Samenvatting

This article demonstrates on the basis of a representative survey among the Dutch population (N=1,892) that it is not necessarily politically ‘rightist’ or ‘conservative’ to resist the toleration of illegal activities (‘gedoogbeleid’). Even though, generally speaking, political conservatives are most likely to be critical, this is merely because they unconsciously associate the latter with practices of tolerating illegal activities by marginal individuals. Whereas conservatives hence oppose the latter more than political progressives do, the latter for their part are more critical than conservatives about tolerating illegal activities by official agencies. These findings illustrate that gedoogbeleid does not have a universal legitimacy in the eyes of the public, but that its legitimacy is determined case by case by the concrete aims and targets addressed by this policy instrument.