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Social-liberalism, pragmatism
and radical democratisation:
the D66-debate
by Dennis Hesseling and Herman Beun
(published in: Sven Gatz en Patrick Stouthuysen (ed.) - Een Vierde
Weg? Links-liberalisme als traditie en als oriëntatiepunt, VUBPress,
2001)
D66 causes Commotion
The Netherlands, March 1998. In the municipal council elections,
Democrats 66 (D66) lost more than half of its seats. The party had
not succeeded in taking advantage of the popularity of the
"purple" cabinet, which its leader Van Mierlo had so skilfully
created after the landslide victory in '94. It was then that the
hegemony of the christian-democrats had finally been broken, a political
force which had been in power in the Netherlands since 1917 (longer
than the communists in the Soviet Union). Finally, the social-democrats
of the PvdA and the conservative liberals of the VVD, once so polarised
in the 70s, were brought together in one government.Despite the
substantial scepticism, D66 had succeeded in pushing through and
maintaining this innovation. But the broad popular support enjoyed
by the purple cabinet affected all parties involved, except its
architect.
And this was merely the run-up
to the national Second Chamber elections which were to be held two
months later. D66 was led in those elections by Els Borst, the Minister
of Public Health. Els Borst had been personally designated by Hans
van Mierlo as his successor, although party chairman Thom de Graaf
had been voted number one by a majority of the members following
the internal ballot vote. Not an auspicious start for a party which
so emphasised radical democratisation.
Trying to take part of a well-earned
booty, D66 profiled itself in the national election campaign as
the creator of the Purple Coalition, with the stakes being the second
coalition, Purple II. A purple campaign bus toured the country,
and on television an election commercial could be seen, in which
a stick mixed a flow of red and blue into purple. Green, the colour
of the Democrats, did not even come into it. The message was hard
to miss: D66 is the necessary binder, the mixing stick, the bridge-builder
between PvdA and VVD.
But bridges are to be walked
over, not to be voted on, as the polls quickly showed. There was
increasing speculation about a purple cabinet without
D66. PvdA and VVD turned out to be able to get on better than many
people had previously thought possible. All of this had weakened
the far from strong image of D66. A party which is seen by many
as a reasonable alternative, an escape route if the other routes
are lacking. A pragmatic party, with at best friendly, reasonable
people; but not a party with its own face.
Saturday 2 May 1998. D66 celebrated the winding up of its national
campaign by walking the last leg of the Pieterpad, a walking route
from Pieterburen in Groningen to the Pietersberg in Limburg, near
Maastricht. A group of young party members seized the opportunity
to make plans for a much-needed overhaul of D66. They came together
in their dissatisfaction regarding the lack of ambition within the
party and regarding the manner in which D66 was being presented.
They were people of a new generation, all of whom had a background
with the Young Democrats (the youth organisation connected with
D66) rather than with D66 itself. They are therefore less 'burdened'
with the general D66 past with regard to the 'pragmatic' presentation
of the party. Since their founding the Young Democrats have presented
themselves as a 'free-thinking democratic youth organisation', referring
to the Vrijzinnig-Democratische Bond (VDB). This splinter group
from the former Liberale Unie was active in Dutch politics at the
beginning of the 19th century, with the stakes being,
inter alia, general suffrage for men and women. At the time the
VDB presented itself as the fourth current in Dutch politics. The
objective of this group of five was to explicitly put D66 on the
map as the fourth current, and, moreover, to make the party more
ambitious, more open and more recognisable. Opschudding (Commotion)
was born.
6 May, the day of the Second Chamber elections. In the end, D66
won 14 seats, down from 24, a loss of almost fifty percent. The
party leadership and many members celebrated this as a victory -
after all, it was not as bad as the 12 seats or fewer predicted
by the polls. In the TV debate between party leaders which was held
the night before, Els Borst managed to pull in another two extra
seats. Some people felt the score reflected the 'natural size' of
the party - a lack of ambition which Opschudding was fighting to
reverse. D66 mayor of Hilversum Ernst Bakker may well have come
up with the best comments: 'D66 is always in the lift: if it's
not going up, then it's going down.' The big winners were PvdA,
VVD and GroenLinks (Green Left), which remained just a little smaller
than D66.
