The basic theories lying behind social democratic regimes have been set out in section 3.2. We are now in a position to test those theories against the actual experience of one social democratic welfare regime in particular – that of the Netherlands. The basic institutional structure of the Dutch welfare regime has been set out previously (section 4.3). There we have also given our reasons for believing that, despite its chequered past and hybrid character, the Netherlands in this period can indeed be taken as a representative – indeed, arguably the best – of social democratic welfare regimes, at least in respect of its tax-transfer policies. Here we test the performance of the Dutch welfare regime against those social democratic goals and strategies.

This test will essentially be against the social democratic welfare regime's own internal standards of success. But the assessment is by its nature an intrinsically comparative one. We want to know not only how well, in absolute terms, the social democratic welfare regime does at accomplishing its chosen goals through its chosen means, we also want to know whether some other welfare regime beats social democrats at their own chosen game. Thus we assess the performance of that regime alongside the performance of the other regimes along all the dimensions that matter to social democracy.