Samenvatting

A gradual process of fragmentation is going on in the Dutch political landscape. This article first describes the political fragmentation (the number of parties in the parliament, the popularly elected body) of the Dutch municipalities after the local elections of march 2014. Next the authors address the background factors of political fragmentation. These factors are the task heaviness, the municipal size, the turnout at local elections and the administrative instability. Then they take up the consequences of political fragmentation. A high level of political fragmentation is accompanied by a somewhat higher absenteeism (so there is a little less ‘civil service power’), a somewhat higher debt per capita (so there are somewhat less financial reserves) and lower performance in the area of separate waste collection (an indication of a somewhat lower level of ‘civil society power’). The absence of an above average political fragmentation can be seen as an administrative resource. The hypothesis that municipalities with a higher level of political fragmentation are characterized by a higher number of administrative crises (early retiring administrators) could not be statistically accepted, nor (not yet) rejected.