Shit hits the windmill

[Watser?]

The Economist has an article on fact checking in the Dutch political system and compares it to the US system.

The discussion in America over the rival candidates' budget plans has taken place in a vague and undefined discursive space, largely because the Romney-Ryan campaign does not actually have a budget plan.

...

In the Dutch electoral system, this can't happen. Two months before the elections, every political party is expected to submit a detailed budget plan to a non-partisan agency called the Central Plan Bureau (CPB), which plays a role similar to the Congressional Budget Office in America. The CPB produces an analysis of the economic consequences of those budget plans. The effects are assessed in detail for 2013-2017, and there's also a prognosis for 2040 to discourage parties from larding up their budgets with short-term candy that leads to negative long-term consequences. The CPB's report came out Monday, and most parties had their strong and weak points. Of the two parties most likely to win the elections, the Liberals did well on deficit-cutting and long-term job creation but hiked income inequality and hurt household purchasing power; the Socialists did well on purchasing power and jobs in the short run but had low employment growth in the long run.

Fact-checkers: Talking crap in Holland v America | The Economist

[Kashmir]

In America we have the freedom to not be burdened by facts. Why do you hate freedom?

[Watser?]

Because I'm furrin', obviously. I hate you for your freedoms in fact.

[Vivisectus]

Lol they are calling the PVDA "Far Left"

[Vivisectus]

Holy crap I have just been away too long the Socialist party was floating around the 30% mark there for a while? Man I have some newspaper-reading to catch up on!

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Lol they are calling the PVDA "Far Left"

No, the SP. Which is still pretty ridiculous, they don't refer to the Republicans as far right.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Holy crap I have just been away too long the Socialist party was floating around the 30% mark there for a while? Man I have some newspaper-reading to catch up on!

Yeah, it's weird. It's especially weird since I went to school with Emile Roemer.

[Pyrrho]

Central Planning!

[Vivisectus]

Quelle excitement! Watser, can I tempt you to give a brief overview of the current political landscape in Holland? I have been away for ages and I do so enjoy Radio Watser on middle-eastern affairs.

[Stormlight]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

political landscape in Holland?

Oh, you've done it now! Watser will drown you and bury you in a Polder!

[Vivisectus]

Yes I rather put my foot in it didn't I

[But]

It's only the part near the sea, right?

[Kael]

Isn't that a bit like saying "it's only the part of Alaska that's cold?"

[But]

Next to the sea then, professor..

[Stormlight]

Nonsense. Holland is the whole country.

[Kael]

I'm sure it's already infected the rest of the country with its clogs and tulips, anyway.

[Watser?]

[Watser?]

Okay, gather ye 'round and I'll tell you.

Dutch politics used to be stable to the point of extremely boring. There were always many parties that would split from existing parties (DS70 PvdA, PPR KVP) or merge (PSP, CPN, PPR, EVP GroenLinks or KVP, CHU, ARP CDA). But generally the major parties - PvdA, VVD, CDA - would ignore all the tiny ones until it became time to build a coalition.

But that has changed. Most people would say it started with Pim Fortuyn, but I think it started earlier than that, with the parties for the elderly. They launched into parliament with 7 seats in total (6 for the AOV and 1 for 55+). They mostly got their votes from the (formerly) Catholic southern provinces, where the Christian Democrats (CDA) and before that the KVP (Catholic People's Party) would traditionally get most of the votes. The AOV especially turned out to be extremely unstable, they become involved in intra-party fueds which lead to nasty splits. They were wiped out with the next elections and everything returned to normal.

Then after 9/11 when everyone was finally officially allowed to hate on the Muslims, people didn't waste their time and Pim Fortuyn's new party was extremely popular right away. He might have become prime-minister if he hadn't been murdered right before the elections in 2002. His party -LPF- went on and got 26 seats (out of 150 total in parliament). So in one fell swoop they were a major factor. They were part of the first Balkenende cabinet with CDA and VVD, but like the parties for the elderly they lacked cohesion and strong leadership and they disintegrated with alarming speed. Half a year after the elections the coalition broke up over fighting between two LPF ministers. In the next elections, January 2003, 10 months after the previous ones, they were down to 6 seats. That must have been a record in Dutch parliamentary history.

