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From ‘Red and Black’ to ‘Red and Blue’
Twenty-Five Years of Dutch Politics
The Netherlands in the post-war period: 1945-1965
A quarter of a century ago, no Dutch citizen could have imagined that a political alliance between social democrats and right-wing liberals would ever be possible in the Netherlands. Not only because such an alliance would not have had a majority in Parliament, but because the political strategy of both groups was to treat each other as the opposite ends of the leftright political spectrum and thus force the centre parties - the three confessional parties active at the time - to opt for either a right-of-centre (liberal) or a left-wing (social democrat) coalition partner.
This strategy was launched in the 1950s by the conservative-liberal vvd (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy - Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie) and enthusiastically embraced in the mid-sixties by the social democratic PvdA (Labour Party - Partij van de Arbeid). That the PvdA should have adopted this ‘polarisation strategy’ was in fact slightly paradoxical: on the one hand it forced the largest of the three confessional parties, the kvp (Catholic People's Party - Katholieke Volkspartij), into a longterm marriage with the political left, while on the other hand it was apparent that collaboration between the PvdA and the kvp was not what it had been and that the era of a more or less ‘natural’ alliance between these two parties was past. The polarisation was also a reaction by the PvdA to the social changes which began to manifest themselves in the Netherlands in the 1960s. To gain a clear picture of social and political developments over the last 25 years, however - including the creation in 1994 of a ‘purple’ (or, more accurately, a ‘red and blue’) coalition - it will first be necessary to understand a few important post-war developments in the Netherlands.
Dutch society had been shattered by the Second World War. For centuries, war and enemy occupation were problems which had passed it by, with the exception of the less than strikingly successful Napoleonic regime (1810-1813). Although a great deal of reflection and debate on issues of political and social reform took place in intellectual circles during the German Occupation, the majority of the population and their political representatives were more inclined to see the Occupation as a violation of
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Council offices and houses in Leeuwarden. These were designed by Abe Bonnema and built between 1972 and 1975.
their history and as a terrible, but isolated, interlude. Above all, the people longed for a return to their pre-war calm and stability. The serious damage which had been done to a number of key commercial and industrial economic centres meant there was also a strong physical need for reconstruction. Quite simply, people had to roll up their sleeves and start putting things back to rights.
There were two complicating factors here. The first was that, while the Netherlands wished to return to the old order, its most important colony, Indonesia, did not. In the first five post-war years, accordingly, a great deal of attention, not to mention substantial financial and other resources, had to be devoted to this issue. Moreover, there was the fear of a sharp drop in prosperity in the Netherlands as a result of the loss of the Dutch East Indies - a concern which later proved unfounded. Its uncooperative attitude to decolonisation - even after 1950 - however, meant that the Netherlands lost a number of economic opportunities which an independent Indonesia would probably have offered under other circumstances.
The second complicating factor was that it was not really possible to proceed from the position in which the Netherlands had found itself in 1940. Not only would effort be needed to build economic recovery - with intensive state intervention - but there was also a general awareness that the still highly agricultural economy would have to embark on a radical industrialisation programme. Additionally, however, there was a genuine realisation that, measured in terms of the level and quality of social security and public services (in particular housing), the Netherlands lagged well behind its neighbours.
The country undeniably recovered at a rapid rate after 1945. Prosperity increased reasonably quickly and became relatively widespread in the population as a whole. Industry underwent major development and was more widely distributed across the country. Agriculture was not eclipsed by this development, but grew in parallel to industry. The same applied to trade, particularly once the German market had recovered and opened up to exports. Rising prosperity brought rapid urbanisation, leading not only to
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the growth of existing towns, but also to increasing urbanisation of the formerly largely empty countryside. The general level of education of the population increased, and with it their physical and mental mobility. From the 1950s onwards public services also began to develop: not only education, but also housing and health care. At least as important was the start made in 1947 on the creation of an extensive and highly developed social security system to cushion the effects of unemployment, illness and disability, old age and the costs of health care. Finally, there was a broad consensus that the Netherlands needed to reappraise its position on the international stage; from being a self-satisfied country which cherished its neutrality, the Netherlands became a member of a range of international alliances such as the un, nato and the various European Communities, in which its enthusiasm and energy were for many years ‘rewarded’ with a disproportionate level of influence.
