Tweede Kamer

The Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (Audio|2e_kamer.ogg |pronunciation, literally "Second Chamber of the States-General"), short Tweede Kamer, is the Dutch lower house. It has 150 seats which are filled through elections using a party-list proportional representation. The Tweede Kamer resides in The Hague.

Functions

The Tweede Kamer is the main chamber of parliament, where discussion of proposed legislation and review of the actions of the cabinet takes place. Both the cabinet and the Tweede Kamer itself have the right to propose legislation; the Tweede Kamer discusses it and, if adopted by a majority decision, sends it on to the senate (eerste kamer).

Review of the actions of the cabinet takes the form of formal interrogations, which may result in motions urging the cabinet to take, or refrain from, certain actions.It is not possible for somebody to be a member of both parliament and cabinet, except if this is a caretaker cabinet that has not yet been succeeded when a new Tweede Kamer is sworn in.

The Tweede Kamer is also responsible for the first selection of judges to the Supreme Court (Hoge Raad der Nederlanden). It will submit a list of three names for every vacant position to the Government.

Furthermore, it elects the Dutch Ombudsman and his subsidiaries.

Elections

The maximum duration of the Tweede Kamer is four years. Anybody eligible to vote in the Netherlands also has the right to establish a political party and contest elections for the Tweede Kamer (see political parties of the Netherlands). Elections are called when the government has lost the parliament's confidence, the government coalition has broken down, the sitting period of the Kamer expired or when no governing coalition can be formed.

The parties wanting to take part must register 43 days before the elections, supplying a nationwide list of at least 30 candidates. Parties that do not have any sitting candidates in the chamber must also pay a deposit (11,250 euro for the November 2006 elections, for all districts together) and provide 30 signatures of support from residents of each of the 19 electoral districts in which they want to collect votes. The candidate lists are placed in the hands of the voters at least 14 days before the election. Two or more parties can agree to combine their separate lists (a so called 'list combination' or "lijstencombinatie"), which increases the chance to win a remainder seat. Each candidate list is numbered, with the person in the first position known as the "lijsttrekker" (top candidate). The lijsttrekker is usually appointed by the party to lead its election campaign. The lijsttrekker of the party receiving the most seats will often become the Prime Minister. Parties may choose to compete with different candidate lists in each of the 19 electoral districts, but as seats are allocated on national rather than district level, most parties have almost identical lists in all districts with candidates running nationwide. Only large parties usually have some 'regional' candidates at the bottom of their lists.

Citizens of the Netherlands aged 18 or over have the right to vote; excluded can only be those serving a prison term of more than one year. A single vote can be placed on any of the candidates. Many voters select one of the lijsttrekkers (Jan Peter Balkenende, for example, received 2,198,114 of the CDA's 2,608,573 votes in the November 2006 elections), but alternatively can place a preference vote for a candidate lower on the list.

Once the election results are known, the seats are allocated to the parties. The number of valid national votes cast is divided by 150, the number of seats available, to give a threshold for each seat (the "kiesdeler"). Each party's number of votes is divided by this threshold to give an initial number of seats. Any party that received fewer votes than the threshold (i.e., less than one in 150 of the total votes cast) fails to gain representation in the Kamer, thus the threshold is always at 0.67% of the total number of valid national votes. This is one of the lowest thresholds for national parliament elections in the world. Any party that received more than 75% of the threshold will have its deposit refunded.

After the initial seats are allocated, the remainder seats are allocated using the D'Hondt method of largest averages. This system favours the larger parties. List combinations compete for the remainder seats as one list of the combined size of all parties in the combination, thus having more chance to gain remainder seats. Afterwards, the seats are allocated to the parties within the list combination using the largest remainder method.

Once the number of seats allocated to each party is known, in general they are allocated to candidates in the order that they appear on the party's list. (Hence, before the elections, the candidates near the top may be described as in an electable position, depending on the number of seats that the party is likely to obtain.) However at this state the preference votes are also taken into account. If a candidate receives more than one quarter of the threshold on personal preference votes (the 'preference threshold' or "voorkeursdrempel", 0.1675% of the total number of valid votes), then he or she is considered elected in his/her own right, jumping over candidates who were placed higher on the list. In the November 2006 elections only one candidate received a seat exclusively through preference votes, while 26 other candidates reaching the preference threshold were already elected based on their position on the list. If a candidate cannot take up the position in parliament (e.g., if they become a minister, decide not to enter parliament, or later resign) then the next candidate on the list takes the place.