In the months following the election defeat, Opschudding organised
itself into a loose network structure. Many party members, often
young people, who were expected to support reform, were approached
by telephone. The reactions were overwhelmingly positive, and an
active e-mail circuit was immediately established. Meetings were
organised in the Utrecht community centre De Kargadoor where frustrations
were expressed and, more importantly, ideas were born. The first
agreement was, regardless of what was to come from the package of
innovation proposals, to stand united and to only speak to the outside
world via two spokespersons, who were still to be appointed. This
had to become the big coup.
The proposals which were presented can be divided into two categories:
one on the presentation of the party, another on the organisational
set-up. Only the first group is important here. One of the most
important proposals was to give D66 a label - a revolutionary idea
considering the background of D66. A brief overview of its history
is necessary in order to appreciate this turnaround.
The History of D66
Seats in the Second Chamber (Lower House of the Parliament):
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The history of D66 reads like an exciting
boy's adventure novel, with all concomitant ups and downs. It
is also a history in which the party has taken a variety of positions.
In the early days it saw itself as taking up only a temporary assignment
of highly necessary reform in the pillarised political arena. In
the Seventies, when party political innovation was dead, the party
was given a more substantive form. In the Eighties, under Van
Mierlo, the two foregoing standpoints were combined into one new
one, which placed the party both within and across from the other
parties. And finally, with the rise of the Purple Coalition, the
Nineties saw one of the biggest victories of D66. In all these years,
D66 never explicitly adhered to a political philosophy nor used
a label to clarify its position, which did not always make it easy
for the voters to place the party within the larger political framework.
The detailed history below can serve as an illustration of this.
In 1966 a pamphlet could be bought in Dutch bookshops for one guilder,
entitled 'Appèl aan iedere Nederlander die ongerust is over de ernstige
devaluatie van onze democratie' ("A Call on Every Dutch Citizen
Concerned about the Harmful Devaluation of our Democracy").
This was the work of the Initiative Committee D'66 (then still spelt
with an apostrophe), consisting of, inter alia, P. Baehr, who went
on to become professor in human rights law, J. Gruijters, who went
on to become minister, H. van Mierlo, who went on to become the
party leader, E. Nypels, who went on to become state secretary,
and H. Zeevalking, who also went on to become a minister. About
themselves they write: 'We are not politicians. Nor do we want to
be at this stage.' Their concern concentrated on the structure of
the political system: 'We are of the opinion that our political
system is functioning poorly. The political game is still being
played according to rules dating from the last century. These rules
were drawn up in the years after 1848 for a society which cannot
be compared to ours.' The committee also objected to the 'outdated
principles' of the then prevailing ideologies, and set these off
by its own practical policy. Thus the pragmatic, non-ideological
roots of D66 were explicitly present from the very beginning. In
the pillarised Netherlands of the day, such an innovative product
of the 60s was a very welcome addition, as the electoral results
would later show.
The objective of the initiative
takers was to mobilise the 'prevailing unrest'. If there turned
out to be sufficient support, they were going to found a new party,
which could be called 'Democraten '66 maybe'. Point one of the 'basic
principles' read that the party 'will strive toward a radical democratisation
of Dutch society in general and of the Dutch political system
in particular.' Specific points which were mentioned were, inter
alia, the direct election of the prime minister, election of the
mayor by either the population, or the municipal council, and investigating
'a referendum with safeguards'.
Due to the fall of the cabinet in the autumn of 1966 (the 'Night
of Schmeltzer') the developments accelerated. D'66 was founded as
a party to counteract the pillarisation and the prevailing oligarchic
mentality of politics. The first election campaign was conducted
under the poet Elsschot's words 'Laws stand in between dream
and action, as do practical objections', under the leadership of
the journalist H.A.F.M.O. (Hans) van Mierlo. It became a resounding
entrance into Dutch politics: coming from nowhere to take 7 seats.
HAFMO made the front page of the New York Times with the story ('Star
rises in Dutch politics').
