Polder Limits: a case study on value-conflicts in rural land use
Rural land use is valued in many different ways. Is it best to use the countryside for agricultural production, nature development, leisure activities or economic development? An important planning and policy question is how these different values can be commensurated? Or are they maybe incommensurable? These questions are not only pressing questions within planning and use of the countryside. They also form the core of a classic debate in sociology and philosophy. Theory and practice of value commensuration is studied using two Dutch cases of rural governance. The Netherlands is interesting as case because values between groups have always been very different, which resulted in a consensual way of value mediation. Dutch value mediation became internationally known as ‘polder’ or ‘polder model’.
This dissertation explores the practical limits of the polder as institution for value-conflict resolution. An important conclusion, based on case studies of rural governance projects, is that the polder as institution is not based on commensurating values, but on commensurating interests. This is an essential difference. Interests can relatively easy be commensurated (for example, using money); for values such terms of trade do not exist. Values are intrinsically valuable; interests are always means to higher objectives. The recent changes in Dutch rural governance, allowing more explicit articulation of specific values, remain limited through the growth of procedures and rules facilitating legitimate citizen participation. Through this paradoxical policy development (controlled decontrolling) mediation of value-conflicts is limited to a ‘barter of interests’. Particularly in a context of value differentiation and pluralisation, such as in the Dutch countryside after de-pillarisation, this is an obvious way for solving value-conflicts. However, it misses out on an essential ingredient for democratic policymaking.
In the polder a functional rationality is dominant over a substantial functionality. These sociological-theoretical terms indicate that Dutch rural governance does explicate how a consensus needs to be achieved but leaves implicit which values should be articulated in this resolution. Such an moral incapacity fails to account for the different values concerning rural land use. Because values remain implicit, Dutch rural policy depoliticises. There is a shared feeling among rural stakeholders that policy shies away of making distinct choices, and that is does not lead to substantial changes. Not articulating values in rural policy is, in this manner, a.o. responsible for the frequently discussed void between policy and practice.