Even after considerable shrinkage, the Christian Democrat CDA retains around 95,000 members. Our own Socialist Party has recently passed 20,000. D66, on the other hand, has only 15,000. According to a 1995 survey conducted by the University of Groningen, only 3% of the Dutch population are members of a political party, and of these only one in every ten is active. What this means is that, no more than 30,000 people are involved in party politics. Thus limiting input into the system and therefore the range of ideas on offer to the electorate and leading inexorably to the development of a system of patronage, preference and graft such as already exists in, for example, Belgium and Italy.
As parties throughout Europe cease to make any real attempt to involve the people in the process of ideological development, preferring instead to base their activities on superficially attractive leaders, `sound-bite' policy statements and slavish adherence to the whimsical movements of opinion polls, this phenomenon advances on all fronts. The result is that everywhere the political caste looks increasingly to its own interests and less and less to those of the electorate. The gap between voter and politician, between citizen and government, grows ever wider, threatening to discredit the democratic process itself.from Enough! - A socialist bites back
by Jan Marijnissen
PvdA | SP | Groen Links | |
| 1992 | 73,000 | 15,122 | 13,548 |
| 1993 | 59,464 | 15,517 | 12,500 |
| 1994 | 68,053 | 15,978 | 12,500 |
| 1995 | 64,525 | 16,899 | 12,000 |
| 1996 | 64,523 | 17,056 | 12,000 |
| 1997 | 60,907 | 19,926 | 11,700 |
| 1998 | 61,720 | 21,975 | 11,873 |
| 1999 | 61,600 | 25,052 | 13,821 |
| 2000 | 61,000 | 26,198 | 13,855 |
| 2001 | 58,426 | 26,553 | 14,314 |
| 2002 | 57,374 | 27,291 | 15,037 |
| 2003 | 60,062 | 36,406 | 18,469 |
| 2004 | 61,935 | 43,389 | 20,503 |
| 2005 | 61,111 | 44,299 | 20,709 |
| 2006 | 61,913 | 44,853 | 21,383 |
| 2007 | 62,846 | 50,740 | 23,539 |
| 2008 | 59,327 | 50,238 | 21,901 |
| Figures January 1st Source: Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke Partijen | |||
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"No members, no party. This is true of any party, but it goes doubly for an activist movement like the SP. Since the beginning of 2005 the SP has been, in terms of membership, the third biggest party in the Netherlands (compare the membership figures since 1992). And, amongst these 50,000 SP members, unprecedented numbers are actively involved in their party – a good 38%, or well over a third of the membership. If you want to know more about SP members, a comprehensive survey is available."
