To what does the Netherlands owe their recent economic success? Will the polder model become the victim of its own success or will the threat come mainly from outside? In the Netherlands, polder are small communities hemmed in by dykes built to resist quickly rising tides, and hence imply communal effort to mediate harmful outside forces. Translated in to economic terms, the polder model entailed tripartite cooperation between business, government, and labor to protect the nation's economic and social well being. Delsen evaluates recent changes in the Dutch economy brought on by globalization and American dominance and concludes that the polder model is reaching its end.