Before our Netherlands delegation in June, I wrote in this publication about the political chaos we might encounter (When populists cannot be tamed, Newsroom 10 June 2024). Geert Wilders had just brought down the government he helped create. I wondered whether the Dutch “polder model” of consensus democracy could survive 21st-century populism.
But Dutch politics was the least interesting thing about the Netherlands.
The New Zealand Initiative has been running these study tours since 2017. The format is straightforward: take about forty business leaders to a successful small country, meet politicians, officials and executives and identify transferable policies. Our previous destinations were Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland.
This time was different. Not because Dutch policies were better, but because we saw a bigger picture.
Yes, the Dutch showed us their regulatory burden reduction programme. By systematically eliminating compliance requirements, they have cut regulatory costs by 25 percent – about four billion Euros annually. Their Advisory Board on Regulatory Burden advised against 60 percent of proposed regulations last year.
Crucially, the Board never questions whether a policy makes sense – they are emphatically apolitical. They simply check whether the policy’s goals can be achieved with fewer administrative costs – a great policy.
And yes, we saw the Port of Rotterdam’s automated terminals handling 460 million tonnes of cargo annually. The infrastructure to protect it is remarkable, too. The Maeslantkering storm surge barrier can seal off the city from the North Sea when needed.
And yes, we visited Wageningen University’s “Food Valley”, where agricultural innovation happens at scale. The Dutch produce extraordinary amounts of food from a country smaller than Canterbury.
However, focusing on all these achievements misses the point. The real difference is not what the Dutch do but how they think.
Edwin van de Haar, an independent scholar who spoke to our group, traces this Dutch pragmatism back centuries. The medieval drainage boards that still exist today emerged from necessity. When your land is below sea level, you cannot afford lengthy consultation processes. You must act, cooperate and deliver results. This created what van de Haar calls the “Frisian Freedom” – a tradition of self-governing farmers who balanced individual liberty with collective survival.
This tradition has shaped modern Dutch governance and created a pervasive pragmatic mentality. For example, when the Advisory Board on Regulatory Burden issues negative advice, ministries rarely proceed. They technically can override it, but they must publicly justify why. When we asked how often negative advice gets overridden, the answer was rarely, because why create an independent board if you are going to ignore it?
Or consider risk. The Netherlands plans for extreme climate scenarios – up to five-metre sea level rises – because failure to deal with it could mean catastrophe for their country. Yet they do not require lifejackets on canal boats or bicycle helmets and leave both to individual responsibility – because it makes sense.
The contrast with New Zealand is clear. We have become a country obsessed with risk, no matter how small or manageable. And we believe that risk, any risk, always needs a collective response.
What I took away from our visit to the Netherlands was that culture and outcomes are linked. It is a country’s culture that creates institutions. These institutions then lead to policies. And ultimately, these policies create outcomes.
In New Zealand, we may sometimes struggle with policy implementation not because the policies are bad or we lack good ideas, but because our culture is not conducive to them.
Meanwhile, the Dutch did not become efficient because they adopted smart policies. They adopted smart policies because efficiency was a cultural necessity when the sea is your permanent enemy.
New Zealand’s political culture is different. Our roads are cluttered with cones, not because we care more about safety but because we care more about being seen to care about safety. Incidentally, we hardly saw any road cones in the Netherlands over a week, and certainly not because there was no construction.
This cultural divergence shows in productivity statistics. Dutch workers produce 51 percent more output per hour than New Zealanders. That is not because they work harder or have better policies. Their entire system is geared towards getting things done rather than talking about getting things done.
It may also have something to do with Dutch directness, which is not afraid to address problems even at the risk of making some people uncomfortable.
What does all this mean for policy transfer? It suggests we need to examine not just which policies work elsewhere, but what cultural factors enable their success.
You cannot implement Dutch efficiency in a New Zealand cultural context any more than you can make water flow uphill. The policies would be rejected, diluted or overwhelmed by process.
Cultural change is possible but rare. It typically requires an existential crisis, exceptional leadership or a gradual generational shift – or possibly all three.
The Dutch have a saying: “God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands.” It captures something essential: that they take responsibility for outcomes, not just intentions.
In his day job, Edwin van de Haar, the scholar we met earlier, also works for a Dutch energy company. He later showed us his company’s wastewater plant in Utrecht, where they extract heat from sewage and use it to bring clean energy to 20,000 households. A few years ago, a similar plant was discussed for Christchurch. It never happened.
The real lesson from the Netherlands for New Zealand is not which policies to copy. Instead, it is a harder truth: we get precisely the government, regulations, and policies that our culture demands. Until we want different outcomes more than we want process, consultation, and consensus, nothing will change.
Thus, the question is not what we can learn from the Dutch. It is whether we ask ourselves why our culture might prevent us from learning those Dutch lessons.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE.
This time was different. Not because Dutch policies were better, but because we saw a bigger picture.
Yes, the Dutch showed us their regulatory burden reduction programme. By systematically eliminating compliance requirements, they have cut regulatory costs by 25 percent – about four billion Euros annually. Their Advisory Board on Regulatory Burden advised against 60 percent of proposed regulations last year.
Crucially, the Board never questions whether a policy makes sense – they are emphatically apolitical. They simply check whether the policy’s goals can be achieved with fewer administrative costs – a great policy.
