Ren? Cuperus on the dramatic comeback of the Dutch Labour party in last month?s general election
The story of the Dutch general election last month is a tale in two dramatic chapters. The first, of polls predicting a historic collapse of the political centre, and the second of the campaign itself, in which one pillar of the political centre ? the Dutch Labour party, the PvdA ? overcame an existential threat of defeat.
The PvdA risked being overtaken by its main competitor, the deradicalised Socialist party. That would have been a disaster for the PvdA, standard-bearer of Dutch social democracy for more than 100 years. August polls pointed to a neck-and-neck contest between the anti-neoliberal, Eurosceptic Socialists and the conservative-liberal party of incumbent premier Mark Rutte, the VVD.
But in the event the dynamics of daily polling, television debates and social media pressure produced a two-horse race never seen before in Dutch politics. This was in part due to ?comeback kid? PvdA leader Diederik Samsom who surprised everyone with his strong performances in the debates by telling ?the honest, complex, hard story? about the dilemmas the Netherlands is facing, from the euro crisis, to demographic shifts and the cost-of-care explosion.
Emile Roemer, his Socialist counterpart, performed badly and failed the test. In the last week of the campaign this drove strategic voting to the max and ate away at smaller parties? vote share. The campaign again revealed the extreme volatility of the Dutch voter: up to two days before the election some 40 per cent of the electorate was reported not to know who to vote for. On polling day, the Socialists retained their 15 seats; the leftwing party GroenLinks lost seven of its 10 seats; the far-right Freedom party dropped nine to 15. The VVD ended up with 41 seats and Labour with 38.
This election was not so much a referendum on Europe, but focused on the type of European crisis management and policy choices needed to reduce the deficit and get the economy back on track, as well as the future of the welfare state. Within the limits of this broad technocratic financial consensus, the choice that emerged was either to stay on the conservative-liberal track or to switch to the social democratic one. But by backing the main two centrist parties, the Dutch opted for both alike and signalled the pragmatic embrace of a more pro-European position.
The Netherlands has become a laboratory of electoral volatility, political fragmentation and the rise of populism. Under the pressures of globalisation, detraditionalisation and post-industrialism, the postwar stability of the Christian democratic and social democratic pillars of the political system eroded. New political entrepreneurs, exploiting the tensions and fears of a changing society, jumped into the political vacuum. Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders became household names even beyond our borders in the debate about the vulnerability of European politics.
Some now speak of the end of the populist era which was heralded by Fortuyn?s rise, and which was blamed by some on the third way-esque purple coalition of Wim Kok which blurred the left-right divide. Now that era may end with a new purple coalition as the PvdA and the VVD looks set to go into government together. Time will tell if it presages a wider return of the European voter to traditional parties.
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Ren? Cuperus is senior research fellow at the Wiardi Beckman Foundation. This article first apeared on www.policy-network.net
Geert Wilders, PvdA, the Netherlands
Source: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/28/the-return-of-the-political-centre/
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