Why planners should pay much more attention to State Avoiders

There is an increase in people who are discontented with the Dutch State and no longer trust that state institutions work for the common good (de Ridder, 2025). This can be explained by recent failures of the Dutch state, such as the child benefit scandal and the consequences of the gas winning policy in Groningen. But the trend also goes hand in hand with the rise of conspiracy theories and social media connectedness. Some of these citizens are so discontented that they question the state’s legitimacy. They seek to disengage from the state by avoiding state institutions, refusing to pay taxes, and developing alternatives to live autonomously. A growing group of several thousand people calls themselves “sovereigns” and tried to cancel their citizenship by sending their passports to the ministry (AIVD, 2024). While sociologists study this group for its cultural identity (Hurenkamp, 2026; van der Tak & Harambam, 2025) and political scientists examine right-wing electoral influences (Rooduijn et al., 2016), the planning literature remains silent. And that is puzzling because their autonomous ambitions are inherently spatial and territorial. 

Many state-avoiding lifestyles require alternative living spaces, making a claim on Dutch land, testing zoning plans, and challenging public services. Not only in the Netherlands, but also in other countries, Dutch State Avoiders make claims on land. One of the countries where a vocal group of Dutch State Avoiders settled is Paraguay. Seen as a country with little state interference, low taxes, and easy immigration, people have moved there to build an autonomous, “free” community.

In the documentary series “Awake in Paraguay”(Wakker in Paraguay, VPRO), these citizens are followed in their everyday practices to develop their autonomous community in Paraguay. The documentary has sparked much debate and interest, as many are intrigued and puzzled by the conspiracies and beliefs these people hold, while also relating to their feelings of distrust in the State. To contribute to these debates with academic insights, the University of Amsterdam’s Rector Magnificus, Peter Paul Verbeek, and host Aron de Jong, invited two social scientists to reflect on the documentary, the people, and Dutch democracy. Jaron Harambam (Sociology) and Nanke Verloo (Planning) discuss conspiracy theories, state avoidance, the broader discontent with the Dutch state, and what we could do about it. Spatial administrative practices are of crucial importance here.

Jaron situates the documentary within broader developments surrounding conspiracy theorists and anti-institutionalist movements in the Netherlands. He explains where they come from and why they lost trust. He argues that this is a vocal and small group, but that the sentiments underlying their decisions are shared much more broadly. He also questions how popular media usually treats conspiracy theorists as “lunatics” (wappies), which increases polarization and strengthens their idea to avoid Dutch society.

Nanke discusses what State Avoidance means in practice. The state and citizens are so intimately intertwined that it is a lot of work and almost a full-time job to disengage from the state. Paradoxically, although these people want to avoid the State, they are constantly talking about it and analyzing it. In the documentary, they are analyzing Dutch state practice more often than any other citizen. You could say they are all political scientists in some sense, but they use their own alternative “facts” and “information” to support their theories.

State avoidance should receive much more attention from planners as it forces two important spatial challenges. First, when people avoid the state, they look for a new territory. In the case of Paraguay, they hope for fewer regulations and easy access to buying new territory. This raises immediate questions about spatial justice. We see in the documentary how they complain about immigrants coming to the Netherlands, taking up space and jobs, but by settling elsewhere and starting spatial developments for their own community, they do the same, but in Paraguay. Their land developments raise land prices for the Paraguayan population.

Second, their land developments are unaffordable for those with fewer resources. The documentary painfully shows how these autonomous groups are blind to inequality and solidarity with people from their own group (let alone others). We see highly affluent citizens buying land to develop and sell or rent out, and we see an individual with the same belief system but not enough resources to “buy” himself into the autonomous settlement. His search for a community where his ability to work on the land and harvest crops is deemed of sufficient value serves as a painful reminder of why the welfare states were established in the first place. We see how injustice is deeply related to land ownership and the ability to develop public services such as water, electricity, and infrastructure.

As a democracy, how can we deal with citizens who choose to avoid the state to the point of seeking alternative living spaces, sometimes in Paraguay and sometimes within our municipal borders? This question is now answered by applying legal pressure on these groups or by offering greater transparency into State decisions. But these practices criminalize people and push them further away. Transparency assumes that if you explain enough, people will believe that you are fair. However, saying that you are fair does not make people believe it. You have to act fairly so that fairness becomes part of a real experience. Furthermore, these people are beyond the point of reasoning about fairness; they do not trust transparency, and their theories can and will provide alternative interpretations that underscore their beliefs.

In my view, we can only start to bridge the difference in everyday experiences. For example, when the father of a teenage boy tells his son to “wear a helmet, although that is not obligatory in Paraguay. Because the ICU is not what it is in Holland.” The documentary reveals several of these beautifully mundane and fleeting everyday moments in which disengaged citizens come to intimately realize the value of the rule of law and the welfare state, and where we can start to imagine an opening to bridge the differences. If we first truly listen to their fears and anger, we begin to understand the world from their perspective. And only then might we see moments when we and they experience small cracks in our belief systems and develop ways to cross the divides.