Last week I blogged about what the (then impending) Dutch cabinet crisis about the Afghanistan war showed about the limits to soft power. Now a bit more on what must seem to most Americans peculiar domestic politics. Below is a graph that shows the projected number of seats the main parties in the Netherlands would get according to the latest opinion polls (and yes, these are just the main parties, ignoring for instance the Party for the Animals, which has two seats). Any coalition needs a total of 75 seats. The main players within the government were the PvdA (center-left, 33 seats) and CDA (center-right 41 seats) who governed together with the small Christian Union. As the graph shows, both of these parties had lost a lot of seats according to the polls, with the PvdA doing particularly badly in recent months.
This is the context behind the PvdA’s insistence to honor its promise to bring Dutch troops home from Afghanistan. The first-post crisis poll suggests that this was a good move politically: the PvdA gained 4 seats in the polls. More importantly for Bos (the party leader), Bos’ position within the PvdA was strengthened. Whereas he was running second in popularity in many recent polls, after the crisis he established himself again as the undeniable party leader (65% of his party wants him to stay leader against 11% for his rival). By contrast, Balkenende (the prime-minister and CDA leader) is now running second within his own party.
It is anyone’s guess how this is all going to play out in the next elections. Traditionally, almost all Dutch coalitions consisted of two or three parties. The way it looks now, at least four parties will be needed to form a coalition. There are seven parties that are projected to win between 12 and 25 seats, with no clear frontrunner. The party that currently runs in second place is Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, a party that few are eager to work with thanks to Wilders’, shall we say, controversial persona, tactics and policy positions. If Wilders’ party becomes the largest, a distinct possibility, he will be asked to form a government; a difficult task given that several parties have pledged not to govern with him. The good thing is that the Netherlands will continue to function pretty well even without a functioning government.
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Erik: Don’t you think the U.S. would look just as funny if you divided public opinion into support for fiscal conservatism, social democracy, religious conservatives, gay rights activists, and the rest? Your story is interesting but I fear that your title and the last line of your entry convey a misleading “foreigners are funny” attitude which might be misleading to people less knowledgeable than you in comparative politics.
Andrew: sure, in fact as a TA I often asked the students what parties there would be in the US if it had a PR system. I certainly didn’t intend to write a “foreigners are funny” story. The current situation is actually unusual for the Netherlands with 7 parties between 12-25 seats and very little separation. Mostly, Dutch politics has been dominated by 3 parties. The tone perhaps reflects a sense of frustration in the Dutch reporting that I have been reading. But, yeah, I see your point and probably should have changed the title and some wording. [I added a sentence to provide some context that this is unusual for the Netherlands].
ps. I should note that I am a Dutchman myself, if that wasn’t obvious from my funny last name.
I’m not sure I understand Andrew’s criticism, although maybe that’s because I’m seeing the updated post. My reaction was not ‘foreigners are funny’ but that this was similar to the Belgian situation a few years back. What is funny is that the US ‘parties’ have no coherent policy positions – or any actual policies at all if they are the Republicans.
This was a good, interesting post, with an informative plot, although I don’t like the blue background.
I don’t take “foreigners are funny” away from this. Rather, I take it to just reinforce the lesson I tell my students about party systems: in a 2-party system, the coalition must form before the election and generally endures for long periods. In a multiparty system, the coalitions end up being a heck of a lot more malleable and dynamic (and, to my thinking, complex).
this is extremely interesting. there is hardly any political system in western europe that is similarly split into parties of equal size. i would love to hear some more coalition speculation from the author. especially since there doesn’t seem to be any pivotal party, as often is in pr-systems with a clear left-right divide. what is, for instance, the position of d66 or groenlinks concerning government participation? is there a possibility of a cda-vvd-pvv coalition?
Ja, hoor.
@Laurenz
Tuurlijk, laten we er geen (hoofd)doekjes om winden.
For all Americans reading this, the PvdA is the socialist dutch workers party, which advocates extermination of jews.
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