
homo economics across the social field. As a correction to that image, recent scho-
larship has shown that neoliberal reform has often gone hand in hand with con-
servative attempts to embed the market in a conservative moral order. This
paper shows this was also the case in the Netherlands, where Christian demo-
crats defended the neoliberal turn with a communitarian and moralistic dis-
course that insisted on personal and collective responsibility: a neoliberal
sermon, if you will. This chimes with Muehlebach’s (2013, p. 458) observation
that social personalism with its emphasis on man’s God-given responsibility has
‘enjoyed remarkable revitalization’ in European Christian democratic politics,
‘where welfare states are also being restructured through a moralized restor-
ation of associational initiatives’. Recent Dutch political trends, in particular
the embrace of a ‘participation society’, shows the continued importance of
this legacy of Christian democracy, even while organized religion and Christian
democracy have seen a fundamental decline.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the Liberalism – Historical and
Contemporary Variations conference held in October 2019 at the University of Helsinki,
20 Economy and Society

and at the workshop ‘Building the neoliberal welfare state’, organized by the University
of Amsterdam in June 2020. I would like to thank the participants for their comments. I
am also grateful to the editors and reviewers for their help in improving the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This research forms part of the project Market Makers, funded by the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

ORCID

Merijn Oudenampsen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1994-535X

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Merijn Oudenampsen is a sociologist and political scientist. He is a Postdoc Researcher

at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, writing a book on the Dutch neoliberal turn. For his
PhD, he wrote an intellectual history of the swing to the right in Dutch politics around
the turn of the century. His PhD-thesis has been published by Routledge as The rise of the
Dutch New Right (Routledge, 2021); it appeared in Dutch as De conservatieve revolte
(Vantilt, 2018).