Piet de Rooy (1944) is professor emeritus of modern dutch history at the University of Amsterdam. Rob de Wijk is the Director of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and Professor of International Relations and Security at the Campus the Hague of Leiden University. He was previously a Professor in the field of International Relations at the Royal Netherlands Military Academy and Head of the Defense Concepts Department at the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

• Introduction, Chapter 1: The first Constitution, 1798, Chapter 2: The structuring of a Nation-State, 1813, Chapter 3: The rise of a parliamentary democracy, 1848, Chapter 4. The construction of the first political party, 1879, Chapter 5: Socialism and Feminism around 1900: the complexities of ideology, Chapter 6: The functioning of a pillarized-corporative system, 1930, Chapter 7: The cultural revolution of the sixties, Chapter 8: Losing a balance: populism, 2002, Epilogue

Anyone with an interest in Dutch political history will enjoy this book. It does not only offer a novel take, but it is also engagingly written, filled with interesting anecdotes and vivid descriptions. As such, the book is much more accessible than many academic texts that sometimes lose their punch in the weeds of academic jargon, theorization, and methodological reflections.,- Edward Anthony Koning, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, Vol. 42, Iss. 3