Ungovernable Amsterdam? Redefining Municipal Government from the Late 1970s to the Late 1980s

Abstract

This article discusses the challenges that Amsterdam’s municipal government encountered and how it responded to them from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. The presence of heroin addicts and radical squatters alongside the effects of suburbanization and deindustrialization raised the specter of an ungovernable city. Mayors and heads of department were also confronted with conflicting expectations from the public and problems of internal coordination while remaining dependent on the nation-state for legislation and funding. Yet, a new approach to governing Amsterdam was gradually emerging, one that brought problems to a manageable level rather than attempting to solve them, improved bureaucratic efficiency, and prioritized creating a business-friendly environment. This redefinition of municipal government adopted some neoliberal elements while retaining a recognizably social democratic profile. The actions of Amsterdam’s leaders should be situated in their contemporary context rather than blamed for the very different problems that Amsterdam is facing today.

“‘They’ve come to believe in their own rhetoric,’ an older Dutch friend told me, ‘but really the city is ungovernable.’” This somewhat fatalistic assessment was reported by the British writer Will Self in early 1994, after a visit to the streets and canals around Amsterdam’s Central Station had led him to conclude that the authorities’ tolerant drug policy was proving “just as ineffective as everyone else’s.” ¹ Apocryphal though the quotation may be, it undoubtedly reflects a widespread sentiment. This goes to show that whether or not a city is deemed “ungovernable” depends on perceptions and expectations as well as on structural problems and political solutions. With this consideration in mind, the present article explores how the governing of Amsterdam was understood and practiced between the late 1970s and the late 1980s. It begins by contouring a municipal government that, despite having changed its approach significantly in response to left-wing protests and popular disgruntlement, still found itself overburdened by various external and internal challenges. It follows on by analyzing a decisive shift toward a new approach, one that brought problems to a manageable level rather than attempting to solve them, improved bureaucratic efficiency, and prioritized creating a business-friendly environment. In the course of the 1980s, pace Self’s native informant, Amsterdam’s mayors and heads of department gradually found a new way to govern their unruly city – by finding different responses to ongoing challenges and by redefining what municipal government meant and entailed.

For a while, the study of municipal government seemed to have become slightly old-fashioned, as urban historians’ attention was moving beyond city hall to encompass a far broader array of actors and aspects. ² However, the recent preoccupation with the emergence of “neoliberal cities” has partly revived scholarly interest in local policy-making. ³ In continental Western Europe, the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s may have been less dramatic and the solutions to it were less drastic than in, say, New York City, but this makes it all the more important to include it when paying renewed attention to the history of municipal government. ⁴ In turn, a focus on how governing was understood and practiced can help to advance the literature on late twentieth-century Amsterdam. The available syntheses recount how top-down, large-scale planning was ambitiously pursued but soon met with such opposition that it was eventually abandoned for the new principle of a “compact city” that became increasingly attractive to new residents and tourists. But the stories they tell are somewhat simplistic, whether they offer an optimistic account of a resilient city that “went through a deep valley, and climbed back out again” or a critical one of the transformation “from a relatively poor city under a radical left-wing government to a city dominated by middle classes.” ⁵ What is needed are historical studies that are more empirically grounded and open to ambivalence than such generalizations, while also being more broadly conceived than the existing biographies of Amsterdam’s major politicians or studies of its various radical movements.

Looking back at his activities as mayor of Amsterdam, Ed van Thijn recalled how, on a visit to New York City, he struggled to explain his position to his namesake and counterpart Ed Koch. ⁶ Leaving aside the issue of Koch’s listening skills, the structure and culture of municipal government in the Netherlands warrants some preliminary explanation. Cities have a council (gemeenteraad), which is elected through proportional suffrage. The councilors elect the members of the executive who head the various departments (wethouders). Mayors (burgemeesters), by contrast, are not elected but appointed by the crown, in actual fact by the minister of the interior, after an application and selection process conducted by the national government’s representative in the respective province with input from the municipal council. They are tasked with chairing the meetings of the executive and the council, safeguarding public order in collaboration with the police, and representing their respective cities. A hybrid between civil servant and politician, any mayor has to rely on cooperation with the heads of departments, the municipal council, and the wider public. Mayors are party members and, at the same time, expected to work for all residents of their city. Even the parties in the council have long tended to form broad coalitions rather than relying on narrow majorities. Having said this, the political atmosphere changed in the 1970s. The Party of Labor, which was strongly represented in the Netherlands’ big cities, came under pressure from the left. Municipal governments were caught in the middle between calls for a progressive stance and the Dutch government in The Hague, which from 1977 was formed or dominated by center-right parties. ⁷

This article first discusses how a shift from large-scale to small-scale planning and the beginning of the popular mayor Wim Polak’s tenure in the late 1970s proved insufficient to solve the pressing problems of squatter radicalism, drug addiction, and high unemployment, which were compounded by the external expectations and internal difficulties faced by the municipal government (I.). Its central section highlights the responses to these challenges that emerged in the course of the 1980s under Polak and his successor Ed van Thijn, especially a more modest and business-friendly approach to governing Amsterdam (II.). The conclusion contends that this adoption of neoliberalism remained partial and ambiguous while any genuinely social democratic alternative had become elusive (III.).

