The articles in this special issue try to shed some light on the rise of societal unease and political discontent in the Netherlands. It is often assumed that citizens are angry and can no longer identify with the actions undertaken by government. But is this really true? Who are these ‘angry citizens’ that everybody seems to be talking about? Do they really exist and what are they angry about? How to square the heated discussions about the angry citizen with research that shows that trust in government still is quite high in the Netherlands? How can we understand the motivations of societal discontent and how can government react to citizens reacting to its actions more emotionally than before?

In recent narratives about the negative mood of the Dutch, ‘societal unease’ and ‘angry citizens’ seem to be concepts that are directly linked: angry behaviour is the manifestation of deep feelings of unease. Is it that simple? In this contribution, I use the Citizens’ Outlook Barometer (COB) to investigate unease and anger, and their relationship. The spread of unease in today’s Netherlands is outlined quantitatively using indicators for strong societal pessimism and political discontent (a complex of negative attitudes towards national politics and globalization). The approach to anger is more exploratory. Anger is definitely not the most dominant feeling that pessimists are aware of, but their explanations of why the country is heading in the wrong direction do often reveal anger. Interviewing ‘angry citizens’ suggests that they are not ‘angry people’ in general, but that their anger is limited to politics and social issues, and is sometimes instrumental (‘you have to express yourself angrily to be heard’). This civic anger can be important both in addressing injustice in politics and as a source of action. It is better to approach anger as a topic in its own right rather than to frame it as an expression of unease.

In this very personal narrative, Gabriël van den Brink analyses why many citizens seem to oppose change instigated by government. In his view, this is due to government and society elites embracing a paradigm of change which is based on an unrealistic view on modernity. He analyses what this means, what its effects are and proposes a new way to go forward.

Populism, terrorist attacks, global revolutions, threats against public figures, hate and fury on social media. All of this suggests that we appear to be living in an ‘age of anger’, as Pankaj Mishra calls it. Everyone is sometimes outraged or angry, but in these times we see permanent moods of anger and revenge raging. This makes classic questions current again: how should anger in the public domain be understood? Is it always inappropriate and should it be controlled and condemned under all circumstances? Or is anger necessary to highlight structural injustices and to force change? The justification of anger is very delicate.. In this article the author discusses these questions based on philosophical treatises of anger by Martha Nussbaum, Peter Sloterdijk, Slavoj Žižek and Pankaj Mishra.

Recently the authors, who all work at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, published a paper in which they analysed contemporary literature and research on social discontent to clarify whether this current feeling of discontent is different to previous periods of discontent and how it might affect the functioning of the Dutch government. In addition, to strengthen their analysis they discussed its implications with local politicians, experts and practitioners. In this article, the authors reflect on the outcome of these discussions. Their dialogues revealed that there is a need to redefine the dialogue between administration and society. They distilled five lessons from these discussions: they argue that government should be more 1) reliable and credible, 2) responsive, 3) effective, 4) empathic and 5) cohesive.

In this article we draw several conclusions based on the individual contributions to our special issue. We do so by making eight statements that in our view should contribute to the discussion on societal discontent and political unease in the Netherlands.

Policy decisions taken now can determine the room for manoeuvre of future generations for a very long term. Politicians and civil servants often only seem to be interested in short-term implications, however. A major focus on the short term does not provide sufficient stability and impetus for long-term structural measures. This is primarily an institutional issue. In this article, the authors discuss how to instil a long-term focus in day-to-day processes of policymaking.