Formally, the Constitution in force today is still the Grondwet for the Kingdom of the Netherlands of 1815. In practice, however, the document is often referred to as the ‘Constitution of 1848’ or as the ‘Constitution of 1983’. These two years saw constitutional amendments so far-reaching that they effectively produced new constitutional texts.
The 1848 amendment, to which King William II agreed in the face of Europewide revolutionary movements, marked a decisive step towards a reduction of the personal powers of the monarch to the benefit of parliament. Among other things, political responsibility for government policy was allocated with the ministers, rather than with the King. Gradually, and over a series of political incidents in the middle of the 19th century, this led to a disengagement of the King from active politics. Ministers became more independent vis-a-vis the crown. Crucially, parliament was able to hold ministers to account for their policies, and it became a conventional rule that ministers must resign if they lost parliamentary confidence (see Chapter 5). Thus, the 1848 reform provided the foundation of a parliamentary system.
The same reform introduced direct elections to the Second Chamber; the provincial assemblies went on to elect the First Chamber, so that the members of the First Chamber were no longer appointed. The statesman Johan Rudolph Thorbecke is considered the drafter of the 1848 reform, and thus the ‘founding father’ of the modern parliamentary democracy in the Netherlands. The 1983 amendment, meanwhile, was a general overhaul, designed above all to update and clarify the structure and language of the Constitution. Yet again, technically the document in force is still the (heavily amended) Constitution of 1815.
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Source: Author(s): Aalt W. Heringa & Philipp Kiiver
