Samenvatting

It is often claimed, that there is a clear relationship between the Dutch experience with the 'pillarization' of national minorities in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and the 'integration' of ethnic minorities in Dutch society by government policies since the 1970s. This claim has never been substantiated though. In this article, the relationship is examined systematically on the basis of an analytical distinction between the 'organizational principles' and the 'rules of the game' of pillarization. It is concluded that traces of the organizational principles and the rules of the game of pillarization can, indeed, clearly be found in the minority policies of the 1970s and 1980s, but that since the early 1990s a process of 'de-pillarization' of government policies has set in. The article shows that in the early twenty-first century the experience with pillarization can hardly be traced in the minority policies.