And yes, we saw the Port of Rotterdam’s automated terminals handling 460 million tonnes of cargo annually. The infrastructure to protect it is remarkable, too. The Maeslantkering storm surge barrier can seal off the city from the North Sea when needed.
And yes, we visited Wageningen University’s “Food Valley”, where agricultural innovation happens at scale. The Dutch produce extraordinary amounts of food from a country smaller than Canterbury.
However, focusing on all these achievements misses the point. The real difference is not what the Dutch do but how they think.
Edwin van de Haar, an independent scholar who spoke to our group, traces this Dutch pragmatism back centuries. The medieval drainage boards that still exist today emerged from necessity. When your land is below sea level, you cannot afford lengthy consultation processes. You must act, cooperate and deliver results. This created what van de Haar calls the “Frisian Freedom” – a tradition of self-governing farmers who balanced individual liberty with collective survival.
This tradition has shaped modern Dutch governance and created a pervasive pragmatic mentality. For example, when the Advisory Board on Regulatory Burden issues negative advice, ministries rarely proceed. They technically can override it, but they must publicly justify why. When we asked how often negative advice gets overridden, the answer was rarely, because why create an independent board if you are going to ignore it?
Or consider risk. The Netherlands plans for extreme climate scenarios – up to five-metre sea level rises – because failure to deal with it could mean catastrophe for their country. Yet they do not require lifejackets on canal boats or bicycle helmets and leave both to individual responsibility – because it makes sense.
The contrast with New Zealand is clear. We have become a country obsessed with risk, no matter how small or manageable. And we believe that risk, any risk, always needs a collective response.
What I took away from our visit to the Netherlands was that culture and outcomes are linked. It is a country’s culture that creates institutions. These institutions then lead to policies. And ultimately, these policies create outcomes.
In New Zealand, we may sometimes struggle with policy implementation not because the policies are bad or we lack good ideas, but because our culture is not conducive to them.
Meanwhile, the Dutch did not become efficient because they adopted smart policies. They adopted smart policies because efficiency was a cultural necessity when the sea is your permanent enemy.
New Zealand’s political culture is different. Our roads are cluttered with cones, not because we care more about safety but because we care more about being seen to care about safety. Incidentally, we hardly saw any road cones in the Netherlands over a week, and certainly not because there was no construction.
This cultural divergence shows in productivity statistics. Dutch workers produce 51 percent more output per hour than New Zealanders. That is not because they work harder or have better policies. Their entire system is geared towards getting things done rather than talking about getting things done.
It may also have something to do with Dutch directness, which is not afraid to address problems even at the risk of making some people uncomfortable.
What does all this mean for policy transfer? It suggests we need to examine not just which policies work elsewhere, but what cultural factors enable their success.
You cannot implement Dutch efficiency in a New Zealand cultural context any more than you can make water flow uphill. The policies would be rejected, diluted or overwhelmed by process.
Cultural change is possible but rare. It typically requires an existential crisis, exceptional leadership or a gradual generational shift – or possibly all three.
The Dutch have a saying: “God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands.” It captures something essential: that they take responsibility for outcomes, not just intentions.
In his day job, Edwin van de Haar, the scholar we met earlier, also works for a Dutch energy company. He later showed us his company’s wastewater plant in Utrecht, where they extract heat from sewage and use it to bring clean energy to 20,000 households. A few years ago, a similar plant was discussed for Christchurch. It never happened.
The real lesson from the Netherlands for New Zealand is not which policies to copy. Instead, it is a harder truth: we get precisely the government, regulations, and policies that our culture demands. Until we want different outcomes more than we want process, consultation, and consensus, nothing will change.
Thus, the question is not what we can learn from the Dutch. It is whether we ask ourselves why our culture might prevent us from learning those Dutch lessons.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE.
7 comments:
NZ will continue to lag behind and not get things done because the Maori way is about holding hui, which are a cost, time consuming and often not achieving anything.
It is refreshing to see NZ finally look further afield than australia and england for inspiration to the way things can be done. Clearly some good things we could consider, but as long as NZ encourages the victim mentality through the treaty and maorification of all legislation our economy and living standards continue to go backwards. A culture change is most certainly required.
This sounds a bit like NZ 30-40 years ago. Unfortunately we have lost the attitude that leads to getting things done and until we get some real leadership the country will continue to suffer.
I wonder if the Dutch have an adversarial political system - one more concerned with besting the opposition than getting things done?
The native Netherlanders are far more productive than our indigenous Maori - that's why we have a huge problem.
Can't Luxon see that and stop taking money from the hard workers and giving it to the indolent ?
How very true. Unlike Netherlands where 80% of the people are Duch, NZ is a melting pot of ethnically different people. And we should stop pretending that it doesn’t matter, because it does. Unless we collectively agree that what make us New Zealanders is more important and worth protecting than the differences we have, we are heading into the dark alley of ethnic segregation.
ACT will bring one of the Dutch requirements of Regulatory discipline into NZ this year and even 10 % of the Dutch regulatory system savings would be spectacularly successful for NZ . When talking water our nations are opposites , NZ needs to retain the water for irrigation that basically all flows into the sea, whereas Holland protects against inundation . NZ only needs to retain water by simple dams for irrigation and higher existing dams for electricity production in the Tekapo lakes district.
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