After years of standstill, politics must “dare to make choices” again. “Give direction.” “From standstill to movement.”
On his second working day as Prime Minister, Dick Schoof reads his ‘government statement’ in the main hall of the Lower House. In the subsequent parliamentary debate, the leaders of government parties PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB sound just as energetic. “It is worth a sweet thing,” says VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz, “if we are less concerned with ourselves in The Hague and more with solving problems in this country.”
Now, more than a year later, the opposite has turned out. The Schoof cabinet was a stagnation cabinet. It stumbled from crisis to crisis and managed to fall twice. For the major problems in the Netherlands, the government has not yet found the start of a solution.
The nitrogen problem is unabated, the housing construction is not accelerated, the Netherlands is in danger of not achieving its climate goals. The many years of political wish to simplify taxes and allowances is exactly that: a wish.
But the problem seems greater than this cabinet term. Previous cabinets saw the problems with nitrogen, living, and the complexity of taxes and allowances as well – and let them exist.
Former top official Bernard ter Haar, who held high positions on the Ministries of Finance and Social Affairs, already drew a gloomy conclusion in 2021. “The Dutch government has not achieved anything substantial this century,” he wrote on his personal weblog. The public administration “has been short of for twenty years”.
His pessimism is felt wider. Many entrepreneurs also crave clear political choices. Less than an hour after Geert Wilders crashed the Cabinet Schoof, the VNO-NCW business association responded that it is “urgently” necessary for the Netherlands to “be controlled for a longer period of time by a decisive and stable cabinet.”
What’s going on? Is politics no longer able to solve large issues of our time? And has politics ever been? And how can the manageability of the Netherlands improve?
These questions are extra current now that election programs are again appearing full of decisive language. Parties want to make “sharp” (VVD) and “courageous” (CDA) choices to “get the Netherlands ahead” as soon as possible “(GroenLinks-PvdA).
Interest in Status Quo
Many ambitious plans of parties beaches in the cabinet formation or afterwards, if cabinets will work out their ideas, says Paul ‘t Hart, professor of Public Administration (Utrecht University) and vice -president of the Scientific Council for Government Policy. “Then it becomes concrete and interest groups become active.”
Large and politically controversial reforms often have winners and losers. After all, the existing order is broken, established interests are at stake. Think of the peak loaders in livestock farming, or polluting industrial companies. They can present themselves as a victim and organize resistance. Against change, for the status quo.
Just see it breaking through it as a politician, especially if the resistance also comes from your own party.
That has become more difficult for politicians, says Anchrit Wille, professor of transitions in the public sector (Leiden University). Voters have become more mobile and that makes politicians uncertain. “If they don’t like your reform, you can calve support and you will be gone during the next elections.”
Just look at the last six years: in 2019, Forum for Democracy became the largest party in the provincial elections, in 2023 BBB. Eight months later, in the Lower House elections of 2023, BBB was already much smaller, and PVV and NSC were the big winners. Now the CDA is on the rise and NSC seems to be swept away.
‘Floating’ voters
Periods in which politics implemented many large reforms were around 1900 (general voting, compulsory education, social housing) and around 1960 (AOW, social assistance, WAO). At that time there were much less’ floating ‘voters, says’ t Hart. Political parties were “rooted in social movements from which people derived their entire identity.”
No matter how obvious all those social laws are, at the time, political leaders all had their own ideas about it. The laws came because they made compromises. “Every party could make a huge profit, but also had to leave feathers,” says’ t Hart. “Those leaders went back to their supporters and said: this came out, we have to do it with this.”
“The essence of reforming leadership,” says “t Hart,” is that you have your own supporters in the claw. ” Now it is the other way around: politicians keep a close eye on how citizens think about different topics, helped by the increased number of polls.
Professor Wille should think of former CDA Vice-Prime Minister Wopke Hoekstra in the Rutte IV cabinet. Hoekstra had agreed to a halving of nitrogen emissions in the formation in 2030, but after six months he publicly distanced themselves from it. He had seen how much resistance that intention evoked, also with CDA voters. Wille: “That means that you return to your steps, to prevent political suicide.”