All these changes were supported and actively encouraged by an alliance of two political parties who were also each other's great rivals: the Catholic People's Party (kvp) and the social democratic PvdA. Although these two parties had little affection for one another, their interests and aspirations to some extent coincided: both had a desire to bring about social and economic recovery and modernisation in the country. They were less inclined to cling to pre-war political traditions and codes of conduct than the ‘old’ liberal party (vvd) and the Protestant confessional parties, the arp (Anti-Revolutionary Party - Anti-Revolutionaire Partij) and chu (Christian Historical Union - Christelijke Historische Unie). Until 1958 this alliance took the form of permanent collaboration in a government coalition between the ‘black’ kvp and the ‘red’ PvdA (the ‘Roman-red’ alliance). Thereafter the kvp became the governing party, with short interruptions, preferably in alliance with the liberals (vvd). The kvp's rivalry with the PvdA continued, however, along with a secret preference for social democracy - if not for collaboration, then in any event for its aspirations. The kvp wished to demonstrate that it was at least as concerned about social justice as the PvdA; and, with the PvdA in opposition, the kvp performed well - better, in fact, than the social democrats would probably have wished.
Almost unnoticed amidst all these developments, the socio-cultural nature of society was changing. A population which had formerly been compartmentalised along religious and social dividing lines gradually began to open up. The shared oppression of the German Occupation had in many cases brought people closer together, while at the same time the old order was being broken down in the cultural sphere - where more resources also became available. Writers such as Gerard van het Reve, Willem Frederik Hermans and Hugo Claus wrote a new language, while visual artists such as Karel Appel and Corneille and architects such as J.H. Van den Broek and J.B. Bakema created new ‘images’. Later on, music and dance went through a similar revolutionary development. What in the past would have been handed down gradually as a cultural heritage penetrated the population in a highly accelerated tempo following the introduction of television.
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The ‘silent revolution’ of the sixties
Now that the turbulence which raged throughout Dutch society in the 1960s has settled again, it is evident that in several respects there have been radical, not to say revolutionary changes - though not in all sectors of life and society.
The most important changes have been in the pattern of daily life in what are, sociologically speaking, the smallest groups in society: the individual and the family. The publicist H.J.A. Hofland once appositely described this process as ‘the decolonisation of daily life’. Citizens began taking their own, individual line on issues of morality and social behaviour, no longer allowing their thoughts to be directed by social control or traditional institutions - in particular the Church. From a conformist society with a very strongly developed system of social divisions along ideological lines, the Netherlands developed in the space of twenty years into one of the most openly permissive societies in the world. A country where formerly nothing moved on a Sunday because of the mass attendance at the many and highly diverse Christian churches, began to secularise at a rapid rate. This did not so much signify the end of all religion and Christian belief as the ‘privatisation’ of religion. What had formerly been a highly organised society, structured in a system of tightly-knit unions, societies and political parties, underwent a process of individualisation. It is true that people today are still members of or sympathisers with many organisations, but they are less active and, in particular, switch their affections more frequently. The same applies to marriage and the family; supported by a new divorce law (1971), the number of divorces increased strongly until today one in every three marriages ends in divorce. As the experts have it: the Dutch citizen is still monogamous, but this has now become a ‘serial’ monogamy.
The Dutch had thus become convinced that the emancipation since the nineteenth century of the Catholic community, of orthodox Protestantism and of the labour movement - all striving against the dominant, free-thinking elite - was complete. They began to see themselves, in spite of all differences of origin and viewpoint, as belonging to a single, traditionally bourgeois and free society - to such an extent, in fact, that foreigners began to see the Dutch as one of the most cohesive societies in the world.
The completion of this emancipation process generated a certain amount of resistance to the established social and political elites and their alleged ‘regent mentality’. The steamroller of criticism and resistance ran through parliament and town halls, schools and universities, farmer's organisations and trade unions. The call for democratisation was widespread and undeniably led to more democratic and egalitarian systems within all these institutions. More particularly, this democratisation led to a change in the position of women in society. In a country where by tradition married women, in particular, hardly ever went out to work - to just as limited an extent as in Ireland or Italy - they now began participating in paid employment, at least part-time. At the same time their position in political parties and interest groups also steadily strengthened. The ‘second feminist wave’ made deep inroads into Dutch society, partly because, in international terms, it represented a catching-up exercise.
