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Populism in the party system in Germany and the Netherlands

Populist parties have been a part of west European democracies for many years. Some years ago, politicians such as the former Hamburg interior Senator Ronald Schill or the Dutchman Pim Fortuyn attracted a large amount of attention. What are the causes of the different successes and failures for their parties in Germany and in Holland?

The Federal Republic of Germany and her small North Western neighbour have some things in common. Until the Peace of Westphalia they both belonged to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The wars of religion have left their mark on both countries: both the Catholic and the Lutheran churches remain about as strong as each other, even though the latter does have slightly more adherents.

Hamburg's former minister of interior Ronald Schill
Photo: AP

The party systems are similar too: Christian Democrats and Social Democrats battle it out for first place while Liberals, Greens and recently also left-wing socialists are allowed to play a supporting role as possible coalition partners or as smaller competitors. Coalition governments are the norm in both countries and single party governments are the exception: this is doubtless thanks to the system of proportional representation that has been introduced in both countries.

Nonetheless, besides size – Germany is about five times as big as the Netherlands – there are important differences between the two countries. The Kingdom of the Netherlands is not a federal state. Its political history has been substantially calmer than that of Germany; Communist and Nazi parties have always been relatively weak there. This is probably the reason why there has never been any need in the Netherlands for a rule barring access to Parliament for new political parties: a party can get elected to the Lower House (Tweede Kamer) with only 0.7% of the vote (on average about 66,000 voters). In spite of this, in Germany, the Greens and the new left-wing party, Die Linke, have shown that the five per cent hurdle there can be overcome. However, nationalist and right-wing populist parties have not yet succeeded in winning seats in the German Bundestag – they have managed to get elected only to one or two regional parliaments. Similar parties have had hardly any success in the Netherlands in the 20th century either, although their fortunes have improved considerably since 2001. Why is this not the case in the Netherlands' large neighbour? The following paper is an attempt to answer the question, but first we need to clarify what is meant by "populist parties” in order better to compare them with one another.

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