Party Politics
Political parties play an active role in municipal politics in the Netherlands. Most candidates who run for municipal office are affiliated with a political party. The elected members of a municipal council are usually members of various political parties. The party with the most members on the council is seen as being in control of the town government. Quite often there is no single dominant party, so coalitions are formed. Since the council members vote for the members of the municipal executive, the municipal executive is also chosen along party lines. When it comes to this aspect of local government, there are two types of municipal executive. One type is called a "programme-based executive" (programmacollege); the other a "mirror executive" (afspiegelingscollege). Most executive boards in the Netherlands are programme-based.
A programme-based executive board is elected on the basis of a clear political programme by a majority vote of all the members of the municipal council. Thus, if the majority of members of the municipal council are members of a given party, it is likely that all members on the executive will be from that party or support that party and the board will have no difficulty implementing the party's programme. However, since the rise of "cohabitation" in Dutch municipal politics, and given the multi-party nature of Dutch politics, most executive boards have consisted of members from various parties, despite being programme-based.
A "mirror" executive board is one in which the make-up of the municipal executive reflects the distribution of the major parties in the municipal council. For example, if the members of the municipal council are evenly split between three mainstream parties, the members of the executive board will also be evenly split between these three parties.
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