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I feel like collapse is a really severe term for what happened? Like if someone said the government collapsed, I'd assume that means it's disbanded completely, not that some alliances fell through.
Maybe someone with better knowledge of Europe could explain this?
The government is the alliance that together gets >50% of the votes. That alliance falling through is the same as government (legislative and executive) disbanding.
Usually this means (1) hand over to a care taker government to have status quo continue (2) no more changes to law.
Then a few rounds of trying to find a new >50% alliance. After that, if necessary, new elections.
The reason it works differently in the US is because first-past-the-post voting always results in a 2 party dominance system. US alliances benefit from being formed before election, join blue team or red team. Here it's after elections, with a lot of different combinations possible.
Seems like a nice feature to be able to get a new government if the current government refuses to work together.
In the US, we just end up with years of political deadlock.
The downside is that it can take a long time to form these alliances. Belgium's record is almost 2 years (out of a 5 year election cycle).
Israel had 5 collapses before Netanyahu got back in.
Canada has first-past-the-post voting and still resulted in a minority government this year.
It will probably continue until we look like America's system. FPTP is just about the dumbest system out there.
In most multiparty systems, a party needs to hold a certain number of seats in Parliament in order to be in power. If no party has enough seats after an election, they attempt to form coalitions in order to get enough seats and form a government.
A party leaving the coalition means that it'll no longer hold enough seats to have a majority. I dont know the specifics here, but they might be able to form a coalition with a different party, or require new elections.
No other parties want to collaborate with the remaining parties in power. So we're very likely to have new elections soon.
Wilders is such an idiot. Poor dutch politics... didn't this government barely outlast the everlasting period they spent even forming a coalition?
A very helpful idiot. His party is polling 1% above the liberal party at 29% to 28%. The other parties in his coalition government won big in Nov. 2023, but have both dropped to 1% in the last two years.
His dropping out and dissolving the goverment should lead to left or left leaning leadership in the Netherlands.
For a second there, I thought the man photo was Elon Musk with an aging-filter 😅