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Soriek  5mo ago (text post)   1116 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 25

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Netherlands

The Netherlands will hold elections on November 22nd. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, of the center right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), resigned in July after his party was unable to agree on immigration reforms. He’s been governing in a caretaker role since, but his party is running without him under the Minister of Justice and Safety Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius (say that five times fast). Their main opposition is establishment politician Pieter Omtzigt of the Christian Democrats under his newly formed New Social Contract (NSC). Currently they are still neck and neck in the polls, and trailed by a bazillion smaller parties. The possibilities for coalitions are complicated to this distant observer:

Omtzigt has publicly rejected any cooperation with Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV and the “Nexit” propagating Forum for Democracy (FvD). This lowers the previous prospect of a center-right government tolerated by some of these more rightist forces and/or the anti-green Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) who have also been losing ground in the polls. Instead, the likely strength of NSC moves the center of gravity to the middle. Whether with Omtzigt as PM or as kingmaker, this may open the door for cooperation with the newly combined list of the Social Democrats and the Green Left, led by former European Commission executive vice president Frans Timmermans, currently third in the polls…this overall political camp is currently expected to win around 90 out of a total of 150 seats.

This is one of those elections where hopefully our locals will come in to shed some more light for me.

For people unfamiliar with Dutch politics, it might be interesting to compare these polls with the political compass (the horizontal axis denotes economic left/right policy, vertical axis socially progressive/conservative policy).

(For the logos: the butterfly represents the Animal Rights Party (PvdD), the seagul Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV), and the Greek building Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy (FvD)).

The current elections are interesting because a large number of party leaders stepped down before the elections and have been replaced with “fresh” faces. Meanwhile, the political landscape has not shifted all that much.

As you mentioned, the historically important Christian Democrat party, which was in decline for a while, has now been almost completely replaced by two new parties: New Social Contract (NSC) lead by Pieter Omtzigt (himself a former Christian Democrat) and the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB) lead by political outsider Caroline van der Plas (whose party was at one time leading in the polls, but has gradually declined almost to insignificance for reasons that aren't quite clear to me).

Meanwhile, the Labour party (PvdA) and Green party (GL) have merged into a single moderately progressive/leftwing party (uninspiringly named PvdA/GL) lead by former Labour-party Foreign Affairs Minister and European Commissioner Frans Timmermans.

The key to understanding current Dutch politics lies with the VVD, the quintessential (neo)liberal party that supports globalism, open borders, low taxes, minimal environmental protections and less regulations for businesses. Their voters consist mainly of the “haves“ in society: wealthy people, high earners, business owners, home owners, pensioners; people who are happy with their lives, do not favor income or wealth distribution, and do not feel especially threatened by globalization or immigration.

The VVD has been part of the government for the past 13 years. The main reason for this is that despite being economically right-wing, they are quite flexible when it comes to social issues, which has allowed the party to form coalitions both with conservative Christians and with progressive liberal parties.

In terms of coalition building, based on the current polls, there is an obvious three-party coalition of PvdA/GL + NSC + VVD. While these parties cover a broad part of the spectrum, the combination isn't as far-fetched as it might seem: PvdA and VVD have governed together in the not-too-distant past (two cabinets between 1994 and 2002). Adding a third party would seem to complicate things, but on paper, Omtzigt's NSC is ideologically somewhere in between the two, so it feels like it should be possible to include them as well, though much depends on how flexible Omtzigt turns out to be: if Omtzigt insists on social conservatism, and the VVD insists on economic rightwing policy, then together they have nothing to offer PvdA/GL: the VVD's past success has hinged on yielding progressive topics to their left-wing coalition partner to secure the economic right-wing policy they really care about.

It's worth noting that historically, a coalition between PvdA and VVD has hurt PvdA much more than VVD. So it's unclear if they will dare to go for it again this time.

No other coalition seems immediately viable. It's probably best to wait for the election to see where the chips fall.

Thanks for the breakdown, that was super helpful.

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