Over the past 50 years, ad hoc policies have come to dominate central government. Financial objectives replaced well-considered substantive considerations. Causes were a lack of vision, knowledge and time of Members of Parliament, ministers and civil servants, interacting with pragmatism, budget cuts, efficiency and privatization. The Hague seems to be stuck in thinking in terms of solutions, money, rules, managing, market and measuring. This book analyses these developments and illustrates them with public housing policy and home care policy. The pragmatic introduction of the individual rent subsidy in 1970 contributed to the beginning of the end of national responsibility for the public housing in 1995. The integration of cross work and family care for reasons of efficiency from the late 1980s resulted in an accumulation of ad hoc policies in home care. This led to increasingly reasonless bureaucracy. This study offers a well-researched, pronounced and critical view of the functioning of Hague politics in general and of politicians from the left and right from the 1970s onward.