I

How could Amsterdam be governed? By the second half of the 1970s, the answer to this question appeared more complicated than ever before. The Party of Labor continued to maintain its predominance in municipal elections and coalition governments, but it had become increasingly divided. Plans to create space for office buildings and infrastructural projects by demolishing several neighborhoods adjacent to the historical city center had been developed in the 1960s but soon met with rapidly growing criticism. Large numbers of both middle- and working-class residents continued to move to various suburbs and new towns. But other Amsterdammers remained attached to their familiar neighborhoods, which were also staunchly defended by young newcomers with an interest in exploring alternative lifestyles alongside finding accommodation. Building a metro line to the detriment of the former Jewish quarter on the eastern fringe of the city center thus sparked massive protests and the project could only be pushed through with equally massive police intervention.

As a result of this controversy, the debate on Amsterdam’s future, including within the Party of Labor, shifted from large-scale demolition and redevelopment toward small-scale renovation and construction. Ambitious plans for the transformation of further areas to the west, south, and east of the city center were shelved. Yet the new social democratic commitment to the preservation of existing neighborhoods did not mean that nothing needed to be done: the state of these areas was too dilapidated and the need for social housing too pressing. Jan Schaefer, a pastry baker by profession who had entered politics as a neighborhood activist, became head of the department for housing and urban renewal after securing a good result in the 1978 municipal elections for his Party of Labor. Bearded and usually wearing jeans and a leather jacket rather than a suit, Schaefer stood for a more popular style of social democratic politics, which he managed to combine with a knack for getting things done once appointed to an executive position (Figure 1). Less dominant and media-savvy than Schaefer, the sandal-wearing policy nerd Michael van der Vlis, head of the department for traffic and spatial planning, provided much of the necessary conceptual preparation (Figure 2). The municipality’s purchase of housing stock, renovation of existing buildings, and construction of new ones where necessary progressed rapidly. It was preceded by consultations at the level of the respective neighborhood, enabled by generous subsidies from the government in The Hague, and executed by a bureaucracy that had adapted to the change of political course. ⁸

Figure 1.

Three shades of social democratic masculinity: Heads of department Jan Schaefer (far left) and Walter Etty (middle), Mayor Wim Polak (second from right), September 1980. Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 2.

The uphill battle to contain the presence of cars in central Amsterdam: Michael van der Vlis (middle) watching a police officer distributing information about Park & Ride rather than a parking ticket. September 1981. © Nationaal Archief.

Even beyond the planning of new projects, the municipal government’s approach to consultation changed in the course of the 1970s. Whereas before, the emphasis had been on an efficiently organized process allowing well-informed citizens to provide limited input, it was now understood more comprehensively as part of a project of democratization: “Central to this policy is the idea of participation,” explained one internal memo, “the aim is to increase citizen involvement in governance.” ⁹ The new mayor, Wim Polak, whose tenure was to last from 1977 to 1983, was a suitable representative of this altered approach to government (Figure 1). To be sure, he was an old political hand, having been a journalist, head of the municipal finance department, secretary of state for local finances, and an influential member of the Party of Labor. Still, hailing from what had been the poor Jewish quarter before Nazi Germany occupied the city, he was widely accorded the credentials of a “true,” somewhat folksy native of Amsterdam, in contrast to his aloof predecessor, a former law professor. ¹⁰ “After all these years, not a patriarch but an ‘ordinary’ person who has risen through his own capacities and will doubtless strive to remain ‘ordinary,’” an enthusiastic resident of the working-class Jordaan neighborhood wrote to the new mayor. ¹¹

If Amsterdam’s city hall had managed to adapt to new times what, then, was still making the process of governing the city so complicated? Vocal and violent protests continued despite the altered approach to municipal government. After having lost the battle against the construction of the metro line, radicals shifted their focus to squatting and then defending houses that had mostly been left vacant by real estate investors—including along the canals, opposite Central Station, and near the famous Rijksmuseum, i.e. at sites that guaranteed public visibility. All the while, the city remained plagued by the structural problem that industrial work was becoming scarcer, companies were relocating elsewhere, and families kept moving to the suburbs and new towns, notwithstanding Schaefer and Van der Vlis’s efforts to improve housing provision in Amsterdam proper. As a result, the tax base was eroding while social problems increased. The latter were compounded by the presence of heroin addicts and dealers, which undermined the city’s appeal to visitors as well as its livability for residents. All this was observed by a critical public that included disgruntled residents, various underground media, and the local newspaper Het Parool. It also mattered that the national press showed a strong interest in the Netherlands’s biggest and most important city—partly out of a conservative desire for demarcating its provincial readership from supposedly radical and crime-infested Amsterdam. As Mayor Polak put it in an internal meeting, public opinion in the country was turning against the municipal government, “with a complete disregard for the actual problems and competences.” ¹²

Thus, the spread and presence of left-wing activism, a dramatic increase in drug addiction, structural trends such as deindustrialization and suburbanization, and critical attention from various quarters continued to present the municipal government with severe challenges. But listing various thorny issues, important though it is, does not suffice to explain how its members, despite their consensual approach and best efforts at problem-solving, found themselves in various predicaments. This requires a closer analysis of the “actual problems and competences” alluded to by Mayor Polak.