Against this background it was not so much people's expectations of the
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Postcard published by the Dutch Catholic Workers' Movement, c. 1950. The caption reads: ‘Mother at home, not at the factory!’ (Photo Katholiek Documentatiecentrum, Nijmegen).
political system as such which changed, as their behaviour at the ballot box. The abolition of compulsory voting (1970) led to a fall in the turnout at parliamentary elections from 95% to between 80 and 85%; participation in other elections fell even more sharply. Election results also became less predictable: voters changed their political allegiances more readily, albeit always within a limited ‘bandwidth’: the positions of the progressive parties (approximately 40%) and the more conservative groups (around 60%) have remained highly stable down to the present day, though preferences within the progressive and conservative blocs have fluctuated considerably.
One structural change did take place, however: the irresistible decline, in part due to secularisation, of the confessional parties of the centre, the kvp, arp and chu. Their membership fell from an average of around 50% of the total electorate between 1918 and 1967 to less than a third by the 1970s. In combination with a number of other factors, this acted as a strong incentive to collaboration; the result was a complete merger in 1980 to form the present cda, or Christian Democratic Appeal (Christen Democratisch Appel). During the 1980s this new cda appeared to enjoy reasonable success: electoral support stabilised and, partly due to the competence of its political leader Ruud Lubbers - who was also Prime Minister from 1982 to 1994 - the cda attained a powerful position, which was certainly no less important than that held by the kvp in the first post-war decades.
What happened to the voters who had deserted the confessional parties? They were distributed among all the other parties, though with two striking consequences: first, election results became much less predictable than they had been up to 1967; and secondly, it has to be accepted that in the longer
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Joop den Uyl (1919-1987) (Photo by Vincent Menzel).
term the liberal parties have benefited to a relatively much greater extent than the PvdA and other parties of the left. The conservative-liberal vvd doubled its electorate between 1972 and 1994; the social-liberal d66 (Democrats 1966 - Democraten 1966) party which, as its name suggests, was set up in 1966, went through a more fluctuating development, but nonetheless grew into a party which in 1994 held 24 seats in the Lower House of Parliament (out of a total of 150). These two parties together formed what by 1994 had grown into the largest bloc in Dutch politics, with more than a third of all parliamentary seats (55 out of 150). Even if one is prepared to accept that d66 and vvd are slightly ‘overrepresented’ with these figures, the rise of liberal ideas in the Netherlands is still striking.
If this rise in liberalism was not so apparent at the end of the 1960s, the collapse of the confessional centre was. Reactions to this at parliamentary and party-leadership level were uncertain and ambivalent: confessional parties which avoided the PvdA and, in particular, d66 as much as possible; and conversely a PvdA which, as stated earlier, opted for radical polarisation against the confessional centre. Initially this approach appeared to have some success, in the form of the left-dominated cabinet under Prime Minister Den Uyl and the election victory of the PvdA in 1977. A second coalition led by Den Uyl failed to materialise, however, and the PvdA was condemned to many years in opposition, until it gave up its policy of polarisation towards the end of the eighties. The Dutch electorate had not been seduced by polarisation and supported the parties which rejected it. Society might have changed in many respects, but the political mores of the Dutch public remained solidly in favour of moderation, discussion and cooperation. The 1960s and their consequences had not so much brought about a political revolution (rather the reverse) as a silent revolution of daily existence and of the Church and social community. This revolution was made possible by growing prosperity and a protective welfare state, which fos- | |
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tered all kinds of spiritual and social relaxation in a free society where the limits of the possible and the permissible had been stretched. Until, that is, the economic tide turned.
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The neo-conservative change of climate after 1980
At the end of the 1970s the welfare state was rocked twice in quick succession by two energy crises which were themselves the result of successive world dollar crises. The greatly reduced economic growth was no longer capable of sustaining the larger growth in private incomes and in collective spending on social security and public services. One of the first consequences was a substantial rise in unemployment, which proved to be unstoppable. This in turn placed severe pressure on social security spending: the burden of spending rose to new heights and the government's budget deficit climbed dramatically. This fostered a climate of neo-conservative intervention, albeit, as always in the Netherlands, in a moderate form. Not only was the government forced to embark on drastic austerity programmes, but concepts such as ‘privatisation’ and ‘deregulation’ also began to come into fashion, along with general, though sometimes ill-founded, criticism of ‘the government’ as itself a social problem.
