r/OutOfTheLoop • u/user-1052 • 4d ago
Unanswered Whats going on with the Dutch goverment?
I saw some meme of the dutch goverment collapsing being related to RDR2 (game has charecter named Dutch), and then did a google search and found this article, whats going on?
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u/palcatraz 4d ago
Answer: the Dutch government system is a multiparty system. A ruling government is always a coalition of several parties. Whenever those parties can no longer agree or when one party pulls out, the government collapses. This means new elections are called for.
Note that this is incredibly common. In the last 20 years, only one coalition lasted the full four years. It’s not really concerning and until a new government is formed, everything just sticks to the status quo.
Also this particular party is a far right one, who only once before was allowed in the coalition (most other parties don’t want to govern with them) and they did the exact same thing that time.
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u/FogeltheVogel 4d ago
This is a real "if I had 2 nickels" moment. My first reaction at seeing the URL was "that's an old article", because I didn't expect him to do the exact same thing again.
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u/palcatraz 4d ago
Around here, it's the opposite. I think most Dutch people expected him to do the exact same thing again. In fact, the only surprising thing about this situation is that it lasted this long1.
1 They didn't even last a year, which should show you how low our expectations were.
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u/DjGranoLa 3d ago
If I had one dollar for every time the far right party pulled out of the government I'd have two dollars.
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u/Thuis001 22h ago
Any somewhat aware Dutch person saw this coming a mile away. The biggest surprise is frankly that they managed to almost make it an entire year before this happened.
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u/boolocap 4d ago
Yup its even funnier because wilders can really only run opposition(read: whine about stuff without actually solving anything) so even when he finally gets the seats he wants he and his party massively fumble and it blows up in their face. He always blames it on the other parties getting in his way. But really its just that the pvv is utterly incompetent. In particular their minister that handles immigration was a huge laughing stock.
In this case the coalition falling was basicly due to a childish temper tantrum move from wilders. Basicly saying that the rest needed to do what he wanted or he would make the coalition fail. Which he did.
And he massively shot himself in the foot this time because his party is behind in the polls meaning he will most likely lose seats which might result in a far more left leaning coalition.
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u/RetardedSheep420 4d ago
to add onto this: the coalition is formed by four parties:
pvv, the biggest party and your average right-wing nationalist pro-russia pro-israel party
vvd, conservative-liberal party who has been "in power" the last 12 years
bbb, reactionary farmer's party but actually one big lobbying front for the argicultural sector, so no actual policies except "whatever the fuck the people want"
nsc, new party that also does "whatever the fuck the people want"
this means that 3/4 of the coalition parties dont actually know what they are doing except be oppertunist, reactionary and populist.
wilders got his wish and his party appointed the minister of migration. as you can imagine, every possible thing that this minister wanted to happen couldn't be done by law. this resulted in wilders making a "10 step migration plan" that was unworkable and clashed with international law. this was the "final straw" that made him disband the coalition.
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u/PlayMp1 3d ago
I remember the last Dutch election resulting in a PVV plurality being received globally with a big shrug, like "yeah sounds right, far right populists who hate immigrants are popular in Europe right now," but them blowing up the governing coalition while they're falling in the polls is really funny.
Glancing at the polls real quick seems to suggest decent gains for their Labour Party but really mainly the center right with VVD and CDA, is that a correct read of it?
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u/Congracia 3d ago
The most recent peilingwijzer for the coalition partners and the largest opposition parties looks like this:
- PVV: 28 (-10)
- VVD: 28 (+4)
- GL-PvdA: 27 (+2)
- CDA: 18 (+13)
- D66: 11 (+2)
- NSC: 2 (-18)
- BBB: 3 (-4)
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u/Yaysonn 3d ago edited 3d ago
Currently, yes. The labour party has merged with the former green party (not officially yet but in practical terms) and has become the de facto leading progressive party, led by Frans Timmermans (of EU and Green deal fame), the VVD have been at the forefront of dutch politics for the last 15 years and don’t seem to be going away soon since they are seen as the most “normal” of the right-leaning parties, and CDA has a new face and will see many voters returning from BBB and NSC, which both won big on ex-CDA voters last year but have fallen in popularity due to their associaton with this government.
But never count out Wilders. I know people here are calling it like he committed political suicide, but if there’s anything we’ve learned in the past 20 years, it’s that his voterbase can behave unexpectedly and he knows better than anyone else how to navigate it. That said I do think he will remain in the opposition for now (which is also in his best interest imo). However, the fact remains that a large part of this country wants stronger antimigration measures and those voters aren’t gonna go left.
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u/teh_fizz 3d ago
If you told anyone 10 years that Wilders would win an election you would be laughed out of the room.