Paradoxical though it may seem for a city that kept deploring the decline of its population, Amsterdam was facing a housing shortage, which was exacerbated by the growing demand for forms of living space other than the single-family home. While the municipal government was well aware of the structural problem and was pursuing the aforementioned major housing program, left-wing activism gave the issue prominence and urgency. How was a mayor who was committed to a non-repressive course of action but simultaneously tasked with ensuring the rule of law to deal with the squatters? Given his responsibility for public order, he lacked the option of dropping the problem into someone else’s lap. Against this background, talking to the squatters seemed necessary on the one hand and tricky on the other. Sometimes these radicals resorted to violence, at other times they expressed a desire for “discussion.” ¹³ After receiving an anonymous letter that requested a meeting, Mayor Polak suspected that the squatters merely intended to “maneuver him into a negotiating situation in which a possible forced eviction would no longer fit.” ¹⁴ Anarchistic and communal in inspiration, the movement was difficult to grasp. The squatters were reluctant to grant any of them the right to speak for the others. And they opposed the very idea of consensual politics that underpinned the municipal government’s attempts at negotiation in favor of direct action. As one underground publication put it in rather drastic language: “This is why it sucks for Polak and his friends that so many people are standing up for themselves, that they aren’t letting themselves be taken in any longer by nice promises and instead are just squatting.” ¹⁵

While negotiation seemed preferable but proved elusive, eviction sooner or later became unavoidable given the mayoral obligation to uphold the law and the long waiting lists for those houses owned by the city or public housing corporations. It led to violent altercations and, in several cases, veritable pitched battles between the police and the squatters. Such experiences prompted Mayor Polak, clearly against his own inclination, to ponder how to improve the local police’s equipment for such situations without risking casualties by filling “the weaponry gap between the baton and the gun.” ¹⁶ He had to deal with special units whose deployment seemed necessary but who felt insufficiently supported by the political leadership and were hence prone to take independent and robust action. The view that such action was needed against the squatters was more widely shared. In one case, a unit that was tasked with an eviction received unsolicited help from a nearby police station and even some sturdy porters and barkeepers from the Leidseplein, one of Amsterdam’s entertainment miles. In another, police officers protested the lack of law and order in one of the central districts and went on a temporary strike, receiving considerable media coverage. The mayor was left to make the difficult case that deploying or not deploying the forces of law and order inevitably depended on the available resources. ¹⁷

The balance between negotiation and repression was so difficult to strike that the conservative press attacked Polak for “insecurity” and “indecisiveness,” whereas the squatters contended that he was borrowing his methods from Pinochet’s Chile and Hitler’s Germany (notwithstanding the fact that, as a Jewish teenager, he had escaped deportation by going into hiding while his parents perished in the Holocaust). ¹⁸ When a riot broke out during and in close proximity to Queen Beatrix’s coronation on April 30, 1980, the political left, this time including the Amsterdam chapter of his own Party of Labor, accused the mayor of escalating the violence by “excessive public order measures,” such as blocking access to parts of the city center. ¹⁹ Other citizens, often, given the ceremony’s national significance, writing from outside Amsterdam, felt that the unrest warranted more of a crackdown, some even retrospectively calling for the deployment of “tanks” or “a machine gun.” ²⁰ Neither side had any understanding for the complexity of organizing such an event, nor for other things that the mayor had had on his plate during the build-up to it, including the ever-pressing drug problem, an affair surrounding a supposedly corrupt police inspector, and the preparations for a visit by the Spanish royal couple, all alongside the customary routine of meetings and appointments. ²¹

Contrasting criticisms of the municipal government’s dealings with the squatters revealed starkly different expectations of the kind of city Amsterdam should be. The prominence of vocal left-wingers and the predominance of the Party of Labor could not obscure the widespread concern about a social order that appeared to be disintegrating, even if the anti-immigrant Center Party remained electorally marginal and neither the Christian Democrats nor the market-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy were fully-fledged parties of the right. The populist undercurrent was expressed in one woman’s letter attacking “‘alternative’ municipal bureaucrats” who condoned squatting, “teenage vandals,” and “often dirty guest worker families”; in the warning (or thinly veiled threat) by shopkeepers’ and residents’ associations that vigilantes might intervene against drug addicts in their neighborhood should the mayor fail to do so; and in complaints about immigrant youth, who were causing disturbances with their loud music and noisy motorbikes. ²² Thus, some citizens expected the municipal government to re-establish order against outcasts and outsiders, while others insisted that it honor its commitment to the idea of a tolerant city that had ceased to be ethnically homogeneous. The latter, too, entailed grappling with contrasting expectations: right-wing and left-wing organizations of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants accused each other of intimidation and wanted the city to do something about it even when evidence of illegal activities remained scanty. ²³