Under Van Mierlo's leadership,
there was close cooperation with the social-democratic PvdA and
the Politieke Partij Radicalen (PPR), which together were to become
a Progressive People's Party. The almost natural allocation
of power had to be broken. In Van Mierlo's view, the intervention
of D'66 in politics was only a temporary one, which was to lead
to an 'explosion' of the political landscape. Together this 'progressive
trio' presented a shadow cabinet for the elections in 1971, with
Den Uyl as prime minister. D'66 gained seats, going up to 11 seats,
but overall, the political right was the victor. A right-wing cabinet
was established under Biesheuvel, which governed for no more than
a year. PvdA, D'66 and PPR again jointly presented themselves under
the coalition agreement 'Keerpunt '72'. D'66 dropped to 6 seats,
but with 1 minister and 3 state secretaries still participated in
the Den Uyl cabinet.
D'66 went down rapidly
in the polls. PvdA and PPR, who had won in the elections, dropped
the idea of the Progressive People's Party. This brought the
party political reform movement to a standstill. Within D'66, the
gap regarding the course to be followed on progressive cooperation
increased. In 1973, Van Mierlo transferred the party chairmanship
in the Second Chamber to Jan Terlouw, a physicist, although he is
better known as a writer of children's books. At a party conference
a year later, the party decided by a majority of 60% of the
votes to abolish itself. However, the party charter demanded a two-thirds
majority. And so the party limped on, with barely 200 members.>
In 1975 the mood turned.
A 'revival conference' was held, and the following year Jan Terlouw
set three prerequisites for becoming party leader in the following
elections: good health, 1666 new party members and 66,000 signatures
of Dutch people who believed that D'66 had to participate in the
elections. The signatures and the members were found, and in the
elections of '77 the party climbed out of its dip: 8 seats.
From 1977 to 1981, D'66 was in the opposition and presented itself
as the 'reasonable alternative'. Terlouw placed less emphasis on
administrative reform and more on the environment and technology
policy, and for the first time presented D'66 as the fourth current
in Dutch politics. There had clearly been a departure from the line
of temporary party reformists.
In the elections of 1981
D'66 gained its best score to date, 17 seats. This provided a place
in the 'awful cabinet' (Terlouw) CDA-PvdA-D'66. Terlouw became minister,
while Van Mierlo took on the post of Defence; Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst
took over the party leadership in the Second Chamber. After a year
the social-democrats left the government. For the sake of stability,
D'66 decided to continue governing with the CDA until the next elections.
It paid a high price: in 1982 the number of seats fell to
6. The CDA turned its face from left to right and together with
the VVD took over the governing of the country.
Maarten Engwirda took over D'66 leadership in the Second Chamber;
Van Mierlo moved to the First Chamber (senate). A discussion arose
regarding a possible name change for the party, which was to make
it more recognisable. In the polls D'66 was regularly set at 0 seats.
Engwirda did not even appear in political cartoons any longer.
In the beginning of 1985
Van Mierlo came to the foreground again. With his speech 'A reason
for existing' he dealt with the 'raison d'être' of D'66. Did the
party still have a reason for existing, or would it be better to
abolish the party to create room for a new party? As he put it,
credibility was at stake. Was D'66 still concerned with political
innovation, like in the early days? Or did it prefer a fixed place
in the political spectrum, from which it intended to present its
standpoints? Then it could, for example, take on a new name, or
become a new party, 'and then there would be every reason to take
on a classical label like liberal-left or free-thinking democrat'.
Van Mierlo's answer, however, was quite different: the issue was
still political innovation. Albeit that D'66 was now, on the one
hand, a party among the others, with a recognisable, progressive
programme, and at the same time a party against the others with
regard to the issue of innovation of the political culture. A combination,
in other words, of the explosion theory and the political reform
of Van Mierlo in his early days and the more pragmatic-programmatic
attitude under Terlouw.
