The politicisation of immigration in the Netherlands

The 2002 Dutch election ‘was the second most unstable election in the post-war history of all the long-established democracies in Europe’ (Mair, 2008: 240). A third of the electorate voted for a different party than in the previous elections. Such a political landslide only happens rarely, usually in the aftermath of broad political crises, such as the corruption scandals in the early 1990s in Italy or the fall of the Fourth Republic in France in the 1950s. However, the Netherlands had experienced a decade of very high economic growth, unemployment was low, and the state debt had been significantly reduced. Moreover, the Netherlands does not have many problems with political corruption and in international comparative perspective it ranks high when looking at political trust and satisfaction with democracy. What happened?