What does it mean that the Dutch Government collapsed?
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The Dutch government consists of a coalition of different political parties working together. If there are issues they do not agree on, they have to work to find a solution that is agreeable to all parties.
In this case, the issue was immigration. The prime minister proposed restrictions on uniting families, which the Christian party did not agree with and neither was willing to budge. So, the cabinet fell.
The government before this also fell. It just means new elections wil be held and a new government wil be formed.
The Dutch cabinet consists of ministers and state secretaries of different political parties. On to the issue of immigration it turned out that the political parties could no longer find common ground. Therefore their cooperation ceased. That is what is meant by collapse.
Now there will be new elections organised for later this year. In the meantime the ministers of some of these parties will continue to cooperate, but in a more restrictive function, which is called a demissionary status. It means they can no longer implement new policies and laws, only continue with the old ones or act during acute crises.
They will continue in this caretaker capacity until a new cabinet can be installed. A new cabinet is formed during the formation process after elections are held, but this process can take quite a while. Essentially it means that certain political parties form a new coalition and decide what their common plan is and who gets which ministerial position.
A government is typically made up of members of an assembly or parliament and needs to have “the confidence of the house” – in other words, more than half of the votes members cast on important legislation such as a budget.
In the case of the Netherlands there was a coalition government; no one party had a majority of the seats (unlike e.g. the United Kingdom) so the government was reliant on all the parties in that coalition supporting its agreed programme. Some of the parties and members withdrew their support over immigration; as a result the government can no longer win key votes and therefore can no longer govern: it “collapsed”.
Has there even been a dutch government since the ’90s that managed to avoid a collapse over one issue or another?
Parliamentary systems (like the Dutch have) of government require at least 51% of the population to vote for them.
If one specific party gets 51%, they can do as they please.
On the other hand, if no one gets 51%, then two or more parties can work together to form a government assuming at least 51% of the population collectively voted for those parties.
In this case, the government of the Dutch was a coalition (that together received more than 51% of the vote of the last election) that included the Christian party. Without the Christian party there would be less than 51% of the vote, and thus the government would be illegitimate.
Even though the Christian party was a minority of the ruling party, without their support there would not be the 51% required to form a government.
So when the ruling party proposed changes to a hot-button issue (immigration) that the Christian party disagreed with, when they could not reach a compromise the Christian party essentially withdrew from the coalition that formed a government out of 51%+ of the voters, and thus the ruling party no longer represented a majority of the country, and thus it was no longer a government (aka it collapsed).
The same party can still be a majority of the next government, but they might need to make different alliances to reach the 51% mark if they want to enact any substantive legislation on an issue like immigration.
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The government is appointed by parlaiment, and you need the majority of the parlaiment to agree. It is straightforward if a single party has that majority, but if you have many smaller parties and none individually have enough votes, then some parties need to collaborate and form a coalition to have enough votes.
But what happens if one of those coalition partners decides the agreement doesn’t suit them anymore? Well, the majority of parlaiment can remove the government just the same. There is no need to wait until the end of term, and for opposition, that is a much easier agreement to come to.
It’s pretty common for governments to collapse like that. Sometimes, it results in a new and different coalition forming a new government, and sometimes it means snap elections if a new coalition can’t be agreed on.
The Netherlands has a Parliamentary system of Government. This means a government “collapsing” is not like the country or whole system collapsing. It’s actually quite normal. It simply means there’s going to eventually be a change in administration via a new election.
In the Netherlands, Members of Parliament (MPs) make the laws, but these Members also decide (and can fire) who will administer the laws, known as the Government.
The Netherlands has two Houses of Parliament, but only their Lower House has a say in who makes up the Government.
It’s like if Congress in the US (specifically the House of Representatives) appointed the President from among their members and also could fire them at any time. The President would always need to have a majority of votes of Members in the House to keep in office.
In the Netherlands Parliament, no party usually has a majority of MPs, thanks to an electoral system that gives parties MPs based on their share of the overall vote rather than who wins in specific districts. Several parties had to come to an agreement to share power to secure thr votes of a majority of MPs, so they could then legally choose who would make up the Government.
Those parties have now disagreed on a key issue, which is so important that they are willing to split the coalition up, and now a new Government needs to be formed through a new election to break the deadlock.
(Technically, it’s the Dutch Crown who appoints and fires the government but they have very little discretionary power and the above way is the practical, legal and conventional way that appointment is effected.)
TL;DR: Dutch Government collapsing simply means those Members of Parliament who had agreed to support each other to have a majority of votes in Parliament no longer support each other.
It means the current government does not find agreement on the migration topic.
Sadly the reality is that BBB will get a lot of votes and BBB with VVD (possibly still having Rutten as prime minister) the government will slide right and maybe agreeing to the terms might have been the better option.
the simplest explanation is that the media are using the wrong words and terminology to explain what happened.
Simplest answer = they are going to have an election.
Collapse is deliberately a US centric way of sensationalising a totally normal occurrence for parliamentary democracy. From the American perspective it’s disastrous for a government to “collapse” but this is 100% built in normal thing for coalition governments to do. It happens all the time and won’t lead to looting, the purge or a breakdown of Dutch society. it just leads to annoying election adds and blowhards telling you who is to blame for the problems you face.
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