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The reinvention of consensus politics: governing without a legislative majority in the Netherlands 2010–2021

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Abstract

For most of the twentieth century, Dutch governments commanded majorities in both houses of parliament, but after 2010 they mostly lack majorities in the Senate. How did this change from governing with a legislative majority to governing without a legislative majority affect political culture? To what extent did the norms of consensus government developed earlier persist in this period of governing without a legislative majority? We operationalize political culture by means of the seven rules of Dutch politics by Lijphart. We combine in-depth interviews and documentary sources to assess the extent to which these norms persisted or changed. We conclude that Dutch politicians used the existing political–cultural infrastructure of consensus democracy when the government lost its legislative majority, although not all consensual norms persisted.

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Data Availability

There is no replication data for this qualitative study.

Notes

  1. We specifically do not call these governments minority governments because that concerns the situation where the parties that supply ministers do not have a majority in the lower house. Here a government can be dismissed by the lower house and needs the (implicit) support of opposition parties to remain in power. All minority governments lack a legislative majority, but a government without a legislative majority can also occur when the government lacks a majority in an upper house that may not necessarily have the power to dismiss the government.

  2. Countries that score higher on 0.5 on the V-Dem Polyarchy score by 1955 (Lindberg et al. 2014), excluding micro-states (countries with less than 100,000 inhabitants) and systems with an elected president with executive powers or a directorial system of government. In Appendix 4, we show the change in legislative majorities before and after 1990 and 2000 and find similar patterns.

  3. There is a strong conceptual connection between proportionality as a norm and the proportional electoral system. However, given that the latter is laid down in the constitution, it is a law and not a norm.

  4. At the same time, but outside the remit of the study, the logic still applies to the Dutch public broadcaster, which is responsive to changing orientations among the Dutch population by allowing new broadcasting associations on their network, such as MAX, LLiNK, WNL, PowNed, ZWART and ON!

  5. NRC (4/6/2008) “Bakker: pensioenleeftijd hoger”.

  6. Staal, H. (25/3/2009) “Haagse poldermachine verdeelt opnieuw de pijn”.

  7. NRC (25/3/2009) “SER Krijgt half jaar voor advies AOW”.

  8. NRC (4/4/2012) “De SGP als machtsfactor”.

  9. NRC (14/9/2011) “Rutte en Kamp gaan langs bij PvdA voor pensioenakkoord”.

  10. Verlaan, J. (16/9/2011) “Kamer steunt pensioenakkoord Kamp” NRC.

  11. Herderscheê, G. (28/07/2017) “Belangrijkste breuklijn door coalitie in wording loopt tussen D66 en CU, maar aan de secondanten zal het niet liggen”. De Volkskrant.

  12. NOS (19/8/2013) "Kabinet niet verder met oppositie".

  13. NRC (9/10/2013) “Eerste Kamer weigert 'draak van wet' te slikken”.

  14. NRC (2/12/2013) “Politiek akkoord in zicht over versobering van pensioenen”.

  15. Stokmans, D. (17/9/2021) “Politieke deal met SGP leverde bekritiseerde hulporganisatie miljoenensubsidie op” NRC.

  16. Despite its controversy in the FNV (Hemerijck et al. 2022), the Rutte I government had actually reached a deal about this with the FNV leadership, but it had not put it into legislation before its fall in 2012. The Rutte II government had asked the SER for advice on the pension fund system. One of the options it proposed was to liberalize and individualize the pension funds (SER (2015) Toekomst Pensioenstelsel. Den Haag.). This proposal did not have the blessing of the unions and the Rutte II government did not pursue it.

  17. Pelgrim, C. & Rijlaarsdam, B. (2019) ‘Eindelijk een pensioenakkoord” NRC.

  18. Telegraaf (13/12/2019) “Senaatsfractie Henk Otten schaart zich achter spoedwet stikstof”.

  19. In exchange for their support, the SP and 50PLUS received more housing for seniors and the SGP got a promise that the government would seek a long-term agreement with the agricultural sector; Geels, M. (9/12/2020) “Kabinet bereikt stikstofakkoord met SP, 50PLUS en SGP” NRC.

  20. This was necessary after the minister responsible for housing had been censured by the Senate. GL and PvdA supported the budget in exchange for increased spending on renovation and sustainability.

  21. Lievisse Adriaanse, M. & Van den Dool, P. (7/10/2010) “Kamer steunt coronawet, ondanks veel kritiek van oppositiepartijen” NRC.

  22. Under Rutte II the close cooperation between D66, CU and SGP also reflects this notion of pragmatic tolerance: despite fundamental differences on moral issues the parties are able to cooperate respectfully on other matters. This notion of pragmatic tolerance plays a larger role in the realm of moral politics e.g. under Balkenende IV, Rutte I and III medical-ethical reforms were paused.

  23. Although we do want to note that in the 1950s, not all decisions were government-led. The most important example is the design of the AOW where the social-democratic trade union NVV forced the PvdA-led government to adopt a pay-as-you-go system instead of a capital-funded system by building support in the SER (Hueting et al. 1983, pp. 280–282).

  24. Engelen, E. & M. Thieme (2017) “Weg met het compromisme!” https://www.partijvoordedieren.nl/nieuws/weg-met-het-compromisme

  25. Kaag, S. (2023) “De jeugd is met reden ongeduldig over hun toekomst” https://d66.nl/nieuws/de-jeugd-is-met-reden-ongeduldig-over-hun-toekomst/ In her speech she suggests that these are words of Obama. The most similar quote we could find was “When the other side refuses to compromise, progress can stall”. from his 2016 DNC speech.

  26. We want to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this suggestion.

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  1. Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Simon Otjes & Tom Louwerse

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Otjes, S., Louwerse, T. The reinvention of consensus politics: governing without a legislative majority in the Netherlands 2010–2021. Acta Polit (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-023-00310-w

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