In the same speech Van
Mierlo stated to be willing 'on certain conditions' to take on the
party leadership. The speech was well-received. But behind the scenes,
the function of Secretary-General of the WEU which had been offered
to Van Mierlo shortly before played a role. In the end, he opted
to try and raise a political party which had been declared dead
from the ashes. The party lost its apostrophe (i.e.: D66) and gained
the sub-title 'Democrats'. Van Mierlo's efforts were rewarded by
the voters with a rise to 9 seats in the 1986 elections, a number
which rose to 12 in 1989. According to the CDA, the winner of the
elections did not have sufficient numbers for a majority in the
Chamber, so there was no room in the CDA-PvdA government. It was,
however, achieving growing sympathy among the voters.
The big success followed
in 1994. One more time, under Hans van Mierlo, D66 took part
in the elections, to come out bigger than ever: 24 seats. Now the
party had achieved sufficient weight to force a breakthrough in
Dutch politics: the forming of the first Purple cabinet. Van Mierlo
became minister and was succeeded in the Chamber, first by Gerrit-Jan
Wolffensperger, later by Thom de Graaf.
In all those years D66 had a varying image, with varying results.
First, under Van Mierlo, it was a temporary movement, geared toward
reform of the democracy. Later, under Terlouw, D66 became the 'fourth
current', which was primarily characterised by its reasonable and
pragmatic attitude. No explicit political philosophy was ever followed,
nor was a label used for clarification. Opponents of D66 made grateful
use of this by claiming that the party was neither one thing nor
another. The election results and the great dependence of the party
on Van Mierlo only reinforced this view.
Opschudding gives D66 a place
In its calling card to the political world, 'Opschudding: more ambition
for D66', Opschudding argued 'that D66 has to profile itself as
one of the principal currents in the Dutch political spectrum. The
recognisability of D66 has to be increased by working out our political
identity and core values, and by the adoption of the sub-title 'social-liberal'.
The recognisability of D66 can be further improved by the use of
the colour yellow instead of green.' True enough, largely cosmetic,
but cosmetics was precisely what D66 was missing. As the subsequent
party leader in the European elections, Lousewies van der Laan put
it: 'D66 has an excellent product, but the packaging has to be improved.'
Nevertheless the topic was very sensitive
within the party, and Opschudding was aware of this. According to
some, positioning D66 within an ideological framework by using a
reference like 'social-liberal' affected the core of the
existence of the party. Years earlier D66 had almost split up over
a similar proposal. For Opschudding the point was to create momentum.
By means of a sizeable interview in the weekly magazine Vrij Nederland,
the two Opschudding spokespersons put the proposals on the table.
The tone had been set. At the autumn party conference of '98 in
Gouda a huge number of members turned up, and an overwhelming majority
of them supported most of the proposals for reform. For the first
time in its life, D66 had an ideologically coloured sub-heading.
The standpoint that it needed one had always existed within the
party from the beginning, but always as a minority view. Opschudding
changed this. Erwin Nypels, co-founder of the party, exclaimed:
'Now the founding of the party has finally been completed'.
In order to understand the place of D66
within the party political spectrum favoured by Opschudding, the
coordinate axes of (the same) Nypels is a useful instrument.
Nypels' coordinate axis
In order to make it clear what D66 stood
for, Erwin Nypels put the Dutch parties in a diagram which has come
to be known as 'Nypels' coordinate axes' (ill.).
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of this cross stands for material (social-economic) freedom. This
axis is the most well-known political classification and symbolises
the classical left-right division. On the right-hand side of this
axis, i.e. with a high score in the area of material freedom, are
the parties who strongly favour the free market. Parties who believe
that government must keep a strong grip on the economy score low
with regard to material freedom and will end up on the left-hand
side of the axis.
The vertical axis in the
coordinate axes symbolises immaterial freedoms. The placing of parties
along this axis indicates to what extent they believe that citizens
must themselves be able to exercise moral leadership. A high score
on this axis indicates that the party believes that citizens must
themselves be able to decide on matters such as abortion, euthanasia
and drug use. Parties which are critical about the legalisation
of such matters score low with regard to immaterial freedoms and
are positioned at the bottom of the vertical axis.
