Popularists a danger to democracy? The welfare state and market thinking have weakened our democratic ethos before, think Kees Buitendijk and Paul Bosman.

Dutch democracy is fragile, warned Thom de Graaf earlier this month. The Council of State fears democratic decline by radical and populist politicians. She writes that a deeply rooted democratic ethos is the best response to the vulnerability of the democratic system. Much is expected of citizenship in education.

But that's not nearly enough. Obviously, strong democratic institutions are rooted in a democratic ethos. The question is: how does that happen? And let the Council also take a critical look at how the government itself has undermined the democratic ethos in recent decades. Let's start there.

Citizen is customer, government supplier

In recent decades, virtually all civil responsibilities have been taken over by the welfare state and then by market privatisation: from care to education, housing and refurbishing the neighbourhood. We ourselves don't fix the neighborhood, that's what the municipality, which hires a company. Thus the citizen became customer; market and government became supplier.

And customers have high standards. If they don't get the promised service delivered, they start moaning. The customer has become king and takes care of the supplier because of poor service. The ballot becomes a complaint form.

Now customer-citizens out of discontent and a lack of security of supply deal with the establishment, one suddenly speaks in The Hague of a lack of "democratic ethos'. However, we behave exactly as expected.

Shared Environment

The Greek word ethos originally means the attitude of life that arises in a shared environment. Norm awareness and citizenship begin at home, in the immediate vicinity and social practices. Democratic attitudes are rooted in a democratic environment.

In the era of liberalisation, globalisation and digitisation, local roots seemed obsolete. The so-called anywhere Cosmopolitan winners live in a world of flexibility, world citizenship and self-development. The national state seems like a remnant of the past. They are faced with the Somewhere: people with strong connections to place, community and history. They experience uprooting and loss. But their voices are louder, their numbers are growing. In the United States, we see the resentment that that can bring.

Restoring democratic standards does not go overnight. We are not born as a democratic citizen, but as a democratic citizen. This is done in the Netherlands, among other things, by focusing on civic education. However, half of the schools do not meet the standards, the Education Inspectorate concluded in mid-April.

Writing and calculating

Moreover, basic skills such as reading, writing and counting have also been out of order for years. The real problem of a calving democratic ethos moreover extends further and lies in our everyday social practices and direct living environment.

Traditionally, citizens in the Netherlands are to a large extent themselves concerned with the organisation of family, family and community, associations, churches and voluntary associations. But also about institutions in the public domain such as education, poor care, housing, health care, youth work and care for the elderly. We must leave room for such practices, because that is where the democratic ethos begins, where our attitude as a customer and consumer is challenged and citizenship begins.

Take the Fix Brigade in Amsterdam. A community organisation of volunteers and learning places that isolated homes for free. When the municipality started a major sustainable operation, the Fix Brigade passed and a market party entered. End Fix Brigade, away citizenship formation.

If we want citizens to feel at home and feel connected to the home (the home) of Dutch democracy, then give them the responsibility. If there is no democratic sense of standard there, because every responsibility has been outsourced to the government and the market, then we are placing education before an impossible repair call.

This essay appeared on 29 April 2025 in Trouw.