The Netherlands has no populist tradition. After the establishment of the liberal system in the mid-nineteenth century, popular interference remained shielded. There was no jury trial, there were no elected directors and hardly any person-based politics developed. The populism that has grown so much in the past decade, however, draws on another tradition:that of majority thinking, of which Troelstra and Kuyper are the ancestors.
You can't open a newspaper these days without encountering the word populism. It is one of the most commonly used terms in analyzes of contemporary politics in the Netherlands. That's new. It also appeared regularly in the newspapers in the 1990s, but then mainly to indicate phenomena in, for example, Latin America, the former Soviet republics or Eastern Europe. VVD member Frits Bolkestein was sometimes called a populist, but that was because, according to his opponents, he broached the theme of foreigners and Islam in order to gain voter gains.
Populism in a precise sense certainly was not. That only came with Pim Fortuyn, who was immediately called a populist. The 'Fortuyn Revolte' was an enormous shock to Dutch politics, of course because of the murder of the leader, but also because of the size of the movement. At once a party with twenty-six seats entered the House and a whole generation of parliamentary leaders left what was then suddenly called 'old politics'.
This was unprecedented, something completely new, was the first reaction. And at first glance it was. The clumsy reactions of established politicians alone made it clear that politicians were confronted with something unknown.
Indeed, populism in Dutch post-war history must be looked for with a light bulb. In the sixties the former Boerenpartij was populist, but you don't get much further. The left-wing reform of politics of the time was far too cheerful and operated too little from the idea that the common people saw it better than the elite to qualify for this. VVD member Hans Wiegel pursued popular, but not populist politics. Until the arrival of Fortuyn, the taboo on populism (which had arisen after the war because fascists and national socialists had been populists) made a breakthrough of populism impossible.
No popular sovereignty
There has been a non-populist tradition in established Dutch politics since the early nineteenth century. After the French invasion in 1795 put an end to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, there was a short-lived violent political outburst under the new Batavian Republic based on popular sovereignty.
Partly as a reaction to this, the policy of the kingdom from 1813-1815 was entirely thought of from above. No public participation – popular sovereignty was not included in the constitution – and a very administrative conception of politics. Unrest was difficult:King William I described opposition as méchants enfants, naughty children, not a way to take political disagreement seriously.
Of course, this did happen after the constitutional reform of 1848, but always within a strict administrative framework with popular influence that remained rather confined. That had its advantages. There was a relatively liberal regime with a broad elite, and discontent gradually found a place in politics.
Meanwhile, what political scientist Hans Daalder would call a 'regent mentality' (which, incidentally, had little to do with the regents from the Republic) prevailed in the 1960s. No popular participation through jury trials, no elected directors, and limited suffrage until 1917-1919. On the other hand, there was also a politics that was generally not based on personal attractiveness or charisma, a parliament that was not very mobilizing and that mainly had an administrative appearance, and distant administrators.
Chattermakers in parliament
Viewed in this way, the Netherlands had virtually no populism until Fortuyn, but there is another side. On a few occasions there has been fierce populist resistance to existing politics, and that resistance has also had a great effect. The clearest examples of this can be found in the 1930s and at the end of the nineteenth century. Between the First and Second World Wars, the National Socialist Movement (NSB) resisted, just like the communists, the 'elite' of talkers in politics. They were convinced that the elite were doing everything they could to keep the common people out of politics. Broom through, that's what had to be done!
The head of government of those years, Hendrikus Colijn, was an opponent of German National Socialism but not insensitive to the authoritarian and activist Italian fascism. Like the NSB, he did not like the 'talk lecture' as he called the House of Representatives, and he called for action. “Let's stop talking, let's put the rules aside and solve the problems!” Rita Verdonk used to say it and was inspired in her political advertising and rhetoric by the famous election poster of Colijn as 's Lands Stuurman.
But Colijn was far too much of a director and member of an established party, the orthodox-Protestant Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) of Rev. Abraham Kuyper, to be a full populist. In the mid-thirties the NSB was a hype for a while but, like the communist party, it remained a minority that turned against the establishment but remained an outsider.
