A short history of Dutch forest policy: The 'de-institutionalisation' of a policy arrangement

Over the past thirty years, forest policy in the Netherlands has almost entirely been integrated into nature policy. This process of `de-institutionalisation¿ is surprising in view of widely accepted theories of institutional stability and `path dependency¿. The process is investigated in this paper along the four dimensions of the policy arrangement approach: discourse, power, rules and actors. It is argued that a discursive shift, moving the focus from production forest to `forest as part of nature¿ and fuelled by a number of underlying factors, lies at the heart of the process. In concordance with this shift, advocates of timber autarky lost power in favour of `nature advocates¿. A more diverse set of actors became involved in forest policy, also reflecting a more general trend in Dutch politics towards greater openness and the erosion of neo-corporatist rules. Thus, changes in all four dimensions of the policy arrangement worked into one direction. This may explain the unusually quick and radical `de-institutionalisation¿ of Dutch forest policy.