After all seats are allocated a government is formed, (usually) based on a majority of the seats. The queen appoints an informateur, who checks out possible coalitions, and formateur, who leads formation negotiations. At the end of the negotiations, the formateur becomes prime minister. Although usually from the largest party in parliament, these appointments are arguably among the largest powers the queen holds in Dutch politics. All cabinet members must resign from parliament, as the constitution does not allow a cabinet member to hold a seat in the Tweede Kamer.

There is no hard and fast quota for winning a seat in the Tweede Kamer. In 1977, for instance, one party gained a seat despite winning only 0.77 percent of the vote. Since the current party-list proportional representation system was introduced in 1918, no party has even approached the number of seats necessary for an outright majority. Between 1891 and 1897, the Liberal Union was the last party to have an absolute majority of the seats in the Tweede Kamer. Therefore, Dutch governments are always based on coalitions between two or more parties.

Current situation

Main article: List of members of the Tweede Kamer (2006-present)As a result of the elections held on November 22 2006, the allocation of the 150 seats is as follows:

The chairperson is Gerdi Verbeet.

Previous situation

Elections were held on January 22, 2003 after the resignation of the first Balkenende cabinet. The PvdA's lijsttrekker, Wouter Bos, declared that he would not become Prime Minister if his party lost: the party's candidate was not announced until a few days before the election - Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, who did not take part in the campaign. The negotiations following the election were lengthy and resulted in a coalition of CDA, VVD and D66 and the second Balkenende cabinet.

The other parties contesting the elections were: Partij voor de Dieren (47,754), Leefbaar Nederland (38,894), Partij van de Toekomst (13,845), LijstRatelband.nl (9,045), Duurzaam Nederland (7,271), Nieuwe Communistische Partij-NCPN (4,854), de Conservatieven.nl (2,521), Vooruitstrevende Integratie Partij (1,623), Alliantie voor Vernieuwing en Democratie (990) and Lijst Veldhoen (296). All of these parties lost their deposit, except for LN which as a sitting party didn't have to pay it.

The total votes cast was 9,654,475, giving a threshold required for a seat of 64,363.167. GL and SP combined their lists for the calculations, as did CU and SGP. The two candidates obtaining seats only because of preference votes were H.P.A. Nawijn (LPF) (21,209) and J.C. Huizinga-Heringa (CU) (19,650).

The Socialistische Partij lost one seat in February 2004 when it expelled Ali Lazrak from its faction. Lazrak decided to continue as a one-man faction.
In August 2004 the entire LPF faction resigned from their party, due to internal politics within the party. They remained as an independent faction, continuing to use the name LPF.
On the 2nd of September 2004 the VVD also lost a seat when Geert Wilders left the faction. He too decided to continue as a one-man faction. In 2005, Hilbrand Nawijn, former Minister without Portfolio for Immigration and Integration in the first Balkenende Cabinet, departed from the LPF to become the third one-man-faction in the chamber.On June 7 2006, Gonny van Oudenallen was installed as successor of Margot Kraneveldt, who retired from parliament and stepped over to the PvdA. Although on the LPF list for the 2003 elections, Oudenallen sat as a one-woman faction. On August 16, 2006, LPF party leader Gerard van As stepped over to Hilbrand Nawijn's faction.On September 6, 2006, Anton van Schijndel was removed from the VVD faction. He became part of a two member faction with Joost Eerdmans, who was removed from the LPF on September 20, 2006.

The new chairman of the Tweede Kamer was elected on December 6, 2006. The winner was Gerdi Verbeet. The previous chairman (2002-2006) was Frans Weisglas, who retired on November 29, 2006.

Historical periods

To give an overview of the longer history of the second chamber, the figure to the right shows the seat distribution in the Dutch second chamber from the first general elections after WWII (1946), to the current situation. Until 1956, there were 100 seats. This was expanded to 150 seats, which is the current number.

The left wing parties are on the bottom, the Christian parties in the center, with the right wing parties closer to the top. Occasionally one (or few) issue parties have arisen that are shown at the extreme top.

Vertical lines indicate general elections. Although in principle every four years, the necessary coalition governments do not always finish their term without a governmental crisis, which is often followed by new elections. Hence the regular periods numbering less than four years.

External links

*nl icon [http://www.tweedekamer.nl Official site]
*en icon [http://www.houseofrepresentatives.nl Official site]
*en icon [http://www.houseofrepresentatives.nl/the_tweede_kamer_present_and_past/virtual_tour/index.jsp virtual tour of the houses of parliament]
*nl icon [http://www.tweedekamer.nl/leden_commissies_fracties/wiezitwaar/wie_zit_waar/overige_plaatsen.jsp seat-allocation in the Tweede Kamer] . Click the diagram on the left to see names and photos of all representatives per section.
*nl icon [http://parlando.sdu.nl/cgi/login/anonymous Official site for archives since 1995 in Dutch]