The Poldermodel and its Order of Consensus: a Foucauldian Perspective on Power and Discourse within the Process of Consensus Creation

Abstract

In the middle of the 1990s the Netherlands became world famous as the Poldermodel. Whereas the country had previously been used as a deterrent example, with high unemployment, low employment rates and rising public deficits in the late 1970s and 1980s, overnight it turned into a model country in terms of macroeconomic and social performance. An extensive consensus between government, employers and trade unions, which is held to be based on the supply side-oriented promotion of international competitiveness by wage restraint and the consolidation of public finances, is regarded as the recipe to success. However, in spite of its popularity since the mid-1990s, consensus has neither taken shape as an analytical concept nor has its creation been thoroughly scrutinized. Referred to as the explanans of successful management of crisis, consensus is at the centre of the academic and political debate, but in fact it has a shadowy existence. This article thus aims at examining the structure as well as the creation of popular unanimity, in order to reposition consensus from an explanans to an explanandum. Starting from an interpretative perspective based on the Foucauldian governmentality approach, the article raises the question why supply-sided strategies, and not others, are seen as being necessary and sensible, and how power relations between the actors are embedded in the process of consensus creation.