Founded in 2019, the agrarian populist Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB) has emerged as a political force in Dutch politics: In 2021 it won its first seat in the lower house of the Dutch parliament. Since then, it has been on a rollercoaster: it became the largest party in every Dutch province in the 2023 provincial election and after expanding its representation in the Dutch lower house, it entered government. Because of its meteoric rise, little is known about this party and its supporters. The central question of our paper is: What kind of voters support this party?
We look at three explanations: firstly, the BBB could mobilize voters with their agrarian message, primarily focused on the interest of farmers (as opposed to nature) in a debate about environmental politics. Secondly, the BBB could mobilize voters on the basis of feeling of regional resentment. They could mobilize voters who believe that politics is focused too much on the interest big cities and not enough on peripheral and rural areas, which would fit wider trend f rural discontent in Europe. Finally, the BBB could mobilize voters with a populist message mixed with agrarianism, mobilizing the normal people in the heartland against urban elites.
This paper dissects the identity of the BBB and its electorate, situating it within contexts of agrarianism, agrarian populism and regional discontent. By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the paper sets out to analyse the party’s platform, rhetoric, and voter base. Specifically, the paper investigates whether the BBB represents a case (or even revival) of agrarianism or agrarian populism, or a novel political phenomenon adapting to 21st-century challenges. In the context of broader European trends, we show that the BBB represents an important case study in understanding how populism can adapt to specific existing cleavages, such as the cleavage between the urban centre and the rural periphery.
