From ‘Red and Black' to ‘Red and Blue'. Twenty-Five Years of Dutch Politics

The first test of the new 'purple' coalition's popularity in the Netherlands came with the provincial elections in March 1995. They turned out very badly for the CDA and PVDA.To everyones surprise it was the VVD, which had taken such risks in cooperating with the coalition, which gained most, doing particularly well in the cities. The question is, though, whether the liberal victory of March 1995 has done anything to improve the stability of the 'purple' coalition; the ‘blue' element was considerably better at getting through to the voters than the ‘red', despite the personal popularity of the social democrat Prime Minister, Wim Kok. The results of the 1994 general election suggested that the PVDA was on its way back after the low point of the early nineties; a year later its situation proved to be just as grave as before. The prospects are not bright; not for Dutch social democracy, but not for the ‘red-blue' coalition either.