1. The Dutch Connection: The European Court of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Global Citizenship in the Netherlands
- Author:
- Erik Larson and Patrick Schmidt
- Publication Date:
- 11-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Macalester International
- Institution:
- Macalester College
- Abstract:
- For centuries, the Netherlands, seen by many as an island of toleration and liberal values, has drawn those escaping intolerance and repression. It remains as attractive a destination today as it was (at least initially) for the Puritans fleeing England. Recognizing the differences among nations, the abiding questions of political life search for normative prescriptions: What obligations do governments have toward individuals and what limitations to their authority must governments observe? The idiosyncrasies of the Dutch case provide well-trodden ground for the study of civil liberties and rights, most famously the libertarian approaches to drugs and prostitution. However, those arrangements, inflected with a voyeurism for cultural understandings of deviance, tell us relatively little about the most important development in the debate about government over the past century, namely, the problem that any attempt to answer fundamental political questions cannot reside solely within the Netherlands or the boundaries of any nation, but is shared across national boundaries in the search for unifying values and settlements.
- Political Geography:
- England, Netherlands, Island, and Dutch