During Nypels' time, the four big Dutch parties were each positioned
at one end of the cross. The social-democratic PvdA of the current
prime minister Kok and the conservative-liberal VVD were both more
or less positioned in the political centre with regard to intangible
freedoms, but personified political extremes in their views on social-economic
policy. The christian-democrats of the CDA, the party of former
prime minister Lubbers, and D66 came together in a moderate view
on social-economic policy, but are directly opposite each other
with regard to the discussion on immaterial freedoms.
Honesty demands that it
be pointed out that the layout of the political landscape has changed
somewhat since then. During the Eighties, the PvdA "shook off
its ideological feathers" (Wim Kok) and it shifted to a considerable
extent to the centre of the horizontal axis, running ahead of similar
movements in other "Third Way" parties like Tony Blair's
Labour and Gerhard Schröder's SPD. The old position of the PvdA,
at the left extreme of the horizontal axis, has in the meantime
been taken by the SP of Jan Marijnissen. GroenLinks has taken a
place in the top left-hand corner of the diagram. This party is
the result of a merger of socialist, pacifist and communist splinter
parties and is today, from an electoral perspective, an important
competitor of D66.
In practice, Nypels' coordinate axes turned out to be an extraordinarily
clarifying tool for making the positions of the different parties
clear. It creates recognition among Dutch voters, as the values
which it reflects are generally the values which are given most
attention in the Dutch political discourse. However, the coordinate
axes alone are not sufficient to ideologically define D66 as a political
party. Firstly, two axes are naturally not sufficient to do full
justice to the complexity of a party's views. But the most important
disadvantage of the coordinate axes is that the positions of the
parties in the cross are relative. In this manner D66 could only
be given a position when compared with other parties. The diagram
does not show that D66, just like the other parties, has an ideological
background which explains why
the party is positioned in the diagram where it is positioned. No
matter how clarifying Nypels' coordinate axes were, it did not
resolve D66's problem that an explicit political philosophy
providing a positive definition of the party's raison d'être
did not exist.
The meaning of social-liberal
The first question which must now be asked is whether D66 is at
all suitable for the formulation of a political philosophy. Perhaps
the comments of other parties were right, that the political standpoints
of D66, partly as a result of the extensive member democracy, were
a haphazard and disjointed hotchpotch of the standpoints of the
members. What is remarkable however is that over the years the D66
course has appeared to be more consistent than that of the other
parties. At most there is an effect of the party leadership on the
theme choice: for example, Van Mierlo primarily focused on administrative
and political innovation, while under Terlouw there was more attention
for social-economic topics. Nevertheless, this a far cry from the
VVD, where not only the theme choice, but the standpoints themselves
regularly turned out to be dependent on who was party leader. The
PvdA changed during the Eighties from a classic social-democratic
party into a neo-liberal "Third Way" party, and GroenLinks
also made a considerable shift to the centre. Apparently D66 members
did have consensus as to what the "D66 feeling" meant,
and what standpoints were involved. A glance over the national borders
helped clarifying matters. A sister party like the British Liberal
Democrats often took standpoints that were very similar to those
of D66, but motivated them from a strongly ideological (liberal)
background. The ideology already existed, Opschudding only had to
make it explicit.
Opschudding started with the name. The participants were quick to
agree that D66 was a liberal party on the left-hand side of the
political spectrum, and almost all proposals therefore somewhere
contained the word 'liberal'. The problem was, however,
that in the Netherlands the word 'liberal' itself
had until that time been monopolised by the conservative VVD, so
that there was a need for a prefix or suffix for marking the difference
with this party. Variations like left-liberal, radical-liberal and
liberal-democratic ultimately lost out to the choice for social-liberal.
This makes the situation in the Netherlands comparable to that of,
e.g., Denmark, where a conservative and a progressive liberal party
co-exist which callthemselves 'liberal' and 'social-liberal'
respectively. In Sweden and Norway too the sister parties of D66
call themselves social-liberal.
