Netherlands

Abstract

The Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid - PvdA) has been one of the pillars of post-war Dutch politics. In the period 1946-2002 the party shared governmental power with different coalition partners for 32 years in all (that is 57 percent of the time). For almost 23 years it supplied the Prime Minister. The PvdA was the largest party in seven of the sixteen parliamentary elections held in that period, for the last time in 1998. On average, the party won nearly 29 percent of the vote. The PvdA dominated the Dutch political left, gaining an average of almost 82 percent of the total left-wing vote.