Refraining from Legal Action against Rule Violations as Heritage of the Denounced Sixties?

Abstract In the public debate in the Netherlands the left-libertarian cultural revolution is increasingly denounced as the cradle of ‘gedogen’, i.e., refraining from legal action against rule violations, especially with respect to soft drugs. This assumes that primarily conservatives and constituencies of right-wing parties oppose the toleration of illegal activities. On the basis of a representative survey among the Dutch population (N=1.892) we have established that this assumption is untenable. Even though constituencies of right-wing political parties and conservatives are most likely to oppose toleration of rule violations in general, this does not imply that they also oppose most fiercely the toleration of specific rule violations. They do oppose rule violations by marginal individuals most often – i.e., unemployed workers defying their obligation to apply for a job and aliens remaining illegally in the Netherlands –, but they oppose the toleration of rule violations by official agencies least often – i.e., the toleration of noise pollution by airport Schiphol and the eavesdropping of police suspects without the formal approval of the examining judge. Hence, the connection between the Dutch ‘gedoog’ policy and the tolerant culture of the Sixties is wrong; there is no such thing as a general disapproval of tolerating refraining from legal action.