Political structure
"The Dutch state drew power from federalism when absolutist centralisation was the norm"
- Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches
Schama believes that, while other states, such as France, Britain, Spain and Germany, had been wracked by internal unrest in this period, the Dutch political model had shown that it was very resistant to stress, effective in administration and ingenious in obtaining and maintaining enough consensus to avoid civil war or similar types of major unrest.
For example, despite the frequent tension and constant rivalry between two of the main factions in Dutch society, the Staatsgezinden (Republicans) and the Prinsgezinden (Royalists or Orangists), this did not degenerate into civil war.
Therefore, when foreigners, in that period, described the details of Dutch federalism as "a chaos of government", Schama believes that this was simply a clear demonstration that they did not understand it.
In modern times, other historians have said that it is difficult or impossible to understand exactly who held power in the Dutch Republic because it was so decentralised and there were so many different levels of government. However, we should not conclude from this that modern historians mean this as a criticism, nor should we conclude that they don't understand the overall political structure.