The Netherlands: Playing with Fire? Dutch Political Parties Between Reluctant and Pragmatic Pro-Europeanism

Author(s):  
Maurits J. Meijers ◽  
Lars Stevenson ◽  
Adriaan Schout
1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1067-1084 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Bone

Last September 29th, with over forty million voters eligible, Indonesia initiated its first parliamentary election since independence. Although the election of the 260-member, unicameral Parliament concluded November 29th, December 15th sees the voters again casting their ballots—this time for a 520-member constituent assembly charged with drafting Indonesia's first permanent constitution.The struggle to carry out elections has been a difficult and protracted one. It has required a decade of strenuous effort characterized by armed struggle, domestic insecurity, shortages of trained personnel and equipment, problems of communication between the nation's hundreds of islands scattered over 3,000 miles from east to west, an overwhelmingly illiterate electorate and, recently at least, reluctance on the part of certain influential groups to hasten matters.Whatever may be the outcome, the intent to hold elections has been present ever since the Indonesian Republic proclaimed its independence from the Netherlands on August 17, 1945. In a decree issued on November 3, 1945, for example, the Government of the Indonesian Republic avowed its intent to execute “the elections for members of the peoples' representative bodies in the month of January, 1946.” The decree in question was issued for the unique purpose of urging the formation of political parties.


Author(s):  
O. Morhuniuk

An article is devoted to the analysis of the functions and formats of political parties in consociational democracies. In particular, it is defined that parties that represent the interests of certain subcultures in society and that reach a consensus among themselves at the level of political agreements are called segmental. At the same time, parties that encapsulate different subgroups of the society that cooperate inside the party within main features of the consociational theory (grand coalition, mutual veto, proportionality in representations, and independence of segments or society subcultures) are called consociational. The theory of consociationalism has received a wide range of theoretical additions and criticism from political scientists over the past fifty years. And while political parties should have been, by definition, one of the key aspects of research within such democratic regimes (parties are part of large coalitions and agents of representation of certain subcultures), there is very scarce number of literature that focuses on this aspect. Therefore, the presented article provides a description of the functions of political parties that could be observed as inside their subcultures as well as in interaction with other segmental parties. Based on the experience of two European countries in the period of “classical” consociationalism (Belgium and the Netherlands), we explain the functions of the parties we have defined in such societies with examples of relevant consociational practices in them. Simultaneously with the analysis of segmental parties, the article also offers the characteristics of consociational parties. The emergence of such parties has its own institutional and historical features. The way of further development of the party system and the level of preservation of consociational practices makes it possible to understand the nature of changes in the societies. Similarly, the analysis of the forms of party competition and interaction between segmental parties makes it possible to outline the forms of those consociational changes that are taking place in the research countries.


2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-399
Author(s):  
Pieter Emmer

In spite of the fact that negotiations have been going on for years, the chances that Turkey will eventually become a full member of the European Union are slim. At present, a political majority among the EU-member states headed by Germany seems to oppose Turkey entering the EU. In the Netherlands, however, most political parties are still in favour of Turkey's membership. That difference coincides with the difference in the position of Turkish immigrants in German and Dutch societies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wandi Bruine de Bruin ◽  
Mirta Galesic ◽  
Rasmus A. Bååth ◽  
Jochem de Bresser ◽  
Lars Hall ◽  
...  

Traditionally, election polls have asked for participants’ own voting intentions. In Nature HumanBehaviour, we reported that we could improve predictions of the 2016 US and 2017 Frenchpresidential elections by asking participants how they thought their social circles would vote. Apotential concern is that the social circle question might predict less well in elections with largernumbers of political options, because it becomes harder to keep track of how social contacts planto vote. However, we have now found that the social circle question even performs better thanthe own intention question, in predictions of two elections with many political parties: The Netherlands’2017 general election and the Swedish 2018 general election.


2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn van Kessel

This article assesses the electoral performance of populist parties in three European countries: the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. In explaining the electoral performance of the populist parties in the three countries, the article considers the agency of political parties in particular. More specifically, it examines the responsiveness of established parties and the credibility of the populist parties. Whereas the agency of populist parties, or other radical outsiders, has often been overlooked in previous comparative studies, this article argues that the credibility of the populist parties themselves plays a crucial role in understanding their electoral success and failure.


1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Brown

Comparatively little of a scholarly nature has been written about Indonesian trade unions, particularly on the two decades from 1945 to 1965 when, like the political parties to which so many of them were affiliated, the unions had their heyday. This paper focuses on the development of trade unions in one specific industry: refined sugar production. The period to be examined—1945 to 1949—runs from the proclamation of Indonesian independence by Sukarno and Hatta, through the revolution fought against the returning Dutch, to December 1949 when the Netherlands finally acknowledged Indonesian independence. It was during this period that the major post-war sugar industry unions were established. The circumstances surrounding the establishment of these unions will be examined, along with their leaders and members, ideological leanings and political and industrial objectives.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
Boris Guseletov

The article examines the results of the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, held on March 15-17, 2021. It compares the results of the leading political parties in the elections of 2017 and 2021, and describes all the leading Dutch political parties that were represented in parliament in the period from 2017 to 2021. The results of the activities of the government headed by the leader of the “People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy” M. Rutte, formed following the results of the 2017 elections, are presented. The reasons for the resignation of this government, which took place on the eve of the elections, and its impact on the course of the election campaign are revealed. It was noted how the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s actions to overcome its consequences affected the course and results of the election campaign. The activity of the main opposition parties in this country is evaluated: the right-wing Eurosceptic Freedom Party of Wilders, the center-left Labor Party and others. The course of the election campaign and its main topics, as well as the new political parties that were elected to the parliament as a result of these elections, are considered. The positions of the country’s leading political parties on their possible participation in the new government coalition are shown. The state of Russian-Dutch relations is analyzed. A forecast is given of how the election results will affect the formation of the new government of this country and the political, trade and economic relations between Russia and the Netherlands.


Author(s):  
Kees Aarts ◽  
Maarten Arentsen

Nuclear power accounts for a low share only of electricity generation in the Netherlands. Plans for further expansion came to a halt due to a high-intensity nuclear energy debate and the Chernobyl accident. After a short resurgence in the early 2000s, political parties and voters shifted towards the anti-nuclear position after the Fukushima disaster. The chapter underlines the importance of path dependency in energy policy and concludes that government policies in consensus democracies with many political parties and coalition government are relatively unresponsive to public opinion and changes in the electoral performance of parties, because there is continuity in parts of the government’s composition in most cases.


2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Boogers ◽  
Gerrit Voerman

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swen Hutter ◽  
Rens Vliegenthart

This article addresses the questions of whether and why political parties respond to media-covered street protests. To do so, it adopts an agenda-setting approach and traces issue attention in protest politics and parliament over several years in four West European countries (France, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The article innovates in two ways. First, it does not treat the parties in parliament as a unitary actor but focuses on the responses of single parties. Second, partisan characteristics are introduced that might condition the effect of protest on parliamentary activity. More precisely, it assesses the explanatory power of ideological factors (left-right orientation and radicalism) and other factors related to issue competition between parties (opposition status, issue ownership and contagion). The results show that parties do respond to street protests in the news, and they are more likely to respond if they are in opposition and if their competitors have reacted to the issue.


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