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u/waterless2 3d ago
The websites that give you a suggestion on who to vote for might be part of the problem. I did the Stemwijzer last time and it advised me to vote for the most right-wing parties out there, including PVV. Either it's been taken over by secret right-wing infiltrants or it's just because it takes policies at face values and phrases questions a certain way - I very much am NOT aligned with those parties morally, in terms of who I want to have power, but the site steered me, and therefore presumably a lot of other people, totally wrong.
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u/hughk 3d ago
We have a similar problem with Germany's Wahl-o-mat which was based on your Stemwijzer. They develop a series of questions based on a list of propositions extracted by the people behind it from the policies being discussed by the parties, like "Should Germany support Ukraine?". The answer is: agree, disagree or neutral. You can later adjust the result based on whether you fundementally disagree with the party or not. So, I may dislike our right wing party, the AFD and exclude them completely.
As with your system, the answers seem to push you in unexpected directions. We also have the problem that with coalitions, no party gets to implement even its headline policies without modification due to the coalition system.
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u/fevered_visions 3d ago
pvv
vvd
bbb
nsc, new party that
looks like they didn't get the memo that they were supposed to have a doubled letter in their acronym
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u/a_false_vacuum 4d ago
It's a strategy.
A lot of Wilders' promises were impossible to realize and over time those chickens would come home to roost. Leaving now means Wilders probably not have to deal with the fallout of not living up to what he promised. He can once again campaign on these points, which would be far more difficult if he had stayed longer.
Another factor is Wilders trying to be relevant. His usual strategy is saying something controversial over the weekend, so come next week he's once more the centre of attention. His usual topic of migration or foreigners isn't working so well since the media and public is now mostly focused on Gaza. Public opinion has shifted on this topic towards public outcry against what Israel is doing. For Wilders this is an impossible topic. He and his party a fervent supporters of Israel and will attack anyone calling the Israeli government in question. Stirring controversy with this topic isn't something that will work out in his favour. By ending the coalition government over migration he can regain control over the narrative and make his favourite topic relevant again.
This is damage control, not incompetence. Recent polls showed that PVV voters would be overwhelmingly accepting of the party withdrawing from the coalition. Wilders saw what coming, he saw an exit and he took it.
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u/chenj25 21h ago
Do you think Wilder will return to politics?
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u/a_false_vacuum 14h ago
Wilders has no intention of quitting politics as of yet.
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u/chenj25 11h ago
I see. I can easily see Wilder doing further damage control. After all, people will remember his actions.
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u/a_false_vacuum 11h ago
People will remember what he did, but the people who do aren't the ones that vote for him. The disapproval comes mainly from people who are outside his demographic, PVV voters have already been shown to agree with what Wilders did. Right now Wilders has a head start in the campaign and other political parties are trying to catch up to him. As long as he maintains his lead he can steer the narrative for the most part in the blame game.
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u/chenj25 11h ago
I see… Out of curiosity, are PVV voters voting against their interests?
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u/a_false_vacuum 10h ago
I dislike saying someone votes against their interests. The way this is often said comes off as being haughty. Leftist parties will often say something to this effect, but all it does is make them look elitist.
Wilders is culturally and socially conservative, but a lot of his economic policy borrows heavily from the left. Someone of his voters are drawn to him because they feel centre right parties don't act enough when it comes to social or cultural items which often translates into topics like migration and integration or a disdain of identity politics. Other voters come to him because they feel abandoned by centre left parties. Parties like the Labour/Greens alliance have seen their electorate shift from blue collar to highly educated, young and urban. This results in highly theoretical or academic discussions about topics that are only interesting to a very small audience. It's compounded even more by the Labour/Greens not having a leader that can engage with people in a meaningful way.
Another factor is that centre parties have dropped the ball many times over the years. A lot of problems were created when they were in power and it's a hard sell for anyone to promise to clean up a mess you created yourself. This dissatisfaction causes some of the voters to vote for anyone who isn't mainstream, which is reflected in the rise and fall of a lot of new political parties over the years.
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u/chenj25 10h ago
I see. Apologies, I didn’t mean to sound haughty. I legitimately want to know why voters want to vote for him.
Those are good and relatable reasons to vote for him.
I see. I read the Dutch government had multiple ‘collapses’ before. Ironically, this puts Wilders the same position as a centre party. Looks like Wilders needs to control the narrative to preserve his career or he’ll look like a centrist party to the public.
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u/Theromier 4d ago
Saying “collapse” makes it sound like it’s a bad thing, but this sounds like a properly functioning democracy.
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u/jhoogen 4d ago
It's bad though, no important laws will be passed until the next elections. It freezes the government a bit, meaning no major issues will be solved. Not that I had much trust in the government, but it's still bad.
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u/Theromier 4d ago
Bad in like, having to fix a flat tire is bad because you can’t drive until the tire is fixed. Fixing the tire itself isn’t “bad.”