The essence of reforming leadership is that you have your own supporters in the claw
What does not help is the political fragmentation. There are now so many small parties that often four government parties are needed for a majority in the Lower House. More parties in the cabinet also means: a greater chance that reform plans will encounter resistance from at least one of them.
Is the Netherlands becoming more and more steering? That conclusion goes too far. “Sometimes there are periods when decision -making is completely detained, and then suddenly space can arise.”
He mentions the disability benefit WAO. Already in the early eighties there was discussion about its affordability, but nothing changed. “We really needed a crisis for that.”
It came in the early nineties, after Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers had connected his political fate to the rapid rise in the number of disabled people. If there are one million disabled people, he said in 1990, I get up. For example, rising costs and political urgency came together: a year later the third Lubbers cabinet decided to limit the WAO.
‘T Hart now sees the same in the Ministry of Defense. Only now that there is a great urgency cure, the defense spending will go up, and then also with many billions of euros per year. In short: in Dutch politics a sense of inevitability is often needed to make difficult changes.
What also helps: a matter, as it were, depoliticization. Such as the purple cabinets (1994-2002). They moved government tasks to the free market and gave companies more freedom. They presented it as “optimization reforms,” says’ t Hart, and could point abroad: just look, everyone gives the free market ample job.
That also explains why it is so difficult in the Netherlands to translate climate goals into concrete measures. The urgency feeling is low because other countries are also waiting. “Yes, then it will also be stuck in the Netherlands,” says’ t Hart.
Powerless passers -by
This gives together the impression that politicians are powerless passers -by, hostage by voters, spirit of the times and circumstances. Can’t they stand for something themselves and break through all the resistance?
Yes, says’ t Hart, but the political risks can be great. Think of PvdA leader Diederik Samsom at the time of Rutte II. No matter how great the criticism in his party was: he continued to defend the need for heavy cuts in crisis time to put public finances in order.
The cuts came, but at a high political price. In the next parliamentary elections, Samsom lost the Lodewijk Asscher party leader struggle. And the PvdA dropped from 38 to 9 seats, a historic low point.
For ‘t Hart, that illustrates the difficult position of politicians. You don’t want to justify the political future of yourself and your party. “Then you must be very convinced of the absolute importance of the measures you defend.”
The Netherlands Coalitieland
Yet ‘t Hart and Wille want to watch for too much gloom. Has the Dutch government not brought anything substantial for a quarter of a century, as former top official puts Ter Haar? ‘T Hart: “The government has done little big and compelling, that is true. But every day the government delivers quite difficult performance.”
For example, the number of smokers has fallen sharply in the last twenty years, says Wille. “That was a major transition in small steps, by adjusting behavior.”
And former top official Ter Haar has also devised a positive exception to his position since writing his weblog: the ‘Room for the River’ project. This has increased the river basin since 2006, in order to better absorb extremely high and low tide.
The agreement between these positive examples is that they were not very controversial politically. The following applies to controversial reforms: in a democracy it will always be difficult for politicians to implement it, especially in a coalition country like the Netherlands.
These positive examples were politically not seriously controversial
Can you then design a more effective form of democracy? That too has disadvantages, says Wille. Look at the United States, where the president has a lot of power and where Donald Trump is trying to stretch that power even further. “That is decisive,” says Wille. “But I don’t think we want that here.”
What politicians can do more, says’ t Hart, is a clear vision for the future for the Netherlands. “What kind of country do we want to be? Where are we going?” Too often he finds that election programs look like “a shopping list”.
Geert Wilders, says’ t Hart, puts down a clear picture of the future in his own way. An idyllic “ethno-nationalist story”, for which he tweets AI pictures of white, blonde women with blue eyes. “I think it is abject,” says’ t Hart, “but it is a big story about where it should go with the Netherlands.”
It is a shame that other parties are unable to put a clear story about it, says’ t Hart. He points to Helmut Kohl, who is committed to West German Chancellor for a reunification with East Germany. Despite great resistance, he managed it. “Why did that work? Due to romantic stories about that united Germany, about ‘thriving landscapes’. That touched people.”
‘t Hart hopes that Dutch politicians will take an example. “If people have to make sacrifices, they want to know what that contributes to. We need meaning.”