We live in times characterised by extreme polarisation. Reflecting this, the overlap between the right and left wing politics has diminished to become negligible. The practical middle has become vanishingly small.
In this context, Simon Kuper has a fascinating article on Dutch politics as the country goes into its general elections this week. Kuper predicts that the elections will produce a "centre-right coalition led by the rightwing liberals VVD and the more centrist Nieuw Sociaal Contract". The description of VVD as a "rightwing liberal" party is interesting.
This is a nice description of Dutch politics.
The Dutch don’t do wild political leaps, not like certain countries I could mention. The mission of every Dutch coalition is to make boring, technocratic compromises.
If only politics, like a lot of other things in life today, were more boring!
This is a fascinating description of the a la carte choice facing Dutch voters,
Dutch politics, because it’s like a supermarket of almost perfect voter choice, is a lead indicator of where other European voters are headed. To see the Netherlands is to see a broader political future, notably for the right. Most Dutch voters binned party loyalty decades ago, after secularisation freed people from voting for religious parties. Elections are no longer about tribal identity, but a ruthless shopping around for the party that caters to their latest needs. That encourages political entrepreneurs to start new parties. The Nieuw Sociaal Contract was founded in August by former Christian Democrat Pieter Omtzigt. The pro-farmers movement BBB emerged in 2019, the co-creation of a communications firm. Proportional representation means there’s a place for everyone. There are 26 parties in this election, catering to some very niche tastes; Party for the Animals is comparatively mainstream... Far-right parties are on the margins of the Dutch picture. Since the far right emerged in 2001, it has spent a total of 87 days in government. Its combined vote in any parliamentary election has never beaten 20 per cent and won’t this time. Rather, the energy of Dutch politics is elsewhere: in the emergence of a new right that is both post-Trumpian and post-Thatcherite.
The dominant campaign themes sit at the centre and voice moderation and balance,
Omtzigt has introduced a new Dutch political keyword, bestaanszekerheid, which literally means “certainty of existence”. The word encompasses a range of issues, from incomes to the nightmare of finding a home in an overpopulated country that keeps getting fuller. Bestaanszekerheid captures the widespread desire for a big state that looks after citizens. So the Dutch right has de-emphasised its traditional promises of lower taxes and smaller government. The campaign’s other keyword is migratie. Cutting migration is the last old-style rightist offering. The VVD and NSC are pushing the issue, but without making it into a culture war... In short, anti-migration policies — which are shared, in moderated form, by the Dutch left — are couched in pragmatic rather than rabid language. The same goes for the right’s tepid Euroscepticism, or its polite reluctance to do much about carbon emissions. There’s no room in Dutch governments for Trumpian conspiracy-theorists who deny climate change or cheerlead for Vladimir Putin.
It helps that the Party leaders or their families combine Dutch and immigrant ancestries. Kuper writes that the Dutch may be at the vanguard of European politics,
The best-selling items in today’s Dutch political supermarket offer a preview of a new European right: quieter, saner, big-state, resigned to membership of the EU, but still anti-migration. This is the place where Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France and their new would-be counterpart Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany are converging. The Netherlands just gets there first.
Polarisation drives parties to their ideological extremities, thereby vacating the middle-ground. In our times, the middle ground demands a recalibration to the centre on areas like roles of the government and the private sector, anti-trust, immigration, free-trade, social protection, public goods provisioning, financial markets and cross-border capital flows, business concentration and firm size etc. I have blogged about it here and here, and pointed to 25 areas for a recalibration of the prevailing conventional wisdom.
Dutch politics may have pointers to the synthesis between conventional parties and populist backlash.
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