Not all political parties in the Netherlands have had to make the same hard choices that are analyzed in this book, at least not to the same degree. For example, the Catholic Party and its successor, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), participated in every government coalition between 1917 and 1994. Its Protestant colleagues, who joined in forming the CDA in 1979, were also hardly ever absent. For these parties office was simply taken for granted, not as something about which decisions had to be made. They could rely upon a solid base of support that hardly wavered, whatever policies were agreed upon with their coalition partners. Even after electoral support began to decline in the 1960s, the Christian Democrats controlled enough seats in Parliament so that, given the structure of the party space, no government could be formed without them until the 1990s. It is one of the few parties that for a substantial period really had it all – votes, office, and policy.

Because of the domination of the Christian Democratic parties, most of the other parties were also not faced with difficult choices. Since the introduction of universal suffrage, support for the Liberal Party (or sometimes parties) fell at times to less than 10 per cent of the vote, and the party became content with obtaining office whenever invited by the Christian Democrats to join a coalition. The choices were seldom hard. The numerous smaller parties in the Netherlands have seldom had the opportunity to make decisions concerning office.