An inquiry into ‘Afgehaakt Nederland’: Assessing regional disparities in capabilities in the Netherlands
Summary
Regional disparities have in the past lead to resentment and political instability, for example in the case of Brexit (Rodríguez-Pose 2018). In the Netherlands, there appears to be a feeling of ‘not being seen’ as well as mistrust towards the central government in nine of the twelve provinces. This thesis aims to assess whether a difference in capabilities in regions outside of the ‘Randstad’ causes people to become ‘disconnected’, which could in turn lead to the aforementioned mistrust in the central government. Through the construction of an index referring to the level of capabilities in different Dutch regions and mapping these indices, this thesis find some limited evidence of a difference in the level of capabilities between Dutch regions.