In addition, the dark side of the permissive society, which initially had seemed to be no more than a means of liberation from paternalism, was becoming more and more apparent. Drug addiction and the associated explosive increase in crime began to be a source of serious concern. There was a sharp decline in willingness to pay taxes and social security contributions, quite apart from the fact that people were adopting a more critical and calculating stance to government and legislation in general. While many critics now saw the government as a problem, therefore, citizens and interest groups also became just as much of a thorn in the government's side. Interest groups launched vehement and often effective protest campaigns, more and more frequently seeking recourse to the courts. This in turn led to an unmistakeable hardening in a society which was becoming less ‘civilised’.
This hardening was also apparent in the attitudes of the Dutch public to ethnic minorities in the Netherlands, whose numbers had grown quite substantially since 1970. Initially these were mainly immigrants from the former Dutch colony of Surinam who no longer wished to remain there following that country's independence in 1975, together with Turks and Moroccans who had come to the Netherlands as ‘guest workers’. When the latter did not return to their homelands as intended, however, their numbers increased considerably through family formation and reunification. This process appeared to be more or less at an end by 1990, but then (as in the whole of Europe) a flood of asylum seekers began to appear, swelling the numbers of foreigners who were already residing in the Netherlands illegally.
Overall the total number of immigrants was and is limited (less than 10%), but in older districts of the major cities they now constitute a majority. These people, including the second generation, also face disproportionately high levels of unemployment, partly due to poor mastery of Dutch and
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Immigrant workers in the Netherlands are usually not very high up the social ladder (Photo by Marian van Veen-Van Rijk).
inadequate education, but also as a result of discrimination in the labour market. The multicultural society had arrived, but in a far from cohesive way. A society which had already lost its old feeling of security and steadily rising prosperity began to see this multicultural society as more of a threat than a social and cultural enrichment.
Against this background, the effects of globalisation and Europeanisation could be felt all around. The acceleration of European integration was initially seen as a blessing: the Netherlands had after all displayed strongly federalistic ambitions since the 1950s. And yet in the Netherlands, too, the Treaty of Maastricht appeared to create more problems than opportunities. To some extent this was because problems were attributed to Brussels (e.g. bureaucracy), an apportionment of blame which was largely unjust. Additionally, people began to question the point of further integration and its effects on national interests. Europeanisation would in any event mean a loss of political democracy and constitutional sovereignty.
The trend towards globalisation, the total removal from national control of capital, information and investment, came as a severe blow to the highly socialised and regulated Netherlands. Not only did unemployment rise while the level of social benefits fell, but ‘permanent jobs’ for people with a reasonable level of education began to become less certain, in a repeat of the earlier and larger-scale development which had occurred in the United States. Diplomas, even at the highest level, no longer offered (or offer) young people the assurance of a secure existence. Older people sometimes have the greatest difficulty in keeping up with modern developments (par- | |
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ticularly the increase in computerisation). The Netherlands has not only become a semi-sovereign state thanks to the European Union; as a result of globalisation it is also having to come to terms with the fact that it has become a semi-sovereign society.
Feelings of uncertainty and insecurity - in employment, on the street and even in one's own home, and also with regard to politics - are also fuelled by the realisation (highly developed in the Netherlands) that the natural environment is becoming more and more polluted, overloaded and exhausted. Nonetheless, it is proving difficult in a democratic society to adapt the individual and collective way of life to the new ecological dangers. Ecological needs constantly come up against (economic) resistance and powerlessness to introduce change and renewal. For many people, the ecological crisis has made a serious dent in their belief in progress - a belief which for so long dominated the political and social culture.
All these are problems and uncertainties for which traditional political ideas - either in Europe or in the Netherlands - are virtually incapable of providing coherent answers. Political parties are searching in a fairly dense ideological fog for new answers both to recurring issues (unemployment) and new problems (globalisation and ecological issues). In the Netherlands the parties ideologically associated with the post-war welfare state, namely the PvdA and the cda, have borne the brunt of the criticism.
