About thirteen to fourteen years ago, I was working my way through a brief Hayek phase, and I penned a road-to-serfdom piece (in Dutch) in which Geert Wilders figured as the symptom and effect of the Dutch corruption of the rule of law. I couldn’t get it published so my late friend, Arthur Wijnschenk, put it online and advertised on google. (It will probably be my most widely read piece.) Eventually he had to take it down because the clicks were costing him a fortune. (I also got my first taste of rather scary anonymous mail.)
He then talked his friend, Brian Gross, into translating it into English. I published it at NewAPPS when it still had fifty daily readers (here). It’s not especially well written or clear to people unfamiliar with then Dutch political life. But the piece has held up remarkably well.
Then around 2011 I was invited to speak at a Tufts alumni event at Talloires in the French alps. I met David Art there and he told me about the book he was about to publish, Inside the radical right: The development of anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe. He convinced me that any party that managed to combine anti-immigration sentiment and defend the welfare state could appeal to about 35% voters many of which with authoritarian leaning sensibilities. A few years later, when I moved to Amsterdam, I learned that my colleagues in comparative politics — including Sarah de Lange (who has co-authored with Art) — had already reached very similar conclusions.
The Dutch have a very pure representational parliament with low thresholds. In the past that 35% was distributed across several parties, including some on the far left. But increasingly they were sorting to the right. But the far right could not capture all of these votes because centrist parties had convinced the electorate they would not create coalitions with them (after a failed experiment in 2010-2012). Yesterday, as I more or less predicted (here), Wilders has captured ca 25% of the vote. I won’t repeat here yesterday’s analysis in predicting this outcome and so I won’t rehash the particular strategic/campaign blunders that led here.
In addition to his very explicit anti-immigration stance, Wilders won, in part, because he clearly promoted accessibility in health care. The Dutch have a mixed public-private health care system. Health insurance is mandatory, but the first €385 health costs are paid by the patient. Since in Holland, basic health care is relatively cheap (fees are capped), it takes quite a few visits to a physician or a pharmacy to ‘begin’ insurance coverage. (As somebody struggling with chronic illness, this is something you notice.)
Many lower income folk find this an added hardship, especially in a period where social security and welfare has been eroded by inflation. A decade ago, I suggested means-testing this ‘personal risk’ (and phasing it out for poor people). Since the money involved is not much, his would be coalition partners (which are fiscally and economically more conservative) may well give him a clear policy victory on this issue.
Going forward, the balance of power in parliament is rather rightwing. So Wilders has a number of options to get to a majority of 76. If he promises to abide by the constitution, as he did in his campaign victory speech, he should be able to form a coalition that will be even more restrictive on migration and refugee issues (and try to push the EU in that direction), that will aim to help Dutch farmers evade environmental restrictions (or generously buy them out), that will cut the remaining arts subsidies, that will attack and cut funding for universities (while promoting Dutch as the language of instruction), and that will, of course, be antimuslim in its tenor (think of delaying building/school permits for mosques, etc.) During the campaign Wilders insisted that while deislamization is part of the DNA of the party he has other priorities now.
Wilders’ political background is on the economic right (he was a MP for the VVD back in the day). So, he won’t challenge Holland’s historic free/quasi mercantile trade policies. This will make him attractive to the more centrist, pro-business parties. But as leader of the PVV he has drifted toward economic nationalism and support of the welfare state (especially pensioners). And so if and when the Dutch economy requires very challenging fiscal choices any coalition government he will put together will have incompatible commitments. (This is what caused the breakdown of cooperation in 2012.) There are also real disagreements over Ukraine lurking in the background.
Unfortunately, some very big policy challenges — pertaining to the climate crisis and the housing market — will be postponed or will be handled in cosmetic fashion. Since the Dutch population is greying, and the welfare state getting more expensive, it will be impossible to maintain economic growth and the welfare state without immigrants. Wilders’ policies will lay the foundations for its own eventual self-undermining.
Another time-bomb under any government led by Wilders is Wilders’ inexperience in collegial governance. (He is the longest serving MP, so it’s not as if he lacks understanding of politics.) For twenty years his party has been a one-man show (literally—it has no members). Given that at least two of his likely coalition partners (NCS and BBB) will also lack experience with government portfolios, Wilders and his team will face enormously steep learning curves in handling the work-flow and responsibilities of being in and sharing responsibility of power.
Eric Schleisser observes the political reality underlying the outcome of the Dutch election. Around 35 per cent of the Dutch electorate has always been willing to vote for a far-right candidate. As Trump has shown, that number is at least as high in the US (even if some who vote Republican supported Trump unwillingly). I've always thought that it's more like 25 per cent in Australia, as evidenced by the various occasions when far-right parties have surged.
The other thing that's crucial is the breakdown of hard neoliberal parties, like that of the outgoing Dutch PM Rutte.
I had a go at all of this a while back https://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/29/the-three-party-system
What are the prospects for a grand coalition of the next three parties?