The pragmatic choice which Opschudding finally made (via a vote)
for the designation of social-liberal turned out to have advantages
and disadvantages. The disadvantage was that the prefix 'social'
caused confusion, especially in the beginning. D66 had been saying
for so long that it wanted to be a bridge between the other parties,
and was moreover so strongly associated through the Purple cabinet
with the PvdA and VVD, that some journalists and politicians initially
interpreted 'social-liberal' as 'a mixture of socialism
and (market) liberalism'. This was, however, the opposite of
what Opschudding meant with the term, and it took a few months before
it had sunk in everywhere that social-liberal could indeed refer
to an independent liberal main current in politics.
On the other hand, the advantage of the term social-liberal was
that by adding the word 'social' the moral and communitarian
elements of D66 liberalism could be given greater emphasis. In the
political discourse of both D66 members and non-D66 members, the
terms 'democracy' (procedures), 'free choice' and
'the individual' always played the most important role,
so that it sometimes appeared as if D66 viewed society as atomistic,
as a random collection of citizens who had nothing to do with each
other. Political opponents on the conservative side of the spectrum
took advantage of this, by making it appear as if D66 favoured a
fully normless society of irresponsible individuals. Positioning
D66 as 'democratic' and 'pragmatic' only reinforced
this image. Of course this was completely wrong, as the emphasis
which D66 had always placed on both emancipation and participation
was very clearly ideologically inspired, and material democracy,
the creation and promotion of the cultural, social and economic
circumstances which encouraged participation and involvement was
always a cornerstone of D66 policies.
Opschudding fleshed out the social-liberal identity of D66 in further
detail in its second and last publication: De Voorzet, which
was presented to the party in the spring of 1999. In this
document, Opschudding positioned itself within the D66 tradition
as follows: 'D66 is supposed to be anti-dogmatic. This is largely
correct. The political ideas of D66 have been free from dogmas for
33 years. But during the course of its history, D66 created a big
dogma for itself: the dogma that D66 was not to be labelled. We
were a movement of bridge builders. Reasonable bridges, that is.
The designation of principles, core values or key foundations was
taboo. Opschudding broke with this dogma and has consequently fully
aligned with the anti-dogmatic tradition of D66.'
According to Opschudding, D66 had a mission which could be worded
as follows: "D66 exists as a political party in order to
build up a sustainable, democratic and open society, in which human
beings develop solidarity with others". This mission was
linked to four core values: Freedom, responsibility, equality
and democracy. The new and distinctive 'typical D66'
element in this did not consist so much of the core values themselves,
but rather of the manner in which they were fleshed out and linked
to each other.
For example, Opschudding naturally attributed great importance to
the freedom of the individual. After all, D66 was founded at a time
when many existing rules, in particular in the area of the private
lives of individuals, were losing their function as social connecting
tool and to an increasing extent were seen as antiquated and patronising.
In Dutch politics D66 has traditionally been an important proponent
of, e.g., making drugs legislation more lenient and the introduction
of gay marriage and legal euthanasia. In addition to promoting negative
freedom, i.e. the absence of external limitations, the party always
took a great interest in the promotion of positive freedom as well,
i.e. the elimination of internal restrictions existing within the
individual himself. Via the spread of wealth and the active promotion
of knowledge and well-being, there must be equal opportunities,
so that everyone can indeed make use of his negative freedom. This
element too is clearly recognisable in the policies followed by
D66 over the years.
The emphasis on positive freedom entails that freedom according
to Opschudding and D66 does not stand by itself, but must be linked
to the second core value: responsibility. Citizens must learn that
it is they themselves who are responsible for society, and that
they are not in the service of the government, but indeed must lead
and manage the government. Responsibility, however, can only be
accepted in freedom, and not be imposed haphazardly. A government
which wants to do something will have to undertake effort to convince
its citizens of the use thereof, and will have to give way if it
fails in this respect. A government which says that it wants its
citizens to be free must logically accept that citizens take over
responsibility from the government, e.g. by implementing a much
more direct democracy and by abolitishing "nanny state"
legislation. This explicit linking of freedom to responsibility
aligns well with the start-up programmes of foreign kindred spirits,
such as the Norwegian Venstre, the Danish Radikale Venstre and the
British Liberal Democrats, all parties which place themselves within
the liberal tradition.