While many expectations were collective, inasmuch as they either represented group concerns or reflected a desire for social order, others came from residents who were pursuing their individual interests. The Office for Contacts between Citizens and Government (Bureau Bestuurscontacten) had been founded in 1971 to overcome this friction, organize consultation, and advise Amsterdammers on how to deal with the municipal bureaucracy. For all the enthusiasm of its staff, however, it was often confronted with the unrealistic expectation that it could immediately effect a desired change. And despite the office’s sincere efforts to reach citizens who were not well-educated, it was concerned about their inclination to worry needlessly in some cases while failing to take necessary action in others. ²⁴ The disappearance of the “fear threshold” that had long prevented ordinary people from approaching the institutions that were meant to serve them seemed a positive development—indeed it indicated that the Office for Contacts between Citizens and Government was fulfilling its purpose. ²⁵ But it also raised the question of how a myriad personal demands could be met and incorporated into the broader process of policy-making.

The relationship between individual priorities and city-wide policies may not have been that particular office’s problem, but it could hardly be ignored when it came, for instance, to traffic planning. Earlier than other European cities, Amsterdam attempted to confront the problem that automobility was reaching its limits. Once large-scale demolition, followed by the construction of broad roads, was off the table, the question arose of how to cope with an urban space that was divided by various canals, the river Amstel toward the southeast, and the IJ, a body of water that lay between the center and the north of the city and connected it to the North Sea. To leave the existing roads and streets as they were and the rest to the free interplay between residents, commuters, and visitors would have been difficult to reconcile with the strong planning tradition in Amsterdam and the Netherlands more generally, the compactness of the city center, and the growing concern about air quality. The municipal government, particularly Michael van der Vlis, designed, and began to implement, more bike-friendly street planning (Figure 2). But here, too, individualistic expectations got in the way. Van der Vlis’s department identified a dilemma: on the one hand, a majority of citizens supported efforts to reduce car traffic politically; on the other hand, actual behavior reflected a further shift from bikes and public transport to cars. Refusing the adjustment that planning asked of them, traffic users were complaining about the introduction of parking meters and the congestion that resulted from streets that had been narrowed in favor of bike lanes. The expectation that political support would translate into change at an individual level had proven overly optimistic: “The policy thus turned against itself; instead of motivating the citizens the effect was simply to alienate and irritate them.” ²⁶

The municipal government had to struggle to cope with squatters and drug addicts, demanding citizens, and individualistic drivers all the more since it was simultaneously grappling with problems of coordination. Important decisions were taken incidentally, as regards the management of the police force, or haphazardly, for instance when heads of department or civil servants granted subsidies without proper approval by the municipal council. ²⁷ New international contacts between Amsterdam and other cities required a systematic approach, the mayor’s cabinet pointed out in an exasperated tone, instead of being initiated whenever a head of department or senior civil servant happened to feel inspired by their latest trip abroad. ²⁸ In 1979, almost no component of the municipal apparatus managed to submit its budget plans in good time, prompting the head of the finance department to complain about a growing “atmosphere of malaise and fatalism.” ²⁹ All these problems were intertwined with the broader issue of a structurally overburdened government. Department heads and the mayor, according to the latter’s cabinet, were so busy troubleshooting and representing that they lacked the time for the proper planning and coordination of projects—and, in a vicious circle, for measures that would reduce their own workload. ³⁰

Even if Amsterdam had possessed a well-oiled government machine, it would still have had to face the fact that it could not act in isolation. After all, its mayor and department heads had to maneuver within the legal and financial framework of the Netherlands, then as now a nation-state that only allows for limited local and regional autonomy. Their efforts to make street parking less chaotic would have been far more effective had the city been allowed to place wheel clamps—but that, characteristically, was a case that Mayor Polak had to make to the minister of justice since it hinged on a change in the law. Deploying the police against squatters in addition to its many other tasks in a big city required more costly manpower, and hence depended on the outcome of difficult negotiations with the minister of the interior. ³¹ A trend toward national centralization concerning environmental regulation, welfare provision, and public transportation was unmistakable, as various branches of the municipal government diagnosed. It put the municipal government in a difficult position given the parallel development toward democratic participation at the neighborhood level and the need for planning without continual interference by the Ministry of Traffic and Transportation in The Hague. ³² The implicit conclusion from such complaints was that Amsterdam lacked the latitude to meet the challenges and expectations it faced with the necessary vigor and flexibility.

With regard to the international context in which it operated, the municipal government was in a similarly uncomfortable position. The parties represented in the municipal council held different views about partnerships with particular cities and about the principles that should underpin them, ranging between the promotion of trade and tourism, pragmatic exchanges about municipal issues, development aid, and symbolic politics. Left-wingers contended that the partnership with Jakarta was not in the Indonesian population’s best interests given President Suharto's iron-fisted rule, whereas center-right councilors thought it unwise for the city to break free from Dutch foreign policy and lecture others in a world that, like it or not, was largely run by dictatorships. ³³ The termination of this partnership, notwithstanding the counterarguments, indicated the importance of taking a stance as a progressive city in the context of a reintensified Cold War. So did the passing of a motion declaring Amsterdam a nuclear-weapons-free zone. The municipal government pointed out in vain that defense policy was shaped at the national level within a framework of supranational treaties and that nuclear weapons were anyway unlikely to be stationed on city territory. ³⁴ In effect, its pragmatic understanding of the political tasks that Amsterdam could meaningfully take on was undermined by the majority of the council with its penchant for symbolic politics.

