Caught in Construction: Why Dutch Sovereign Citizens Challenge the Bureaucratic State

Governments and scholars worldwide have raised alarm about the increasing popularity of sovereign citizen movements, whose adherents rely on conspiratorial narratives to declare their governments illegitimate and themselves sovereign. While a sovereign citizen movement emerged in the Netherlands in recent years, it has not yet received much scholarly attention. Moreover, numerous studies on sovereign citizen narratives emphasize etic perspectives and suggest an image of sovereign citizens as dangerous or irrational. Studying the Dutch sovereign citizen movement ethnographically, we aim to gain a more nuanced understanding of their experiences, motivations, and practices. We find that Dutch sovereign citizens feel trapped in the bureaucracies of “the system” and reject these either through retreat or by constructing alternative legal realities. Their desire for ultimate freedom, however, hinders community building: what society can function without at least some rules and institutions? We therefore conclude that sovereign citizens’ effort to live in full autonomy is based on a sociological illusion.