Tamar de Waal: ‘The result of a middle cabinet: just nothing’
Since the elections, it has often been emphasized that the far-right bloc of anti-rule of law parties has not shrunk. The PVV lost eleven seats, but FVD and JA21 won them again. In addition, D66 won the elections (narrowly), but not thanks widely supported concerns about the rule of law. Although I think that Rob Jetten considers the democratic constitutional state of the utmost importance, this is a cause for concern. For few Dutch people, the rule of law really weighed in on their vote choice.
Like columnist Kustaw Bessems in a clear piece in de Volkskrant noted, with the current outcome there are few conceivable coalitions that can stop the slide of the democratic constitutional state. The most obvious option is a middle cabinet, but the risk is that it will be wiped out in subsequent elections. That happened in Biden America after Trump I and also seems to be the fate of Tusk Poland after the PiS period.
Policies of such centrist governments — which are also thwarted where possible by their radical opposition — require too many compromises, have too little ideological color and too little time to bring about social improvements. The result is just nothing. Left-wing and right-wing voters become frustrated, without winning back voters who have drifted away from the rule of law.
The most important task of a new cabinet will be to avert exactly that outcome. In other words, to prevent it from merely being the prelude to a future victory of the radical or even extreme right.
Tamar de Waal is an associate professor at the Amsterdam Law School of the University of Amsterdam.
Léonie de Jonge: ‘The far right not only became bigger, but also more radical’
The PVV lost eleven seats in the House of Representatives elections. In international media, D66’s victory was quickly interpreted as a major blow to the radical right. But that is anything but true. The growth of D66 was not at the expense of the far-right bloc: voter research shows that the new D66 voters mainly came from GroenLinks-PvdA, NSC and VVD.
The PVV still achieved its second best election result ever and narrowly finished as the second party. The PVV’s loss of seats also went hand in hand with significant gains for the extreme right-wing variant Forum for Democracy (from three to seven seats) and the more ‘moderate’ JA21 (from one to nine). Together, PVV, FVD and JA21 won 41 seats – one more than in 2023. If you add BBB and SGP, the parties on the right flank represent about a third of parliament.
Since 2021, the far-right bloc has been a permanent part of the Dutch political landscape. Within this block we see increasing competition and fragmentation. Through this mutual struggle, parties try to overtake each other on the right, especially on their core theme: migration. This dynamic allows JA21 to profile itself as a ‘moderate’ option within the bloc. At the same time, partly due to the growth of FVD, the whole has not only become bigger but also more radical.
This poses a major challenge for the formation – and subsequently for the new cabinet. That will first have to clean up the rubble of the Schoof cabinet. If that does not work, the far right will continue its advance unabated.
Léonie de Jonge is professor of right-wing extremism research at the Eberhard-Karls University in Germany.
René Cuperus: ‘New government must understand breeding ground for populist uprising’
In recent days I have spoken to many international media. They came to the Netherlands with only one question: did you manage to stop Wilders? Has the political center of the Netherlands succeeded in throwing off the yoke of right-wing populism? The answer: yes and no.
Rob Jetten deserves the great honor of having spared us a shame: Wilders, the largest party in the Netherlands, was already quite hysterical, but the largest party again after a completely failed government participation would have been more than embarrassing.
At the same time, the photo finish between D66 and PVV shows how divided and polarized the Netherlands has become. We see a risky fault line in our society: that between an administrative-institutional Netherlands and a more popular Netherlands. Two Netherlands that see each other as a threat. It is the task of a new cabinet to govern those two Netherlands together again.
The new cabinet must combat anti-rule of law and anti-democratic attitudes, but it must also better understand the breeding ground for the populist uprising in all Western democracies. What is the trigger of the push to the nationalist right in prosperous, well-organized societies? Why is abundance accompanied by uneasiness?
We can inaccurately call everything anti-rule of law ‘fascism’, but much of it can be traced back to existential uncertainty about the future. And on a noblesse-oblige problem of the Western elites, who do not fulfill their responsibilities. The political elite does not sufficiently solve social problems. The economic elite does not do enough, but prefers to live a pleasant life. And the cultural elite offers no moral orientation, but loses itself in anti-Western thinking, unhindered by historical awareness. That is also one of the causes of an orphan society adrift.
René Cuperus is a cultural historian and co-author of the Atlas of the Disengaged Netherlands.
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