Voice of the common people
There is something to be said for seeking the greatest wave of populism in modern Dutch politics at the end of the nineteenth century. The liberalism of Thorbecke, who wrote the constitution in 1848, had wanted to separate state and society. Politics had to do no more than set frameworks for a free society and, conversely, that society had to leave politics to the gentlemen in The Hague who were elected once every four years without national campaigns or political parties in our sense.
The new political parties at the end of that century were social movements that operated from within society and wanted to connect state and society. The socialists Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis and later Pieter Jelles Troelstra led the way in this, but also the ARP van Kuyper, which is considered the first modern party. They were 'democrats', in the sense that they were in favor of extending the right to vote, but also in the sense that they wanted to give the common people a voice.
Kuyper spoke of the orthodox Protestant 'little people', the common people that would form the backbone of the nation. It was at least partly a rhetorical construct, but a classic populist theme it was also with the drumming at the neglect of the little man's desires. He also fulfilled almost all the characteristics ascribed to populists, albeit with him that they were linked to a principled neo-Calvinist worldview and a convinced faith. If possible, the socialists turned even more strongly against the liberal "elite"; in their case too, this was linked to a principled ideology, but populism was part of it as a matter of course.
In Kuyper's case, you could say that populism distinguished him from the earlier orthodox Protestant leader Willem Groen van Prinsterer. He remained close to Thorbecke, with whom he had also been friends, in his view of how to conduct politics. Undeniably, Kuyper was also more democrat than Groen, if this means that the voice of the common people must be heard and that the politician must also address that people. Groen wrote illegible speeches and did not want to set up organizations, Kuyper was a journalist and started one organization after the other.
Democracy:two faces
The interesting and at the same time perhaps disturbing is that in this crucial initial phase democracy and populism were inextricably linked. The representative system as we know it today in fact goes back to two traditions, that of the limited representation with the rule of law that liberalism advocated, and that of 'democracy' in the sense of direct popular participation, which leads through the socialists back to the French Revolution in 1789 but also has another root through the Protestants. What was referred to as democracy around 1900 would often be described as populism today. It is also no wonder that the modern concept of populism arose then, not in the Netherlands, by the way, but in a number of other countries.
Political scientist Margaret Canovan writes in an article on "The Two Faces of Democracy":the government, the order of things on the one hand, and the dream, the longing for a new, perfect world on the other. Populism is then part of the dream. A second contradiction ingrained in the modern concept of democracy is perhaps more tragic. Our democracy is actually a liberal democracy, a combination of the rule of law and protection of minorities on the one hand with majority thinking and the people decide on the other.
After the Second World War there was little doubt about the way in which parliamentary democracy should be interpreted and the tension between the rule of law and majority seemed to have disappeared. It is now clear that this tension is still there, and that it is also part of the essence of modern democracy. It is therefore logical that there will always be criticism of democracy. That there is criticism of the administrators or 'regents' is therefore nothing special. Outsiders will always blame insiders in democracy for complacency (sticking to the plush), and insiders will almost always blame outsiders for lack of decency and stirring up unrest.
Wilders
However, the case is now being sharpened, partly due to the tone of the criticism. It is partly the tone that turns outsiders into successful populists. Geert Wilders and his followers are characterized by their anger, unlike Fortuyn, for example.
When the camera is off, Wilders can be an amiable man, but when it's turned, his face looks like thunder. Due to its exceptional nature in the Netherlands and its uncompromising polarization, a great deal of attention is paid to the form of the commentary, which is very successful for that reason alone.
The relatively great success of populism from an international perspective can partly be explained by the unaccustomedness of Dutch politics to the phenomenon, partly by the tendency of Dutch society to walk unitedly in one direction for a while, but then suddenly in another direction. (as in the late 1960s), partly from the radical decline of the old major parties and the parallel rise of the floating voter. These things amplify the effect of populism.
In response, the reflex of pacification in the Dutch consensus democracy is not sufficient, and in general the tension in democracy cannot be resolved with it. If democracy puts all the cards on preserving the rule of law, it threatens to neglect the wishes of the population and incurs the accusation of a regent mentality; if, on the other hand, it only wants to bet on what the majority wants, the dictatorship of that majority threatens and populism has free rein. It is difficult to navigate between regent mentality and populism, but that is what modern democracy should do.