The New Faces of the House: A Look at the Diverse Backgrounds of Incoming MPs

A supermarket manager, a fairground operator and a metal worker. Many newly elected MPs who will enter the House of Representatives next Wednesday were, until recently, still at the center of society. That is good news for diversity in the Chamber.

For example, the number of MPs who have completed a maximum of a secondary vocational education will double. This is evident from data from the Parliamentary Documentation Center Foundation and our own research. A total of nineteen MPs without an academic background will take their oath on Wednesday, compared to ten in 2021.

That may not sound like much, but for the first time in twenty years the percentage of theoretically trained people has fallen to 87 percent. In recent decades, the number of MPs who have completed an academic or higher professional education has remained stuck at more than ninety percent. This compares to more than sixty percent of Dutch people who are practically trained or have not completed any training.

Critics also call the Netherlands a ‘diploma democracy’, because the country is largely governed by politicians with the highest diplomas.

The new MPs seem to be changing this somewhat, albeit on a limited scale. Especially because an important part of the shift can be explained by the gains of one party: the PVV. Two-thirds of the 37 new PVV MPs do not have a university degree.

Less Randstad

The non-urban regions are also better represented in the new House of Representatives. The number of MPs living in a province outside the Randstad is increasing sharply, from less than fifty people in 2021 to 65 in 2023. This means that almost half (43 percent) of MPs will have to travel a lot longer in the near future to to enter the House of Representatives than their predecessors.

In recent decades, the Randstad has been over-represented in parliament. More than sixty percent of MPs lived in the provinces of North Holland, South Holland or Utrecht, while only forty percent of the population lives there. The fact that more MPs now live elsewhere in the country is partly due to the rise of parties such as NSC and BBB, which advocate the importance of the region.

Furthermore, the male-female distribution in parliament has remained virtually the same. As in 2021, approximately sixty percent of MPs identify as male and forty percent as female. Previously, only thirty percent of MPs were women. An (openly) non-binary person is also entering the House of Representatives for the first time, namely Ines Kostic of the Party for the Animals.

Cultural diversity

Although the new House of Representatives will become a lot more regional and less elitist, cultural diversity will deteriorate. When the House took office in 2021, there were still 28 MPs (19 percent) with a bicultural background. This means that either the Member of Parliament or the parents come from abroad. According to this definition, approximately a quarter of the Dutch population has a migration background.

Of the politicians who will be installed in Parliament on Wednesday, only 24 (16 percent) have foreign roots. The fact that the percentage is not lower is mainly due to GroenLinks-PvdA. Of all candidates with a migration background, almost half (10) come from that party.

The majority of parties do not nominate culturally diverse MPs at all. The lists of PVV, BBB, SP, CDA, FvD, SGP, Volt and JA21 almost exclusively contain white candidates with Dutch roots in eligible positions. “You see that right-wing parties in particular have made significant gains; it is known that they do not have diversity high on their agenda,” says Ian van der Kooye. He is director of Kleur de Kamer, an organization that advocates more cultural diversity in parliament.

But Kooye is also critical of progressive parties, such as D66. After the previous elections, that party supplied many candidates of color to parliament; now there is only one. “It seems as if the members of that party give less priority to diversity. Candidates with a bicultural background have even been put lower on the list by the members,” says Kooye. He fears that if parties do not pursue a conscious policy, the cultural diversity of the House of Representatives will further deteriorate.

Who are these new MPs?

1. Rachel van Meetelen (PVV)

Rachel van Meetelen from Bergen op Zoom was one of the big surprises on Geert Wilders’ party list. Out of nowhere, the fairground operator, who never graduated from high school, found herself in third place. Of course, Van Meetelen did not get that position just like that. During corona times, she campaigned all the way to the House of Representatives for compensation for fairground entrepreneurs, a group that The Hague politics threatened to forget. Her drive was noticeable, which means she will now have to divide her time between politics and her family business, the ‘poffertjessalon’.

2. Ines Kostic (Party for the Animals)

Ines Kostic from Hilversum is the first Member of Parliament who is openly non-binary in the House of Representatives. The number two of the Party for the Animals fled with her parents from Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Netherlands at the age of ten during the Yugoslav civil war. Before she was elected as a representative, she was group leader of the PvdD in North Holland. There she fought for a provincial ‘rainbow policy’.

3. Cor Pierik (Farmer Citizen Movement)

Cor Pierik grew up among dairy cows in Genemuiden (Overijssel) and worked for years for the Central Bureau of Statistics. Partly thanks to the BoerCurgerBeweging, the number of MPs living in Overijssel has increased considerably after these elections, but the share of MPs with an agricultural background has not grown enormously. Pierik himself is the owner of a hobby farm, where people can also spend the night.

4. Esmah Lahlah (GroenLinks-PvdA)

Esmah Lahlah was an alderman in the Municipality of Tilburg for five years, with the portfolios of Social Security, Equality of Opportunities and Talent Development. In 2021 she was named the best Local Administrator in the Netherlands and then managed to achieve second place on the candidate list. Lahlah has a Moroccan father and is therefore one of the ten MPs of GroenLinks-PvdA with a bicultural background. Compared to other parties, that party performs by far the best in the field of cultural diversity: approximately forty percent of the new GroenLinks-PvdA MPs have a migration background.

5. Patrick van der Hoeff (PVV)

Few politicians are in as close contact with ordinary citizens in daily life as supermarket manager Patrick van der Hoeff from Philippine (Zeeland). Only a few months ago he campaigned for the PVV during the Provincial Council elections. His main aim then was to put the province of Zeeland more clearly on the map again. He may also be able to achieve that goal in the House of Representatives. Of all 150 MPs, only three live in the southern province. That is the same number of MPs who come from Friesland, Flevoland or Drenthe. These four provinces are least represented in parliament.

Also read:
Breakthrough in the previous elections: more women and people of color on the candidate lists for the House of Representatives

In the previous elections, almost all political parties entered the elections with at least 40 percent women on the list, and many also with at least 15 percent candidates of color.

2023-12-03 20:16:18


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