Is de SGP een niet-democratische politieke partij?

Een van de oorzaken van mijn periode van afwezigheid was mijn deelname aan een intensief studieprogramma in Ankara en het werk daarna aan een essay. Van het essay moesten we een samenvatting maken in de vorm van een column. Ik dacht: waarom zou ik die niet 's op mijn blog publiceren? Bij deze.

Is the Dutch Reformed Protestant Party SGP non-democratic? 

Does the Dutch Reformed Protestant political party SGP exceed the bounds of separation between church and state when its representatives attempt to realize religious ends using generally accepted or mere religious arguments in the parliamentary debate and to be more precise by trying to realize religious ends as such?

In his The Idea of Public Reason Revisited John Rawls discusses this problem where he calls  the ‘bounds’ the ‘proviso’, and in his terms religious ends can be based largely on ‘sources of not only religious but also secular non-political motives’ which he calls ‘comprehensive doctrines’ so let’s see if Rawls can cast light on the matter.

The SGP reasons that neutral debating doesn’t exist. One cannot enter into the public sphere without bringing along one’s belief and the conceptions based on it. Conversely Rawls is very keen on repulsing comprehensive doctrines from the public political forum.

Using the term ‘public sphere’ the SGP refers to the Dutch historically developed practice of negotiation, formally between church and state and contemporarily between religions, secular philosophies and the state. When a Dutch citizen appeals on the separation between church and state then he doesn’t refer to an accomplished legal fact but to good practice.

In the USA, where Rawls was writing, Jefferson’s ideal of a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is supplemented over the years by jurisprudence on the subject. As if meant allegorically Rawls writes about an ‘ideal of public reason’. The public political forum has to be sterile from any expression of whatever doctrine.

Officially in the Netherlands comprehensive doctrines exclusively reach the legislative power because citizens – different from the USA – cannot vote for candidates for the other two powers. This seems easier to oversee but that is not the case due to party politics. Citizens choose candidates for Parliament who are listed as members of political parties and once they are chosen they represent their voters as members of that political party, having its own doctrines expressing its ideology, so comprehensive doctrines are present in the composition of the parliament itself.

On the contrary Rawls calls all three political powers the ‘public political forum’ distinguishing it from public sphere. Within the limiting values ‘equality and freedom of all citizens and deliberative reciprocity’ the proviso can permeate deeply into the parliamentary debate but of course has to be respected in the end. Legislation itself has to be performed in terms of public reason. However, thus a wide range is provided for (adherers of) comprehensive doctrines. Due to the fact that citizens give insight in each other’s comprehensive doctrines in deliberation as well as how these doctrines endorse ‘constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice’ these citizens can – in spite of their opposing comprehensive doctrines yet ‘exercise ultimate political power as a collective body’.

In the Netherlands the principle of separation between church and state actually refers to an accomplished fact of institutional separation. There are no bounds of legal separation between church and state which can be exceeded. Well, the SGP does strive for realization of religious ends using religious and common arguments but they are doing so in the traditional political practice of the Netherlands. So in the end the SGP does in Rome as the Romans do.

There is one fly in the ointment though. The SGP does violate a principle if you define democracy the way Rawls does: ‘the execution of ultimate political power by the people as a collective body’. The SGP on the contrary states that ‘ultimate power does not emanate from the people but from God’. If the SGP means this literally then, in the light of Rawls’ idea of public reason, it disqualifies itself as a democratic party.

Geïnteresseerd in het hele essay? 

Reageer dan via 'reacties'. Voeg je e-mailadres toe en je ontvangt het van me.