Income Distribution Policy in the Netherlands: a Paradigm Shift

This paper investigates which different views have occurred on the main lines of the Dutch incomes policy. To this end the implications of the incomes policies pursued by different cabinets have been analyzed, mainly since 1973. It appears that distributive policies are heavily influenced by a paradigm shift. In the 1970s, the Dutch government replaced its keynesian oriented economic policy making with a neoclassical framework. As a result, the government not only moved from an interventionist approach in the 1970s to a restrained attitude in the 1980s and 1990s, but also altered the institutional framework of its distributive policies by abolishing a number of policy instruments that had been created to influence the size distribution of incomes.