The fragmentation of the political landscape does not stop – see the elections last week – and what is striking are the resigned reactions. After an election night like this you will never see an interviewer who says to a politician: and what are you doing about the fragmentation?
The transition is also great. Political scientists have long been putting things into perspective. Fragmentation was typically Dutch, you heard. They emphasized the benefits: more trust in democracy, better control of power. Now we know better. Small fractions often do not have the time for thorough checks. Larger political groups have become so small that they also miss out on basic parliamentary work. And the weaker the parliamentary control, the weaker the government ultimately becomes.
The fragmentation exploded relatively quickly. Ten years ago, in 2012, the House of Representatives still had eleven factions, and five years ago, in 2017, thirteen, after the inevitable split in the Volt fraction, there will be twenty. One record since the introduction of universal suffrage. And now that the people’s parties CDA and PvdA are barely recovering from previous blows, and the VVD relies almost entirely on Prime Minister Rutte, you can argue that the end is not in sight.
Just imagine: after two years of corona, followed by war in Europe, the country faces large-scale refugee shelters and economic setbacks, while the system is being weakened by fragmentation. Then you think: where is the debate?
Possible solutions have already been devised. For example, an electoral threshold, although political scientists show that the advantages are limited and the disadvantages large. You can also think of an elected formateur (in fact: an elected prime minister). In the end, two candidates face each other, parties must nominate their favourite, so that clarity is also created about coalition preferences before the elections. The downside: the party landscape is torn into two blocks, with sharpened polarization as a by-product.
And there is the option of party mergers, provided they lead to such strong blocs (for example: VVD-D66 or D66-PvdA-GroenLinks) that it creates a concentration wave: other parties sympathizing with each other also feel compelled to cooperate or merge. Politicians in The Hague are rarely enthusiastic about this, but they often forget that their parties (VVD, PvdA, CDA, GroenLinks, CU, etc.) are already merging parties themselves.
In any case, the pace of fragmentation is suddenly so high that waiting is no longer an option. In a war, domestic adversity can also stimulate extremist affiliations. So indeed: politicians cannot be asked often enough about their contribution to the fragmentation. (And voters too, for that matter.)
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 22, 2022