ABSTRACT
The recent history of integration politics in Rotterdam is at least as turbulent as that of Amsterdam. In 2002, Pim Fortuyn achieved his first great electoral victory in his hometown of Rotterdam. Fortuyn was virulently opposed to what he saw as the Islamization of the Netherlands (see Chapter 5). After his death, the council members and aldermen of his party, Leefbaar Rotterdam, continued Fortuyn’s promotion of a culturalist discourse. Leefbaar Rotterdam was extremely critical of minorities and Muslims but, contrary to what we might expect, minority and Islamic associations flourished in this period. Why? The key to answering this question is the specific governance figuration that emerged in Rotterdam in the 1980s, one that has since remained stable and which I refer to as civil corporatism. The first section of this chapter examines civil corporatism’s genesis and evolution; the second shows how civil corporatism produced a balance of power between different types of actors. The third section then identifies three contradictions that plague civil corporatism. The fourth section concludes that Rotterdam’s governance figuration may well have increased the power of minority associations.
