Preaching Politicians
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Preaching Politicians The Development and Relevance of Dutch Small Orthodox Protestant Parties M.D. Appelman 10003305 Research Master Social Sciences dhr. dr. D.J. Bos dhr. prof. dr. W.G.J. Duyvendak 18-08-2017 Amsterdam Abstract Until well into the 1990’s, Small Orthodox Protestant Parties (SOPP’s) in the Netherlands were regarded as politically irrelevant, utterly predictable and even interchangeable, being dubbed the “small Christian right”. In recent years this has changed, however. Since the ChristenUnie (CU) entered government in 2006 and the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP) participated in the so-called “backseat consultations” of 2012, these parties have been closer to political power than ever before. There are also signs of ideological divergence: while the SGP is generally still considered a right-wing Orthodox party, the CU has become more moderate, describing itself as “Christian-social”. This thesis identifies the defining characteristics of both parties – explaining how they differ from mainstream political parties and from one another, and how they developed into the parties they are now – by analyzing historical literature on these parties through the lens of political scientific framework on party typologies. Furthermore, a content analysis of speeches given by the SOPP’s during the Algemene Beschouwingen (General Debate) from 1990-2016 will be conducted, analyzing the most recent developments. It is argued that the SOPP’s once represented clearly demarcated quasi-ethnic social bases in society that provided them with natural electoral support. The CU’s connection to such a natural social base has weakened, however, creating the necessity to seek support from new electoral groups and to distinguish itself politically from other religious parties. The SGP on the other hand shows more signs of continuity, although recent developments might herald similar changes in the future. Key terms: CU; GPV; RPF; SGP; Small Orthodox Protestant Parties; Dutch Politics; Party Typologies; Algemene Beschouwingen; Content Analysis 2 Introduction Dutch politics is changing. For decades, it was known for its political stability, (Andeweg & Irwin, 2014), but now extreme volatility characterizes it. At the 2017 Parliamentary elections, the social-democratic Partij van de Arbeid (Labor Party; PvdA) lost 29 of its 38 seats; the biggest electoral loss ever witnessed in Dutch Parliamentary history (Houten, 2017). For many years the PvdA, the conservative-liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy; VVD), and the Christian-democratic Christen- Democratisch Appèl (Christian Democratic Appeal; CDA) (Andeweg & Irwin, 2014) won most of the votes, but now these parties hold just over 40 percent of the seats. The new government coalition will need at least four parties to reach a majority, a situation not witnessed in the Netherlands for decades. An indirect effect of this increasing volatility and fragmentation is that the Small Orthodox1 Protestant Parties (SOPP’s) – the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (Reformed Political Party; SGP) and the ChristenUnie (ChristianUnion; CU) – have gained manifest political relevance (cf. Sartori, 1976/2005). The CU already showed its relevance in 2006, when it became part of the then government coalition, but the more Orthodox SGP has also become relevant by participating in the so-called “backseat consultations” with prime minister Mark Rutte in 2012 (Visser, 2012) and aiding the former government coalition Rutte II in 2013 when it needed its numbers in the senate to pass the parliamentary budget, resulting in the so-called “autumn agreement” (Vliegenthart, 2013). It is quite a change compared to the 1990s, when the SGP and the predecessors of the CU – the Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond (Reformed Political League; GPV) and the Reformatorisch Politieke Federatie (Reformatory Political Federation; RPF) – were lumped together under the label “small Christian right” and characterized as utterly predictable and relatively powerless. They now do 1 “Orthodox” can be understood as “closely following the established beliefs of a religion” (Merriam-Webster, 2017). In the SOPP abbreviation it will be used to distinguish religious political parties that explicitly use religion as their guiding principles, like the SGP and the CU, from those religious parties that have become more general and secular, like the CDA. It will also be used – cf. Bos (2010) – to contrast a sub-group of Reformed Christians that emphasize their “societal responsibility” (Orthodox Reformed) with a sub-group that emphasizes the inner and personalized experience of the faith (Pietistic Reformed), even though the latter group technically also closely follows the established beliefs of their religion. 3 not only have direct political influence, but are also different ideologically. The SGP is still considered an Orthodox right-wing party, but the CU has become a more environmentally oriented, economically middle-of-the-road party (Hippe & Voerman, 2010). They do no longer fit under one label. Because of their SOPP’s alleged “irrelevance”, political and social scientists tended to leave this subject matter for historians and theologians to research (e.g. Fieret, 1990; Zwemer, 1992; Klei, 2011; Mulligen, 2014b). With their newfound political influence, however, there is an increased urgency to gain insight into their goals and nature. To fully understand them, however, it is first necessary to seek out the factors explaining different trajectories the SOPP’s took since the 1990’s. The main research questions are therefore: 1. Which factors contributed to the different trajectories of the SOPP’s since the 1990s? 2. What are the defining characteristics of the CU and SGP; how do they differ from mainstream political parties, and from one another? For answering these questions, a mixed methods design will be applied. In the Theoretical Framework, scholarly literature on party typologies will be discussed, seeking out the different functions and characteristics that distinguish parties from one another. There will be special attention for the specific nature of Dutch politics and the atypical parties it might produce. Given the limited political and social scientific literature on SOPP’s, historical literature on the histories and development of the SGP and CU – including its predecessors: GPV and RPF – will be analyzed in the Historical Framework through the lens of the content discussed in the Theoretical Framework. To extend the analysis into the present, a content analysis of political speeches held by the SOPP’s during the Algemene Beschouwingen (General Debate) will be covered in the Methods and Results sections. The Discussion section will integrate the historical and content analyses, answering the main research questions. The thesis will end in the Conclusion, summarizing the main findings. 4 Theoretical Framework In the literature on political parties, we can roughly distinguish three ‘families’ of party typologies. The first is based on the genesis and ideological base of political parties, and is heavily inspired by the work of Lipset and Rokkan (1967) on “cleavage theory”. The second is functionalist and focuses on the organizational structure of parties and their relation to civil society. Finally, there is an approach that combines aspects of the other families. They will be discussed consecutively. The chapter ends with some remarks on the specific nature of Dutch politics and the special party types it produces. The First Family: Cleavages and Ideology The first type of typology is based on cleavages, the idea that voters can be divided into oppositional voting blocks. While there were numerous cleavages present in western societies, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) argued that political parties in 20th century Western Europe were the product of four “basic” cleavages. Two emerged due to the process of state centralization: the central elites vs. subjects in the periphery, and the nation-state vs. the church. The others emerged due to the industrial revolution: landed interests vs. industrial entrepreneurship, and capital vs. labor. Lipset and Rokkan (1967) saw the Netherlands as a prime example of institutionalized segmentation based on such cleavages, dividing society amongst religious and economic class lines.2 Von Beyme (1985) elaborated upon this line of thinking by arguing that because these basic cleavages were the same across Western European countries, they should also produce similar types of parties. He classified parties into different Party Families, – Liberals, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, etc. – a now common way to describe and compare parties across countries. Further elaborations in this branch of literature often seek to prove or disprove the emergence or disappearances of specific cleavages. Inglehart (1977), for example, argued that a new cleavage emerged due to a generational distinction between materialist and post-materialist values, leading to the establishment of new party families like the Greens/Environmentalists. More recently, scholars have argued that globalization has caused a new cleavage, dividing society into 2 See Historical Framework: Pillarization 5 those who do and do not benefit from it, explaining i.a. the success of right-wing populist parties (e.g. Kriesi et al., 2005; Milanovic, 2016). This branch of literature has also seen some criticisms, however. Although there is general agreement that social cleavages could once explain a great