Has Populism Been Defeated in The Netherlands and What Lessons for EU?
NOVANEWS
Rob Hoppe, Margarita Jeliazkova
The elections in the Netherlands attracted so much media attention for the first time in recent history. The dominating narratives – domino-effect, Trump-effect, Nexit, Wilders vs. Rutte – were all simplistic and based on little understanding of the national context and Dutch political reality. Was this interest inflated? Not really. After all, 81.9 % of the Dutch electorate showed up to exercise their voting rights – a 30-year record high voter turnout.
Why did the Dutch election matter?
First, the media narrative presented the election process as a one-off ‘defeat of populism’, ‘defeat of Wilders’. Case closed, next piece of the potential domino - France. The picture is more complicated, though, and if not told, the lessons to be learned will b...