Bruinsma; Blankenburg

Dutch Law in Action

The Netherlands is a small country, but it has many rules, in handling them the Dutch tend to be pragmatic: they use law to solve problems, not to create additional ones. If applying the rules would lead to seriouw disadvantages, they try to find ways around them. Rules too strict to be applied are ignored and only if that meets with resistance, they change them. Because of its nonlegalistic leanings Dutch legal culture favoured a pragmatic public administra tion, a mild penal climate and an informal civil justice. The real backlash came from political elites in the mid-eighties, striving for a new type of social control. Reducing the costs of the welfare state and halting the rise of unemployment were put at the top of the political agenda. Dutch political and legal elities also welcomed European integration as an argument for adaption: what will happen with a soft laegal culture in a hard world? The administration of law had not only been tolerant to ideology, it has also been indifferent to inefficiency due to slack. the turn towards legalism and control, however, threatens to do away with the vices of Dutch legal culture together with is virtues. This socio-legal essay is an updated version of Dutch Legal Culture (1991, 1994) with Erhard Blankenburg as a co-author.