As the above may have made clear, liberalism and individual freedom
of choice do not mean that sight is lost of community. The free
will of the individual, so often invoked by liberals, has only limited
use as an independent philosophical concept, because all these individual
identities and value patterns and the wishes ensuing therefrom are
formed to a significant extent by the network of social and cultural
communities to which every individual belongs. In the social-liberal
view, acknowledging these communities is not contrary to the goal
of positive freedom for the individual, but are, rather, a prerequisite
for it. Social-liberals are not striving for a scientifically designed,
uniform model citizen, contrary to the socialist ideologies of the
past. Liberals are by nature reticent with regard to the imposition
of a specific social view from the top down, and make the existing
wishes of the individual and his need for security and recognition
the basic principle. The social-liberal goal of emancipation therefore
stands next to existing value patterns and views of the good as
much as possible, and enters into dialogue with them. Ergo the third
core value, equality, which expresses the importance of the great
diversity of communities, lifestyles and views which can be found
in our society.
Communities provide not only identity and values, but also function
as a source of self-confidence and valuation. The feeling of being
part of the same community is necessary for the creation of solidarity
with otherwise unknown individuals, and is essential for the functioning
of democracy. Joint political decision making is therefore pointless
where there is insufficient solidarity. Communities are a fact,
the structure of the political order must take them into account.
Solidarity and altruism cannot be imposed from above.
Everything comes together in the core value of democracy, while
conversely the other core values can only be realised in a democracy.
Freedom and responsibility for the individual citizen means that
democracy must become much more direct and must be applied more
often, including outside of the political arena. Consequently Opschudding
argued not only for more, and more direct, democracy by means of
referenda and popular initiatives, but places also question marks
by the "polder model", the Dutch version of the Third
Way, because the majority of stakeholders is not involved in this
form of corporatist consultation.
Opschudding concluded that social-liberal is not a synthesis of
socialist and liberal. This concept already existed under the names
Neue Mitte, New Labour and Purple. Purple is not equivalent to the
social-liberal ideal because a combination of market liberalism
with socialism will not lead to more autonomy for the citizen, but
will rather lead to domination by two sides: the all-powerful free
market on the one hand, and a non-transparent government bureaucracy
on the other. The individual citizen who is the focal point of D66
hardly plays a role in the struggle between socialists and conservative-liberals,
let alone has a chance to exercise any influence on the developments.
The task facing social-liberals is therefore not to form a bridge
between market and state, but to reverse the power ratios, and to
make market and state subordinate to the citizen.
Following the Opschudding motions at the 1998 autumn conference,
the Executive Committee of D66 established a committee which was
to flesh out the basic principles requested by the Conference. The
result, which greatly rested on the document published by Opschudding,
was finally accepted during the conference of 25 March 2000.
Opschudding passes on
By taking on the label 'social-liberal', drafting the basic
principles of D66 and introducing reform-minded D66 members to the
Second Chamber, the European Parliament, the D66 Executive Committee
and the Programme Committee, Opschudding has achieved the greater
part of its objectives. Some former Opschudding members tried to
bring about further reform by cooperating with the PvdA reform movement
NietNix, but this modernised progressive cooperation died a painless
death. In the autumn of 1999 Opschudding decided to dissolve itself.
A bit of the old explosion theory became reality after all.
Bibliography
Backer, J, Tussen droom en daad. D'66 en de politieke crisis,
Baarn 1983
D66, Over berg en dal, www.d66.nl/documenten/ls/bergendal
Initiatiefcomité D'66, Appèl aan iedere Nederlander die ongerust
is over de ernstige devaluatie van onze democratie, Amsterdam
1966
Meulen, L. van der et.al. (ed.), D66 staat voor niets. De slag
om de kiezer: campagne '94, The Hague 1994
Mierlo, H. van, Een reden van bestaan, speech, Arnhem 1985
Opschudding, Meer ambitie voor D66, Arnhem 1998
Opschudding, De Voorzet, Arnhem 1999
Rogmans, B., Hans van Mierlo. Een bon-vivant in de politiek,
Utrecht 1991
With thanks to Udo Kock
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