Given his responsibility for public order, Mayor Polak was directly implicated when a violent demonstration against American involvement in El Salvador caused the intermittent closure of the United States consulate and more peaceful protesters subsequently placed crosses for the victims of the conflict in front of the building. His compromise solution to remove the crosses but only after leaving them standing for a week predictably satisfied no one—not even the representatives of the rival superpower, who were outraged when, in turn, some anticommunists placed a cross in front of the Soviet trade mission. ³⁵ Given the tension between the American presence as a target for left-wing protest and its importance for Amsterdam’s economic interests it was rather unfortunate that the city’s 1982 annual report featured a prominently placed image of protesters burning the stars and stripes. The mishap earned Polak angry letters from the Minister of the Economy and from a fellow member of the Party of Labor and former mayor of Dordrecht, to whom he sent the unusually emotional reply that the leader of a “world city” such as Amsterdam could not possibly keep abreast of the “countless decisions that are taken every day in his name.” Such unfair criticisms, Polak complained, risked making “‘the most difficult job in the Netherlands,’ which is what the mayoralty of Amsterdam has often been called again over the last few weeks [. . .] completely impossible!” ³⁶

Leaving aside his epistolary handwringing, Wim Polak raised an important issue: what sort of personal leadership could reasonably be expected from the mayor of a tension-ridden and highly complex city? As he never tired of pointing out, his own remit was narrowly circumscribed. His task, as he saw it, could merely be reduced to one of integration and coordination internally and representation and negotiation externally. But the problem was that the expectations of his role were much higher than those of an “active team member,” as he had described himself in his inaugural address to the council. ³⁷ This is already evident from the congratulatory letters he received upon his appointment, which acknowledged the difficulties of his position yet set a lot of store by a vaguely defined mayoral “influence”—sometimes expressed in general terms, sometimes by requesting an intervention in a matter of personal interest. ³⁸

That expectations of Mayor Polak’s role far exceeded his narrow remit also emerges from media coverage of his tenure. This had much to do with notions of masculine leadership that were no weaker (perhaps even stronger) in a period of increasing political, cultural, and ethnic diversity, in which female political leaders were still very much the exception. Similar expectations were directed at Amsterdam’s heads of department. Witness the widespread, albeit often grudging, respect for Jan Schaefer, with his leather jacket, thundering voice, and impatience with bureaucratic constraints. ³⁹ Witness also the outrage against Irene Vorrink, one of the few women members of the municipal government, who was depicted as incapable of heading the city’s public health department after suggesting that the drug problem might be unsolvable. ⁴⁰ In contrast to most of them, however, Mayor Polak could not hope for any break from media attention. For him, the only respite came in the form of occasional visits to friendlier territory, such as Manchester, where one newspaper portrayed him as a “small, dapper, dynamic man” who was working very hard for his salary. ⁴¹

Critical voices back home in the Netherlands did not deny that Polak was hard-working, but they most certainly did not see him as dynamic. He neither possessed nor conveyed inspiration, the conservative tabloid De Telegraaf wrote, instead all he did was to talk about his city’s many and massive problems: “his problem: which problem to start with.” ⁴² A social geographer at the University of Amsterdam declared that he felt reminded of “the concept of powerlessness” when reading the mayor’s pensive interviews. ⁴³ Even more worryingly, similar criticisms emerged from within the municipal government itself. Under the guise of anonymity, one head of department provided the following unflattering quotation: “Polak is anxious, he takes no risks and too few decisions.” Granted, he was a “good administrator,” but quite simply “not a strong man.” ⁴⁴ The mayor’s very own cabinet felt that he was “not getting enough results.” He should urgently raise his external and internal profile and formulate a “vision,” lest he limit himself to fighting symptoms rather than tackling problems. ⁴⁵

In sum, Mayor Wim Polak and the members of the municipal government were operating in a highly challenging context. Radical squatters were prepared to use violence and, owing to the character of their movement, proved rather elusive partners in any attempt at negotiation. At the same time, “ordinary” citizens pursued individual interests and held ideas of the common good that were ever more difficult to reconcile with any political program. Moreover, Amsterdam’s government was subject to national legislation and dependent on the government in The Hague for funding while also struggling with its own internal coordination. All the while, it was faced with high but contrasting expectations: on the one hand, to accommodate a more diverse city and take a progressive stance in the late Cold War period; on the other, to restore public order and demonstrate masculine leadership. Hence the frequent, often acerbic criticism from across the political spectrum, including the Party of Labor, and even from within city hall. All this said, however, Polak was much more than a hapless figure: in fact, he was working toward a major shift in the entire approach to municipal government, which was subsequently pursued by his successor Ed van Thijn.

