Lianne van Kalken, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at Erasmus School of Law, is researching council agreements in municipalities. Additionally, her role as a council member of the municipality of Vlaardingen provides personal experience and practical insights into the use of these agreements. “A council agreement offers both coalition and opposition parties the possibility to truly participate during the four years in which they are a member of the city council. However, there are some catches to agreements of this kind”, Van Kalken states in VNG magazine.
The most significant benefit of a council agreement as an alternative to a coalition agreement is that the whole council participates in the discussion about whether there is agreement on specific topics. A coalition agreement is made at the beginning of the term. Therefore, many things are decided in advance by the coalition parties only. The gap between coalition and opposition could well be closed by using council agreements, which could lead to positive politics.
A good start
The most important criterium of a council agreement is that more parties partake than necessary to gain a majority in the council. In addition, however, it desires proper preparations and good arrangements between all the concerned parties (council members, the mayor, aldermen, the clerk’s office, and the administrative parties). That is of importance to make the agreement work.
No panacea
However, Van Kalken does not consider the council agreement to be a panacea: “when I visit municipalities, I always say: the council agreement is not the Holy Grail”. In her council in Vlaardingen, the agreement failed in 2019. The lessons Van Kalken took from this experience combined with the findings of her research could help the councils of other municipalities: “it should be clear what the goals of the agreement are, as well as how you interact with each other. What is it exactly? What do we want to do with it? Which option should we choose? Based on these insights, the set-up of the agreement can be decided.”
It is expected that after the municipal elections in March 2022, more municipalities will start with a council agreement. How that is going to pan out and whether this also has a positive impact on the quality of the local democracy, will have to be proven by Van Kalken’s research.
- PhD student
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Read the full interview in VNG Magazine here (in Dutch).
Lianne van Kalken is a PhD candidate at Erasmus Graduate School of Law, under the supervision of Evert Stamhuis, Professor of Law and Innovation at Erasmus School of Law, and Geerten Boogaard Thorbeckeprofessor at Leiden University.