That welfare state has become ‘too expensive’ and ‘too unwieldy’ and has proved incapable of providing the promised security and protection when times are hard. Until the end of the 1980s many citizens were prepared to believe that, if precisely those two parties would work together again, things would return to normal. Hadn't the economy recovered and hadn't employment risen sharply? The wish became reality in 1989: the Christian Democrat Ruud Lubbers and the new social democrat leader Wim Kok
Ruud Lubbers (top) and Wim Kok (bottom), drawn by Waldemar Post for de Volkskrant in 1989 (Photo Stichting Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam).
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were to join forces in a new coalition. This coalition, it was confidently predicted, would be capable of setting about its task effectively, supported by a two-thirds parliamentary majority. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything, as it turned out. Although the coalition lasted the full four years, its course was anything but smooth. The allure which the Den Uyl cabinet had once had was missing completely between 1989 and 1994. In addition, the economic recession bit deeply and it became apparent how far the Dutch state was still living beyond its means. The Lubbers-Kok cabinet, which had started with such high expectations, was itself forced to introduce major austerity programmes and was left no choice but to contemplate a radical shake-up of the Netherlands' most valued social protection system, namely invalidity benefits. More generally, any political system naturally loses legitimacy if it is forced constantly to talk about nothing but money and retrenchment rather than renewal and reform.
Support for the government coalition began to crumble rapidly and drastically. Initially the PvdA suffered worst, as a result of the understandable feelings of disappointment and criticism. However, when from 1993 onwards ministers and mps belonging to the cda increasingly began to clash with each other and the leaders of the parliamentary party began to distance themselves from their own Prime Minister (Lubbers was a member of the cda), the decline of the Christian Democrats was also assured. In the last six months before the 1994 general election this decline became a dramatic slide.
On 3 May 1994 an event took place which had never before occurred since the introduction of universal suffrage in the Netherlands: the parties in the cda-PvdA coalition lost so many seats that they saw a two-thirds majority in parliament shrivel away to a parliamentary minority, losing 32 seats out of 103. The PvdA suffered a dramatic loss of 12 seats, though this was still better than expected on the basis of the opinion polls. The cda lost 20 seats, around 40% of its support, a catastrophic result which made the cda even smaller than the PvdA in parliament. Contrasting with this was the ‘march of the liberals’ already referred to, and the rise of the small parties. If the 1960s were characterised by a youth revolution, it was now the turn of the elderly to revolt: two new parties for the elderly achieved a total of seven parliamentary seats. Undoubtedly an historic election result, then: but which history?
Ruud Lubbers (1939-) (Photo by Bert Verhoeff).
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‘Purple’ coalition: intermezzo or new era?
Soon after 3 May 1994 a number of things became clear: racist parties such as the cd (Centre Democrats - Centrum Democraten) were and still are not a significant political force in the Netherlands. Liberal ideas were clearly in favour - but would that be a permanent phenomenon? The Christian democrats entered a deep existential crisis. The social democrats breathed a sigh of relief, but are still today facing a serious crisis of confidence in the large cities and among the young. The PvdA leader and Prime Minister, Wim Kok, had avoided a disaster for his party with his election campaign, but that was all.
The start of the period of cabinet formation - always a complicated and
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Wim Kok (1938-) (Photo by Fotobureau Thuring B.V.).
Hans van Mierlo (1931-) (Photo by Bert Verhoeff).
lengthy process in the Netherlands, if an entertaining one for the interested observer - quickly revealed one important fact. There would be no chance of forming a normal majority coalition without the left-wing liberal d66 party. This raised d66 and its successful leader Hans van Mierlo to a position of power which hitherto only the Christian Democrats had known. Van Mierlo's preference was clear and decisive, and he stuck to it firmly, notwithstanding an initial breakdown in the negotiations: a coalition between d66, vvd and PvdA. Since the PvdA, with 37 seats, was the largest of the three ( d66 24 seats, vvd 31), it could supply the Prime Minister. Suffering a severe loss at the elections and still managing to supply the premier: it seemed a handsome consolation prize.
Cabinet formation became a long, complex process, because both the PvdA and the vvd initially wanted to govern together with the cda - but then without each other. For the vvd, a continuation of its period in opposition was an attractive option. The cda wanted either to go into opposition (to lick its wounds) or to work with the vvd, preferably in a minority combination. The cda was plagued by uncertainty, however, and was saddled with a successor to party leader Ruud Lubbers, Elco Brinkman, who had been severely damaged by the elections. No one saw any future with Brinkman, not even the cda. His only support came from his colleagues in the parliamentary party, and this lack of support increased when a thorough and open investigation by the cda into its election debacle heavily criticised both the leader and the parliamentary party. They were accused of being technocrats, who had too little conviction and too little heart for the confessional and social beliefs of the party.
