The Netherlands

Abstract

The political system is consociational, consensual, multi-party and corporatist (Lijphart, 1984; 1999 — see Figure 3.1 in Chapter 3, above). Elections take place according to a system of proportional representation. In the recent period the main parties have been Christian Democrat (a 1980s merger of previously separate Christian parties — CD A), a Liberal Party (conservative — VVD), a Social-Democrat party (PvdA) and a small Progressive Liberal Party (D66). There are also a number of other small parties. The Christian parties were continuously in government from the First World War until 1994, allied to various groupings of other parties. Through the 1970s the governing coalitions were centre left, in the 1980s centre right. Unusually, in 1994 and 1998, ’purple’ (left-right) coalitions were formed without Christian Democrat participation. However, from the late 1990s the party system became more volatile, with the rapid emergence, and then equally rapid decline, of Pim Fortuyn’s anti-establishment LPF party. After the elections of May 2002 and January 2003 (and after Pim Fortuyn’s assassination) the Christian Democrats, under Balkende’s leadership, returned to government. They formed a coalition with the VVD and D66.

The Netherlands is a unitary, but decentralised state: ’traditionally, the Dutch state … has always resisted centralisation of state authority’.

(Kickert and In’t Veld, 1995, p. 45)