II

Understandably enough, after six challenging years in office and plenty of criticism from different sides of the political spectrum, Wim Polak refrained from seeking a second term as mayor of Amsterdam. Yet, when he was taking stock of his tenure in speeches and interviews, he came across as serene rather than embittered. His statements were surely motivated by a feeling of relief, a willingness to depart on an optimistic note, and a desire to shape his future image. But they also reflect a shift in the way municipal government was practiced and understood. Polak offered a principled defense of his cautious approach, which he sharply distinguished from the view that “there is just no way of governing big cities.” Warning of “too much governability,” he sang the praises of a “free society” that was moving ahead in unpredictable and unstoppable ways, changing the outlook of particular shopping streets, leading to forms of living other than the nuclear family, and bringing about a more culturally creative and diverse city. To acknowledge a limited governmental influence on social trends, argued Polak, was not tantamount to defeatism. On the contrary, the municipal government should view it as its core task to deal with the consequences of these trends and still develop plans and even a “vision,” notwithstanding the absence of sufficient funding from The Hague. ⁴⁶

What was Polak’s renewed optimism based on? Between 1980, when the attacks on him peaked, and the end of his tenure in the spring of 1983, things had started to change. For some time, the squatters had enjoyed considerable sympathy for their stance against real estate speculation, but they were now increasingly seen as a self-interested bunch, who claimed buildings that were owned by the municipality and sorely needed by those waiting for social housing. They had, according to one journalist, “replaced the terror of speculators with their own arbitrary rule.” ⁴⁷ While Polak was still accused of authoritarianism when he once more resorted to eviction, he was now, according to a poll, getting through with his argument that the squatters’ refusal to compromise had not left him with any other option. ⁴⁸ He himself felt that that particular decision, and its precise execution by the police, had persuaded many people to give him more credit and even to concede that he was doing a good job. The legal circumscriptions of the position and the political environment of Amsterdam, Polak argued, would have condemned any “tough mayor” to fail. Much-criticized decisions, such as leaving the protesters’ crosses standing in front of the U.S. consulate for a week before having them removed, had turned out to be effective problem-solving measures in the sense of restoring calm. Polak could, pointing to parallel challenges in American cities, even get away with saying that there was no real solution to the drug problem—much the same statement that, as mentioned above, had widely been seen as a declaration of political bankruptcy in the case of Irene Vorrink, the head of the public health department. ⁴⁹

The departing mayor continued to be criticized by the conservative press and center-right councilors for his deficient leadership, yet his middle-of-the-road course and ad hoc decisions as well as the general difficulty of influencing social trends from city hall were meeting with greater understanding. But what had been Polak’s and more broadly the municipal government’s contribution to the “vision” that he himself deemed indispensable? The answer lies in the increasing efforts to facilitate economic activity beyond industry and the port, overshadowed though they were by the more contentious issues around housing and squatting, drug consumption and street crime. The self-declared “subversives” who attacked the mayor for striving to “sell Amsterdam to American investors” were being hyperbolical yet were on to something. ⁵⁰ From the beginning of his tenure, Polak regularly emphasized how important collaboration with business was, which included trips to various countries, the promotion of trade and investment, and speeding up procedures for issuing permits. He stressed the interplay between public investment, for instance for the congress center RAI and Schiphol Airport, and the growth of the finance, retail, and hospitality sectors. ⁵¹ The vision was that of a government that refrained from the idea of a “dogmatic masterplan” and instead saw its task in “nurturing, and keeping up with, the processes going on in the city: sustaining infrastructure, setting preconditions, and creating opportunities.” ⁵²

Behind Polak’s public statements lay a broader change in the way municipal government viewed and approached its own role. Problems of coordination were often discussed, as we have seen, which led to reflections about possible improvements as well as complaints about predicaments. As early as 1978, Polak had spoken of various efforts to draw on organizational expertise derived from business in order to render administrative processes more efficient. ⁵³ Memoranda argued that various branches of government needed “management,” or stressed the importance of professional communication both within these branches and in their relations with the public. ⁵⁴ The term “efficiency” (a naturalized English word) entered bureaucratic and political language—even that of Michael van der Vlis, the progressive head of the department for traffic and spatial planning, who had to pursue his ambitious projects in a context of budgetary restrictions. ⁵⁵ The Office for Contacts between Citizens and Government with its participatory ethos complained that consultation was increasingly institutionalized and limited to minor planning decisions. ⁵⁶ At the same time, the Party of Labor, which had once striven to influence policy-making directly and had not shied away from undermining the mayor, was becoming less and less contentious and visionary. Instead, it followed the line of its pragmatic representatives in municipal government and reorientated itself toward short-term solutions. ⁵⁷

Polak’s incipient agenda was more fully developed and pursued by his successor Ed van Thijn, whose tenure as mayor lasted from 1983 to 1994. Van Thijn, another member of the Party of Labor and Jewish survivor in hiding, had been a leading member of both the Dutch parliament and the Amsterdam council and, briefly, minister of the interior before his appointment. He benefited from the groundwork laid by his predecessor and, most importantly, from a more favorable, though continuously challenging, context. The shift was gradual rather than abrupt. Van Thijn, too, faced protests, most spectacularly during one of his customary neighborhood tours. The Staatsliedenbuurt to the west of the city center was a stronghold of radical squatters, who felt provoked by the prospect of the visit, accused the mayor of treating social problems as issues of public order, and physically as well as verbally accosted him when he insisted on showing up (Figure 3). ⁵⁸

Figure 3.

