Lessons from the Past?: Cultural Memory in Dutch Integration Policy

Abstract

This article explores the contribution that cultural memory studies can make to the debate aboutthe role of ideas and the dynamics of ideational change in policy making. Cultural memory studies engagewith the cultural dimensions of remembering, and analyse how shared images of the past are mediated andtransferred across distance and time. Such research shows how the past may continue to inuence the presentby informing the frameworks through which groups and individuals interpret and give meaning to events andphenomena. Since policy makers operate within a cultural context, shared memories are likely also to affectthe way they think about the nature and roots of policy issues and the appropriateness and feasibility ofpolicy options. In this article, policy memory (the memory shared by policy makers about earlier policies) isidentied as a subcategory of cultural memory. The role of cultural memory among policy makers is studiedwith reference to Dutch integration policies in two periods: the mid-1990s and the early 2000s. On the basisof an in-depth analysis of policy reports and parliamentary debates, references to the past and the role theyplay in the policy debate are identied. Different modes of dealing with the past are found in the two periodsstudied, reecting the different political contexts in which the debates took place. In the 1990s, the memoryof earlier policy was invoked in the mode of continuity – that is, policy change was legitimised (conceived)as part of a positive tradition. In the 2000s, memory was invoked in the mode of discontinuity. The samepolicies were reinterpreted in more negative terms and policy change legitimised by the perceived need tobreak with the past. Arguably, this reinterpretation of the past was a precondition for the shift in policybeliefs that took place around that time.