After a surprising intervention by the Queen in July, Wim Kok was charged with the task of forming a cabinet following the earlier failures, and he decided that nothing could be achieved with the cda. He was also aware of the stubbornness of Van Mierlo and d66. After the historic elections came the historic switch by Kok to the conservative-liberal vvd, the old arch-enemy. At the end of August the resultant ‘purple’ cabinet consisting of social democrats, left-wing liberals and conservative-liberals took office with Kok as Prime Minister and with a government programme with clear liberal features and another radical programme of economies and tax cuts. The social security system was spared further cutbacks, at least for the time being. This government programme, even though it was written by Kok himself, was a perfect illustration of how weak the PvdA had become since the elections.
The cabinet is referred to as ‘purple’, suggesting a fusion of the ‘red’ of the left and the ‘blue’ of the liberal right. It is anything but a fusion, however: the vvd and, in particular, the PvdA, are too far apart for that. It would be more accurate to talk of a ‘red and blue’ coalition, in which the colours remain visibly standing next to each other.
An historic election and an historic coalition, then: for the first time since 1918 without a single confessional party in it. But is this an historical intermezzo - however striking and spectacular in itself - like the first confessional cabinet (1887-1891) or the left-wing Den Uyl cabinet, both of which were followed by more traditional combinations? Or is the Netherlands currently undergoing an historic change on the road towards a new political map? We would do well to be cautious with our opinions.
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It is significant that the new coalition was forced on the parties by the electorate rather than being a conscious aim of the parties and their leaders, with the exception of d66 - though it gives them a pleasant feeling to have finally banished the Christian Democrats to the opposition for practically the first time in three-quarters of a century.
Seen in the light of some of its most important political tasks, this coalition has arrived too early. The reconstruction of the welfare state and the renewal of the economic production apparatus would have been activities more natural to the parties which built them up after the Second World War, namely the cda and the PvdA. Only then would the way be open for a coalition in which the cda and other confessional parties would stand for the preservation of traditional values and the non-confessional parties (now united in ‘red and blue’) for further secularisation and socio-cultural renewal. A further problem is that the balance of power shifts when it comes to ecological policies: the cda and vvd are closest on these issues, ranged against the PvdA, d66 and the small left-wing groups - supported, surprisingly, by the small confessional parties, which often adopt radical standpoints on environmental issues.
The first test of the new coalition's popularity came with the provincial elections in March 1995. They turned out very badly for the cda and pvda; the former was unable to recover the ground it had lost, while the latter sank to its lowest point ever. d66, the architect of the ‘purple’ coalition, lost much of what it had gained in the national elections. To everyone's surprise it was the vvd, which had taken such risks in cooperating with the coalition, which gained most, doing particularly well in the cities. The triumph of the conservative-liberals was undeniably helped by the behaviour of Frits Bolkestein, the only political leader in the coalition who had not become a member of the government in 1994 but remained in the Second Chamber. This enabled him to support the Cabinet, while at the same time maintaining his distance from it. By so doing he was able, more effectively than the cda, to cast his party in the role of a quasi-opposition, and this led to sizeable gains in the provincial elections, which always provide an opportunity for voters to express their dissatisfaction with the government. At the same time, however, Bolkestein - who knows how to appeal both to the intellectual middle classes and to the traditional, more lower-class, conservative voters - has done something to advance the recovery of liberalism following its temporary stagnation in the eighties.
The question is, though, whether the liberal victory of March 1995 has done anything to improve the stability of the ‘purple’ coalition; the ‘blue’ element was considerably better at getting through to the voters than the ‘red’, despite the personal popularity of the social democrat Prime Minister, Wim Kok. The results of the 1994 general election suggested that the pvda was on its way back after the low point of the early nineties; a year later its situation proved to be just as grave as before. The prospects are not bright; not for Dutch social democracy, but not for the ‘red-blue’ coalition either.
joop th.j. van den berg
March 1995
Translated by Julian Ross.
Frits Bolkestein (1933-) (Photo by Bert Verhoeff).
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