Liberalism in the Netherlands started as an anti-monarchical effort spearheaded by the Dutch statesman Thorbecke, who almost single-handedly wrote the 1848 Constitution of the Netherlands that turned the country into a constitutional monarchy. In contemporary politics, there are both left and right-wing parties that refer to themselves as "liberal", with the former more often espousing social liberalism and the latter more often espousing liberalism. A common characteristic of these parties that they are nominally irreligious, in contrast to the traditionally dominant and still popular Christian democracy. In the contemporary economic situation, even though the markets for basic needs services like food and clothing are still subject to economic liberalism, this is not the case in housing, in child education, health care and payment services. For example the health care system does not satisfy basic requirements for being a market economy because in the distribution of goods and services the offered supply is not subject to patients demands, like this is the case in Germany. This article gives an overview of liberalism in the Netherlands both as a movement politically espoused by the leading parties and what is actually implemented as liberal economic policy. Background of economic liberalism Even though the economic system is relatively highly ranked in terms of overall economic freedom, there are a number of sectors in the market that are inherently economically non-liberal. For example the health care system that consists of a market-driven welfare state can be considered to be non-liberal with respect to countries like Belgium, England, Sweden, and Germany where respectively Ziekenfonds in België, National Health Service (England), Health care in Sweden, and German statutory health insurance are state run and leave a market for individual private insurance and medical services. There is no free-market in housing and building plots, because the municipal governments, through zoning plans, release the farming land for building, to the public subsidized housing, the housing associations and what is left for the private building industry, leading to special interest politics for home price levels and the distribution of building plots, and shortages and high prices for starters on the housing and labor markets. Background of legal liberalism The Dutch constitution was revised many times. In 1983 the list of constitutional [:nl:Grondrechten|fundamental rights] were altered, to include universal equal treatment and non-discrimination in the first article, applying to all, regardless of whether they are government officials, working for a business,