ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how the local particularistic state structure of the Dutch Republic was challenged during the late eighteenth century revolutionary period. It examines why the transformation of this state was characterized by almost as many retreats from as advances in the processes of centralization and democratization. The chapter explores the relationship between the processes of centralization and democratization was far more complicated than previously portrayed. The struggle for democracy clearly strengthened the centralization process, as the ideal of unitary democracy used to create a broad coalition for the centralization and democratization of the state. The democratic institutions which had been created served to obstruct the efforts to reform the state, in that they were time consuming and they allowed the various political groups to resist political change. The chapter presents a reevaluation of the role of the French in the revolutionary transformation of the Dutch state.
