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Goodbye, city district councils. You will be missed for at least one unexpected reason - By associate professor Floris Vermeulen
Publication date 16-12-2013
Thirty years ago Amsterdam installed its first city districts. At the highpoint of this era, in 2002, there were 14 city districts (stadsdelen). Each had its own council (stadsdeelraad). And each thus provided a place where Amsterdam politics, with all its ups and downs, became truly local. It might seem strange to an outsider or, for that matter, to an insider to have so many small ‘parliaments’ in a city with less than 800,000 inhabitants. But this won’t be an issue next year.
After the 2014 local elections, the city districts will disappear. The
national government has decided to do away with this neighbourhood form of
politics. Although Amsterdam will not fully comply with the ban – by insisting
on maintaining a ‘light’ version of city districts – the city district councils
will be history.
The question that looms is: will Amsterdam miss them? Debates in Amsterdam
about the councils touch on many subjects. Some reason that they introduce an
unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy. Other say they are a means to bring
politics to the people. Still others claim that they are just providing jobs to
members of the Labour Party. The arguments go on. But I’d like to raise one
issue that has not been discussed so far: that city district councils are a
successful instrument for empower immigrants in our city. Though that was not a
reason 30 years ago to establish them, this effect could well prove valuable in
hindsight.
The political incorporation of immigrants is an important issue. Cities in
Europe and North America are becoming increasingly diverse, with higher
percentages of inhabitants of immigrant background. Amsterdam is no exception to
this trend; for a few years now, the majority of its population has comprised
people of immigrant background. We know from existing research that
incorporating these groups in the local political system is no easy task.
Just take a look at the city councils of a number of major European and North
American cities. You’ll be surprised, if not shocked, by the extremely low
numbers of representatives of immigrant background. There are many reasons for
this, though an important one being that existing local political systems and
parties are often inaccessible to immigrant groups. For the long run, this poses
all kinds of serious problems for these cities; the emergence of second- and
third-generation immigrants does not seem to guarantee any automatic change to
the status quo. Political systems are inert and evolve slowly.
I believe it is no coincidence that the number of local politicians of
immigrant background in Amsterdam has been the highest in Europe and even higher
than some traditionally immigrant cities in the US or Canada. The Amsterdam
political context, in which the city district councils have played a crucial
role, has been favourable for incorporating minorities and newcomers. The
thresholds here were low, as politics was organized to a great extent at the
district level and numerous entry points were available. For this reason alone
the city district councils will be missed, though perhaps even more than we can
presently imagine.
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