In the Netherlands, political parties came into being during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their aim was to represent the interests of particular sections of the population politically. In 1879, members of the Dutch Reformed Church founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), a party which denounced the principles and results of the French Revolution. According to the ARP, state power was derived from God, not from the people. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, another Protestant party and a Catholic party came into being. In the 1960s, the three parties’ electoral losses prompted them to intensify their cooperation; in 1980 they eventually merged into a single party, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). Since then, the CDA has frequently been the largest political party in the parliament. Christian Democrats take the Bible as their source of inspiration. They opt for the shared responsibility for groups (family, social partners) and organizations (municipality, non-governmental organizations) in society.

The Dutch Labour Party (PvdA), which came into being in 1946, stems from the traditional Social Democratic Party, which was founded in 1894 to represent the interests of the working class. In 1946, the Social Democrats tried to stage a break-through in party politics by forming a party that would be able to attract both secular and Christian elements in society. However, the breakthrough did not come about and the Labour Party subsequently manifested itself as a party trying to implement a gradual reform of society. Their key word is solidarity, in this case with the less privileged social classes.

The formation of political parties at the end of the nineteenth century stimulated the liberals too. For the greater part of the century, the liberals – as the main protagonists of individual freedom – were wary of all kinds of party formation. However, they could no longer ignore the winds of change and formed their own political parties. In 1948, conservative-minded liberals formed a new Liberal Party (VVD). Since the 1980s, the liberals have (until very recently) been the third political force in parliament. They try to contain state intervention in the social and economic spheres and to secure the individual freedom of all members of society.

Within and outside the Christian democratic, the social democratic and the liberal movements, there is a broad range of other political parties. Two small parties represent certain segments of Protestant denominations: the Calvinist SGP, an orthodox party promoting an established church in the Netherlands, and the Christian Union, slightly more liberal, but nevertheless convinced of the importance of implementing Christian values in society. The Labour Party has lately been confronted with the massive growth of the competing Socialist Party (SP), which denounces the way in which the Social Democrats reach compromises with other parties on, for example, social and economic topics. The SP, founded in 1972, has Marxist-Leninist roots, but the party cut them off after the fall of international communism at the end of the eighties. Housing and health care are also important issues for the socialists. The party Green Left came into being in 1990 as an amalgamation of small parties consisting of pacifists, radical Catholics, progressive evangelists and communists. Nowadays, Green Left is characterized by its environmental and multicultural profile. Democrats 66 (D66), founded in 1966 and now calling itself social and liberal, has been the strongest advocate of state and electoral reform in the Netherlands. A new political formation is the Freedom Party (PVV), founded in 2006, advocating for reductions on immigration. Finally, the Party for the Animals (PvdD) gained admission to the parliament in 2006 on a platform of animal welfare.

Types of Parties

Dutch political parties can be classified in various ways. A familiar distinction is the one between denominational and nondenominational parties. Denominational parties base their programmes and positions on their religious convictions or the Bible. These include the Christian Democrats and the two small Protestant parties. Non-denominational parties – such as the Liberal Party, the Labour Party, the social-liberal D66, Green Left and the Socialist Party – base their programmes on non-religious convictions.

The left-right classification of Dutch political parties is controversial and sometimes rather unclear. The extent to which a party aims at greater equality of income, knowledge and power in society and the extent to which it is willing to use government policies for this purpose determines its position within this scale. This is mainly a question of socio-economic policies, employment, taxation, incomes and benefits, although it also involves educational policies and the democratization of industry and institutions. Parties in favor of state intervention to achieve greater equality are referred to as ‘left-wing’. Parties that do accept the existing inequalities in income and power as reasonable or inevitable are referred to as ‘right-wing’. All in all, the Dutch parties take the following positions on a left-center-right scale:

Then again, parties are sometimes described as ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative’. A progressive party is reform-minded, while a conservative party wants to keep things as they are. Nowadays, it is becoming harder and harder to use these categories. For example, a right-wing government can implement a large-scale reform of the social security system, while the left-wing opposition parties want to secure the existing system and resist any change.

There is also another way to make a distinction between ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’. Then we refer to the extent to which parties are willing to use the state (government policies) to restrict people’s personal freedom, particularly in moral matters such as homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, censorship, and Sunday observance. Parties that believe in maximum personal freedom are known as progressive; they take the view that the state should not interfere with the way people wish to live their lives and should not patronize them. Seen from this point of view, D66, the Liberal Party, Green Left and the Labour Party are ‘progressive’. The denominational parties – the Christian Democrats and the Protestant parties – are conservative. In their view the government has a duty to uphold Christian values.

Source: The Dutch Political System in a Nutshell