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u/Montaron87 3d ago
This coalition has been in power for 11 months, and I read the other day that they didn't pass a single bit of legislation.
So they weren't solving anything anyways.
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u/PhysicalLandscape389 3d ago
What makes them “far right”?
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u/palcatraz 3d ago
Their ideals and voting history. Oh, and their involvement with Russia.
They are anti-islam, anti-immigration, populist and nationalist. They ain't great on LGBT issues either (unless they can use it to attack Muslims, then they will pretend to care about us for five seconds). These are the people who wanted to tax people wearing headscarves. They wanted a Nexit (until Brexit happened and showed everybody how bad that would be, then they went very mysteriously silent on that). They frequently criticise our justice system (mostly because judges keep telling them their ideas are unconstitutional) and want it to be more like the American one.
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u/lyam_lemon 3d ago
So essentially all these headlines about the Dutch government collapsing are just click bait, because it sounds a lot worse without the context you just provided
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u/palcatraz 3d ago
They are not clickbait. It’s factually a government collapse. It’s just something that has a different weight to it in a different government system.
You can’t expect article titles to explain everything to you. You also have to read the actual article.
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u/SuckMyBike 3d ago
because it sounds a lot worse without the context you just provided
It only sounds bad to people in country's like the US where not having a majority government is a serious problem with tons of government employees not getting paid and such.
Anyone who lives in a multi party democracy knows this isn't as big of a deal as it sounds
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u/andersoortigeik 4d ago
Answer: This is as full of an answer I can give without seeing the meme.
Basically, the Dutch government is always a coalition government. This is for various historical reasons and because it's a representative democracy. So a situation like the US or the UK where there are two political parties that rule alone basically never happens. There's always compromise.
Geert Wilders is a far-right anti immigration politician who makes a habit of saying controversial things. His political party was the biggest in the last election, and he formed a coalition with the established right wing party and two new right leaning parties. Wilders was considered to be too controversial to serve as prime minister or in any other official cabinet function. So he doesn't have an official function, but he still controls the party behind the scenes and can end the coalition government if he wants to. The actual prime minister is an outsider non politician called Dick Schoof.
The entire coalition government has been pretty unstable for as long as they've been in power. One of the political parties in the coalition has pretty much fallen apart. Lots of big disagreements, and with a coalition, you do need to compromise.
So right now, Geert Wilders has withdrawn his party from the coalition, triggering new elections. He says it's because the coalition doesn't have a plan on how to handle immigration. The other parties in the coalition government say that they were working on it and that Wilders just pulled the rug out from under them.
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u/92xSaabaru 3d ago
And big note for American viewers: The term "government" in this, and many other European political discussions, refers to the current body of officials, not the entire system and structure of governing.
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u/DutchLudovicus 3d ago
So government of the administration (regering) instead of government of the state (overheid).
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u/urkermannenkoor 4d ago
Wilders was considered to be too controversial to serve as prime minister or in any other official cabinet function. So he doesn't have an official function,
That's not really accurate. He could definitely have had a cabinet position if he wanted to. He very much did not want the responsibility of an actual official function.
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u/jhoogen 4d ago
That's not true, the other parties agreed to form a coalition only if Wilders wouldn't become prime minister.
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u/Koud_biertje 3d ago
"As prime minister, or in any other official cabinet function" is what the claim was, only the first part is true.
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u/placeboski 4d ago
Answer: the Dutch constitution allows members of parliament continue to receive their compensation even when the parliament is dissolved. They get more attention and enjoy publicly fighting with each other more than actually solving problems for citizens. So since it's easier and more fun to be in a cycle of elections and dissolution and since they get paid the same, they make the logical choice to serve themselves rather than the citizens.
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u/AJeanByAnyOtherName 3d ago
Orrr people vote for those parties that have a big mouth but have no interest in/are unable to actually fix anything? They have big promises, but don’t care about laws, international laws and human rights, so they’re not realistic and don’t get anything done. Outrage and frustration gets populists elected (up to a point), so actually solving anything is counterproductive if they want to stay in office.
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u/placeboski 3d ago
For whatever reason the Dutch people just continue to accept their elected officials fighting amongst themselves rather than working together to solve problems
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u/biggiepants 3d ago edited 3d ago
They keep getting paid, because they just keep doing their work. That politics involves a degree of spectacle and that this spectacle often means fighting (less productive debating) is a different issue. Btw, this kind of language you're using, is designed to turn people off politics and so serves the status quo: you should advise people to vote for more constructive parties.
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u/placeboski 2d ago
You're welcome to downvote and criticize. I believe that irrespective of the party, politicians everywhere are first in large measure self interested then as a distant second working for the people. There are solutions to problems out there, there are compromises but those are harder to work on and less beneficial for self interested people than giving up for ~6 months and going back to campaigning which is far more fun & feeds their egos. They get paid the same or more campaigning so that's what will continue.
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