So Wilders, who had been a member of parliament for the VVD for some time and is in fact the longest serving MP, was building on fertile ground when he built his Muslim-hating PVV. Like the parties for the elderly, he gets a lot of his support from the formerly Catholic south, where secularization was a bit slower than elsewhere but happened on a much larger scale than in the Protestant areas. The CDA is paying the price and has ceased to be a major party. But the PvdA (Labour) has also been taking major hits. At the time of the rise of Fortuyn, they were in a cabinet with the VVD (Purple Coalition, named after the party colours: Red for the PvdA and blue for the liberal VVD), which was popular at first and introduced gay marriage which the Christian Dems opposed. But the traditional PvdA electorate didn't like the coalition much, nor party leader and PM Wim Kok's leadership style. The PvdA was the hardest hit by the meteoric rise of the nouveau right LPF.

Meanwhile the more radically leftwing Socialist Party SP was steadily building up a strong base in Noord Brabant (Oss is where they started out and where Jan Marijnissen who made the party grow big is from; the current leader Emile Roemer is from Boxmeer), where the PvdA had never been strong and the CDA was losing ground because of the secularisation of the Catholics.

So the instability is mostly caused by the decline of the CDA as people become less Christian and the decline of the traditional left PvdA with its ties to the trade unions. The VVD has been mostly immune to it. Wilders' PVV did not take votes away from his former party (VVD) but mostly from PvdA and CDA. His rise has been slower and he learned from the LPF disintegration. He decided not to have a traditional party with members who can vote out the leadership or split to form a new party. He is the only member of the PVV and everyone answers to him. Wilders' power base is in the other formerly Catholic province of Limburg.

So the PVV was founded in 2005 after Wilders left the VVD. They got nine seats in the 2006 elections. Then in 2010 they got 24 seats and could no longer be ignored. It was almost impossible to form a new cabinet as the left (including the leftist Christian party CU) refused to work with them for their Muslim-bashing ways. So for the first time in Dutch history a minority cabinet was formed of CDA and VVD, supported by the PVV who didn't want to participate. Wilders probably didn't have enough capable people to become cabinet ministers and if he had, he probably wouldn't have trusted them to toe his party line. That cabinet crashed and burned in the spring, so that's where we are now. Wilders is now considered by the other politicians to be too unreliable to work with, so chances are slim that he will be part of any new coalition.

In the polls the SP and PVV were competing for biggest party for a while, but then the VVD started passing the PVV. So it looked like it was going to be a race between SP and VVD (which is the situation the Economist refers to). The biggest party gets to take the initiative in forming a new coalition, so there is some pressure to try to be the biggest one. Especially since even after all the instability the basic fault line between left and right remains about the same, but with the center disintegrated.

By now the PvdA has caught up to the SP and is competing for first place with the VVD.
Meanwhile GroenLinks has commited electoral suicide by first agreeing to send troops to Afghanistan, a deeply unpopular move, and then this spring sitting down with the remains of the cabinet to hammer out a deal their electorate considered a sellout. They have taken a mojor hit in the polls and may get no more than 4 seats (used to be 15 or something).

So whatever happens, it will be pretty hard to form a new coalition.

[Clutch Munny]

tl;dr: If the number of Dutch persons is n, they will form 2n political parties.

[Stormlight]

So, are you a member of the Party for the Elderly, Watser?

[Vivisectus]

Wow. The political landscape sure got shaken up.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Stormlight

So, are you a member of the Party for the Elderly, Watser?

[Watser?]

Ok, so maybe it's worth explaining that in a parliamentary system where it is impossible for one party to rule by itself and coalitions have to be built with at least 3 parties, tactical voting becomes important.

For instance as I explained it matters which party becomes the biggest one as they get to take the initiative in building a coalition and it is usually the leader of that party who gets to be prime-minister. So people who always vote left but are not sure about SP, PvdA, GroenLinks or some of the smaller parties might consider voting for the PvdA now as they have a chance to become bigger than the right-wing VVD. Same thing applies on the rightwing.

On the other hand you know that when they build a coalition they will be forced to make deals and dilute what they really want. So if you are a moderate leftist and like the PvdA for instance, you might think back about how the PvdA made a deal with the VVD and sold out a lot of their core principles and you might be tempted to vote for a more leftist party (SP) to keep them on the right track (same applies for the rightwing of course). Broadly speaking every party might lose votes on the left and on the right, so it is always a balancing act for them.

[Angakuk]

Seriously, that is such a crazy and way too complicated system. Politicians in the U.S. sell-out and compromise on their principles all the time, but they do it for money. That is a much more rational system. Also, very free-market oriented.

[Janet]

Off-topic, but while I have the attention of the Benelux contingent, I have a question. A while back, Man City's captain Vincent Kompany, who plays for the Belgian national team, tweeted that he would like to see the teams merge. Is that an actual possibility? It seems to me the team would still be dominated by Dutch players anyway, although any team would be lucky to have Kompany in my opinion.