Under radical pressure: Mayor Ed van Thijn attempting to visit the Staatsliedenbuurt. December 1984. Picture by Bert Verhoeff. ©ANP Foto.

The heroin problem was still rampant all through the 1980s, prompting Van Thijn to ponder ways to lift the “pessimistic and demotivated” mood among his narcotics officers and pacify angry residents. ⁵⁹ Most importantly, structural unemployment, which disproportionately hit Amsterdam’s large Moroccan and Turkish communities, remained a matter of great concern. Meanwhile, funding from The Hague continued to be limited, even more so given that the government led by Christian Democratic Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers adopted key tenets of neoliberal thinking, stressed the necessity of budgetary restraint, and bluntly stated that “cities need to solve their own problems.” ⁶⁰

In a way, the persistence of these conflicts and issues bolstered the new approach to municipal government. The treatment meted out to the mayor during his visit to the Staatsliedenbuurt increased the distance between the squatter movement’s radical and pragmatic wings, together with a mix of patient negotiation, offers of legal tenancy to long-term occupiers, credible eviction threats, and the increasingly tangible results of the municipal housing program. The fact that the heroin problem plainly persisted made it easier to argue for the provision of medical care, methadone, and, from 1984, clean needles to users. At the same time, it justified applying police pressure to contain crime and reduce the city’s attraction as a transnational drug capital. Green Party delegates from the West German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who expressed admiration for Amsterdam’s humane approach but asked to extend it to addicts from across the border, were told in no uncertain terms that the municipal government felt unable to solve what was really a “German problem.” ⁶¹

Limited funding from the Dutch government made budgetary restraint at the local level seem unavoidable. “Concepts such as productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, competitive capacity,” explained the mayor at an internal meeting, “will be normative for decision-making.” ⁶² Coordinated by Van Thijn and Walter Etty, the cleverly anticharismatic head of the finance department (Figure 1), the municipal government was now keen on defining priorities more clearly and dividing or pooling tasks. ⁶³ Various departments and offices began to see themselves as providers of services, which should consequently be “customer-oriented”; they also acquired a habit of hiring external consultants for the improvement of their internal processes. ⁶⁴ The municipal council itself became more governmental in orientation, stressing that its focus would be strategic and structural, whereas truly local issues would now be left to the district councils; ideological questions receded to the background. ⁶⁵ And the national government granted the city greater latitude, for instance for finally setting up its own parking regime with permits, tickets, and wheel clamps. ⁶⁶

In tandem with these organizational changes, cooperation between the municipal government and business developed further. Both sides shared a concern about high unemployment and a belief in a more flexible labor market, an increasingly global outlook and an awareness of competition with other European cities. ⁶⁷ Mayor Van Thijn initiated various committees and circles with representatives of business, often inviting them to his auratic residence on one of Amsterdam’s canals. He aimed at attracting investment and setting up various foundations for economic and social advancement, but, above all, at creating a shared optimistic spirit—reflected in the motto Amsterdam heeft’t (Amsterdam’s got it), which boldly risked triggering sarcastic comments to do with crime and dirt. What counted, he stated at one of these meetings, was the will to declare Amsterdam a “prime location” that had “called a halt to impoverishment.” ⁶⁸ In turn, business was encouraged to offer input on issues such as infrastructure. Its representatives were thus given the opportunity to argue that more needed to be done for its needs and to redefine the common good. “It would help if the municipal government saw itself as the board of directors of Amsterdam Inc.,” opined one report, “and drew up a multi-year investment plan from that perspective.” Such a plan should, the report argued, include facilitating investment, improving infrastructure, and developing previously neglected parts of the city. ⁶⁹

A vision for the renewal of the city became central to planning at a time when the municipal housing program was nearing completion. A number of projects rendered the vision concrete even if they took time to yield tangible results and some of them had been initiated much earlier. The most prominent of these were: a casino for visitors, which eventually became part of a postmodern architectural development on the city center’s southwestern fringe; a hotel that initiated the revival of the Zeedijk, a street opposite Central Station where the drug problem had been especially visible; a World Trade Center that was to spearhead the development of Zuidas, a new financial district in Amsterdam’s far south; and the waterfront along the IJ, which stretched from the west via the back side of Central Station to the east and promised compensation for the decline of the port. ⁷⁰ Such projects, Mayor Van Thijn argued, were important in and of themselves but also for the focus they gave to the current spirit of cooperation between municipal government and different sectors of society. The “impetus that had developed in the time of the Olympic candidature” was, from his perspective, crucial (Figure 4). When radicals accosted visiting members of the International Olympic Committee and threatened massive protests should Amsterdam host the 1992 Summer Games, they destroyed whatever chance the city had of winning over enough of the delegates gathered in Lausanne. But in separating process from outcome, Van Thijn had isolated himself from the very possibility of failure. What ultimately mattered was the habit of cooperation that arose from the candidature: the Foundation Olympic Games Amsterdam 1992 as a “unique joint venture of government and business” and the promotion of Amsterdam’s image in the national and international arenas. ⁷¹

Figure 4.

