There are two trucks along the provincial road between Slagharen and Harderberg in Overijssel. “Mark said it himself,” the first car reads in large letters. “Only a small group ruins it for the rest”, the other reads, with large photos of politicians such as Sigrid Kaag, Mark Rutte and Jesse Klaver. They have all received a Pinocchio. A passing passenger car honks. The driver raises his thumb.
Rarely has regional and political division in the Netherlands been so visible as this summer. You can see it in the villages where almost every house has an inverted Dutch flag or farmer’s handkerchief. And you hear it in conversations at kitchen tables, on farms, at the front door, the further from the Randstad, the more fanatical: we’re fed up.
Twenty years after the Fortuynist uprising, a new wave of unease is sweeping the country. At that time it mainly took place in the old quarters of the big cities. Now on highways and farmyards, in villages and towns.
The nitrogen crisis has been raising dormant feelings of regional resentment for some time now. “It’s not just about nitrogen and what percentage the livestock should be reduced,” says Groningen professor and VVD senator Caspar van den Berg, who has been researching regional inequality in the Netherlands for years. “It’s about a wider political-cultural divide. In the rural areas or edges of the country, people feel less and less connected to the other part of the Netherlands. Particularly with the economic and political heart, where the tone is set. In many areas, people are less and less recognizing that.”
These differences are not just emotional. The gap between the successful center, with more cosmopolitan, highly educated, wealthier residents, and the periphery, with increasingly low-educated, low-paid, more traditionally living citizens is widening. For example, between 2000 and 2016, GDP per capita in the Amsterdam region increased by 29,000 euros (from 47,000 to 76,000 euros). In East Groningen, the growth was only 7,000 euros (from 15,000 to 22,000 euros).
Prosperity rises, gap grows
In the most prosperous regions of the Netherlands, trust in government and politics is much higher than in the underprivileged regions, write electoral geographer Josse de Voogd and publicist René Cuperus in their published earlier this year Atlas of the Netherlands Dropped Out. In those regions, such as East Groningen, Drenthe and South Limburg, people are much unhealthier and more unhappy. There is more social assistance and higher unemployment. There is less voting, and populist parties score better.
The greater the distance from the Randstad, the more political dissatisfaction. Political opinion poll shows that regional frustration is great in Drenthe, Friesland, Limburg, Zeeland and Groningen. Broad majorities agree with statements that ‘politicians in The Hague are not interested in my region’ and that the government ‘has done too little to improve the economic situation in my region’. Less than half think so in the Randstad provinces.
Education level also plays a role. Highly educated people move to the city, in the regions it is mainly the less educated who stay behind. They are less well represented. The preferences of the highly educated are reflected in government policy for 94 percent, those of the lower educated for 54 percent, according to research by political scientist Wouter Schakel.
Those deep rifts can erode politics as a common space in which social conflicts are fought and pacified. “Social reality shows that parliamentary democracy does not work equally well for everyone at the moment and that citizens for whom democracy works less well are at risk of losing out on politics or have already dropped out,” the state committee on the parliamentary system warned in 2019. .
The peasant protests, supported by many more people than just farmers themselves, therefore appear to be “revenge for the places that no longer matter,” as economic geographer Andrés Rodríguez-Pose calls regional political resistance.
City region or the periphery
“The facilities in those areas are declining,” says Van den Berg. “Public transport is declining, libraries are closing, care is becoming less easily accessible.” That is the result of political choices, journalist Floor Milikowski shows in her book A small country with far-flung corners. From the 1980s, under the motto ‘Don’t back the losers, but pick the winners’ consciously focus on strengthening the promising regions at the expense of the periphery. With success: urban regions around Amsterdam and Utrecht are flourishing. But the downside, writes Milikowski, is that the regions lagged further behind.
In the aftermath of the populist breakthrough of 2002, unease about this has long remained in the background. The parties mainly focused on dissatisfaction with migration and multiculturalism. “While the unease has been growing mainly on the edges of the country for ten years now,” says Van den Berg. These are also the regions where the CDA is steadily collapsing, while between 2002 and 2010 this party was still the largest in the Netherlands. The BBB of Caroline van der Plas mobilizes that regional discontent: in polls the party is growing strongly.
Just ‘supporting the guts’ does not solve regional resentment, says Van den Berg. “Politics should ask themselves: what substantive challenges are we facing? It’s about spatial planning issues, about public facilities.” In his opinion, citizens and administrators in regions are well aware that the major transitions involving nitrogen, climate and agriculture require major interventions in their environment – while the political desire to do so mainly comes from voters from the center. Van den Berg: “They are concerned that their area and spatial quality will be sacrificed and that they will see little in return. The Hague must find a much better answer to that.”
For the time being, it remains silent in The Hague – both about those bigger questions and about the increasingly fierce farmers’ protests.
Police chief Willem Woelders called this week’s blockades “crimes that carry years of prison”. When five tractors block the Rotterdam Coolsingel on Thursday evening and farmers hang upside-down flags on lampposts, police officers mainly watch. Why? That, says one of them, “is decided from above.” The next morning, when the Coolsingel is preparing for the multicultural Summer Carnival, the flags are still there.
Profile Van der Wal page 10-11
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 30 July 2022