Since the fall of the government a year ago, the general election held in november 2023 significantly changed the party-political landscape, but this hasn't made it easier to form a new, stable coalition. The radical right, labeled populist party PVV — led by its single member Geert Wilders — for the first time became the biggest party in the House. The main right-of-center parties — the big-business oriented VVD, the 'farmers and citizens' party BBB, and the good-governance NSC — found it hard both not to form, and to actually form, a coalition with clear election-winner, Wilders' PVV. However, the conditions for this coalition to form, were heavily influenced by the demands of the NSC party (New Social Contract), lead by Mr. Pieter Omtzigt, a former CDA christian democrat MP, mentioned before in this Dutch news section.
David Van Reybrouck, author of Against Elections, was interviewed by the French newspaper Libération on the election result. The headline: 'Victory of the radical right in the Netherlands: the built-up frustration leads to one single outlet: the populist vote' (Victoire de l’extrême droite aux Pays-Bas : «L’accumulation de la frustration conduit à une seule échappatoire : le vote populiste», November 23, 2023)
As far as democratization is concerned, the NSC party wants a new voting system, with more influence by districts, probably a bit similar to the German dual-list system, with district priority candidates within a system that is still based on proportional representation. Apparently the post-war, thus relatively modern but still disfunctional German system is good enough of an improvement for the Netherlands, according to the NSC party.
What's quite a surprise, is that the national Citizens' Assembly on Climate (topics: nutrition, consumption, travel), that the fallen coalition had planned, is seemingly still on the agenda. The PVV is definitely not a fan of CAs, and the other three parties are at best luke warm to them, but apparently the organizing department continued working on preparing the assembly and has managed to sell the idea to the coalition. What's also possible, is that this CA is seen as not urgent and unimportant, but also harmless. The conservative right-wing opinion website Wynia's Week published a poll that showed only minority support for CAs by the Dutch voters, but that apparently has not deterred the new coalition to apparently go ahead with it. This is remarkable, because voters of the VVD — the only party of the previous coalition still governing — are the most strongly opposed to them (66 percent). In fact, according to the Wynia's Week poll, the voters of three out of the four coalition parties oppose CAs with an absolute majority; only voters of the NSC have a relative majority of 46 percent being opposed to CAs. So what is going on? Should the poll not be taken too seriously, because it's just a poll? Or are at least two out of the four coalition party leaders silently more on favour of CAs than their voters are? Or will the CA-plan be killed later on?
For the time being, parties that are openly in favour of CAs are in the opposition, and the most outspoken ones of those opposition parties are quite small: the Animal Rights Party (3 out of 150 seats), and the pan-European social-liberal party Volt (2 out of 150 seats). Two other parties that are sympathetic to the idea of CAs are LEF ('guts'), a party that focuses mainly on the interests of the younger generation and views CAs as a way to realize their goals, and the Pirate Party, a party has a strong focus on matters concerning ICT, but on democratization as well. LEF tried very hard to attract attention with a remarkable and unique outside intervention during a live TV interview with two party leaders on the programme Buitenhof, but neither LEF nor the Pirate Party succeeded in obtaining even one single seat in the House.
Of the mainstream parties, it's possibly centrist (originally more left-of-center) liberal democrats D66 that has been warming up the most to Citizens' Assemblies. The party was once founded on the promise of renewing democracy, but those ideals had been neglected over time. However, advocating for CAs fits them naturally: their party think tank published an essay advocating for them.
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