Olympic spirit, Amsterdam style: Mayor Ed van Thijn (right) jogging with his driver in Lausanne. October 1986. Picture by Cor Mulder. ©ANP Foto.

In the course of the 1980s, a different approach to municipal government thus emerged, amid high unemployment and budget cuts at the national level, the visible presence of drug addicts and dealers, and ongoing conflicts with squatters. This approach was developed, though overshadowed by other issues, during Wim Polak’s mayoral tenure and more explicitly embraced and pursued under his successor Ed van Thijn. It was informed by a more modest understanding of what mayors, heads of department, and civil servants were capable of achieving. They could, it was argued, only bring problems and conflicts to a manageable level rather than solve them, foster society’s dynamic instead of steering it. It fit this redefinition that the practice of municipal government became more congenial to business, with regard to reorganizing internal processes, creating an attractive urban environment, and networking with companies to attract investment and benefit from their expertise. Even the failed bid for the Olympic Summer games was, from such a vantage point, a qualified success because the process mattered more than any particular outcome. By around 1990, the modest understanding and business-friendly practice of Amsterdam’s municipal government was enjoying growing acceptance and yielding important results.

III

“We should never have done that”—this quotation titles a recent book on the adoption of neoliberalism by the Party of Labor, which stresses the pioneering role of those social democrats who were governing the Netherlands’ big cities in the 1980s. ⁷² It is useful in raising the issue of constraints and alternatives. But the aim here has been to reconstruct the perspectives of Amsterdam’s mayors and heads of department, not to highlight roads they should or should not have taken. Such an approach yields the following three considerations:

First, at some point in the 1980s these politicians felt they had done their social democratic duty. A major public housing program was nearing completion while abiding by the then-dominant principles of consultation with residents and, where possible, renovation at the neighborhood level; to expand it might have been desirable but was unrealistic given that further funding from The Hague would not be forthcoming. The conflict with the squatters was increasingly being pacified and the heroin problem managed, both with a combination of the carrot and the stick. Bureaucracy was becoming more efficient, which also facilitated progressive projects such as rendering Amsterdam’s streets more bike-friendly. Much work remained to be done on all these counts, but it is unclear what a genuinely social democratic project for the 1990s should have looked like.

Second, as social democrats, these politicians cared deeply about Amsterdam’s persistent unemployment rate of well over 20 percent. The Dutch government with its emphasis on pro-market reforms and welfare cuts made it plain that funds for coping with the resultant problems would remain limited—which meant that, say, major work creation programs were out of the question. But The Hague was willing to support some landmark projects, including new residential neighborhoods along the IJ that would comprise a proportion of privately owned apartments, by paying for the necessary infrastructure. In the circumstances, attracting the financial and service sectors and middle-class residents who would spend their money in the city appeared the only way to boost Amsterdam’s economy and broaden its tax base, to create jobs for the low-skilled, and to raise additional funds for addressing various social problems.

Third, the new business-friendly approach chimed both with a more modest understanding of what the government of a highly complex city was able to achieve and with the frequently voiced expectation of visionary leadership. Squaring this circle was an attractive prospect for politicians who had spent years trying to cope with all sorts of challenges while being harshly criticized from across the political spectrum. Accommodating the dynamics of urban society rather than trying to steer it also offered the chance to align the priorities of municipal government with three trends that had been under way since the 1960s but were now beginning to have a more tangible impact: the gentrification of some neighborhoods near the city center, the expansion of Schiphol Airport and with it the entire region in and to the southwest of Amsterdam, and the growth of tourism, which was based just as much on experiencing the city’s famously tolerant atmosphere as on appreciating its cultural treasures. ⁷³

The redefinition of municipal goverment doubtless shared some important features with neoliberal thinking, but it also retained a recognizably social democratic profile. This was a latent tension, resulting in a sense of ambiguity among Amsterdam’s leaders. Mayor Ed van Thijn harshly (but vainly) criticized the Dutch government’s austere approach to economic policy. He voiced his concern about rampant individualism, a growing distance between the municipal government and the citizenry, and political parties that increasingly resembled each other. ⁷⁴ Moreover, uncertainty rendered the implementation of key policies such as promoting owner-occupied housing tentative. The municipal government spoke of “taking a small step back to make room for private investment,” and it initially doubted that newly built apartments near the city center would attract investors and buyers. ⁷⁵ When redefining their approach to governing Amsterdam, mayors and heads of department could not foresee the boom in middle-class living, weekend tourism, and the finance sector by the second half of the 1990s, nor the tight labor market and well-nigh unaffordable housing since the mid-2010s. We should refrain from blaming them for current problems and instead historicize them as politicians of their time, who were trying to cope with challenges of the 1980s—albeit with unintentionally far-reaching consequences.