The States General of the Netherlands ( ) is the supreme bicameral legislature of the Netherlands consisting of the Senate ( 'First Chamber') and the House of Representatives ( 'Second Chamber'). Both chambers meet at the Binnenhof in The Hague, the oldest parliament building in the world still in use.
The States General originated in the 15th century as an assembly of all the provincial states of the Burgundian Netherlands. In 1579, during the Dutch Revolt, the States General split as the northern provinces openly rebelled against Philip II, and the northern States General replaced Philip II as the supreme authority of the Dutch Republic in 1581. The States General were replaced by the National Assembly after the Batavian Revolution of 1795, only to be restored in 1814, when the country had regained its sovereignty. The States General was divided into a Senate and a House of Representatives in 1815, with the establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. After the constitutional amendment of 1848, members of the House of Representatives were directly elected, and the rights of the States General were vastly extended, practically establishing parliamentary democracy in the Netherlands.
Since 1918, the members of the House of Representatives have been elected for four years using party-list proportional representation, while the 75 members of the Senate are elected by the States-Provincial every four years. On exceptional occasions such as the opening of the Parliament on the third Tuesday in September, or when an regent needs to be appointed if an heir to the crown is a minor as stipulated by the Constitution or the Charter for the Kingdom, the two houses form a joint session known as the United Assembly of the States-General (verenigde vergadering). The president of the Senate serves as President of the States General during a United Assembly.
Etymology
The archaic Dutch word staten originally related to the feudal classes ("estates", or in Dutch) in which medieval European societies were stratified; the clergy, the nobility and the commons. The word eventually came to mean the political body in which the respective estates were represented. Each province in the Habsburg Netherlands had its own staten. These representative bodies (and not their constituent estates) in turn were represented in the assembly that came to be known as (a plurale tantum), or (General States). The English word "states" may have a similar meaning as the Dutch word staten, as in e.g. States of Jersey. The English phrases "States General" is probably a literal translation of the Dutch word. Historically, the same term was used for the name of other national legislatures as, for example, the Catalan and Valencian Generalitat and the Estates General of France during the Ancien Régime.
Several geographic place names are derived from the States General. In 1609, Henry Hudson established Dutch trade in Staten Island, New York City and named the island after the States General. Isla de los Estados, now an Argentine island, was also named after this institution, the Spanish name being a translation of the Dutch name. Abel Tasman originally gave the name Staten Landt to what would become New Zealand. Staaten River is a river in the Cape York Peninsula, Australia.
History
Burgundian and Habsburg rule
Historically, the convocation of the States General consisted of delegates from the States of the several provinces, like the States of Brabant, and dated from about the middle of the 15th century, under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy. The first important session was the Estates General of 1464 that met on 9 January 1464 in Bruges, Flanders, on the initiative of the States of Holland, the States of Flanders, and the States of Brabant, with the initially reluctant agreement of Philip the Good.
This was a confederation in which most government functions remained with the provincial States (and local authorities, like the Vroedschappen). These delegated representatives to the States General as a kind of ambassadors acting with a mandate limited by instruction and obligatory consultation (). The States General, in which the voting was by province, each of the seven provinces having one vote, took on many executive functions after the Council of State of the Netherlands had temporarily come under English influence, due to the Treaty of Nonsuch. The States General for this reason since 1593 remained continually in session until their dissolution in 1795. The presidency rotated weekly among the senior representatives of the provinces. Under the Union of Utrecht treaty the States General formally was the sovereign power, representing the Republic in foreign affairs and making treaties with foreign monarchs.
Due to the vagaries of the Eighty Years' War in which territories were lost and (partially) reconquered, not all territories that had originally signed up for the Union of Utrecht remained represented in the States General. The States of Brabant and of Flanders lost their representation after 1587 as most of their territory had been conquered by the Army of Flanders, and it was not restored after part of that territory (together with parts of the Duchy of Limburg) was reconquered by the Dutch Republic. The Drenthe territory was never directly represented in the States General.
Twenty per cent of the new Republic's territory, known as the Generality Lands, was so under the direct rule of the Generality ().
Kingdom of the Netherlands
The name was resurrected in the title of subsequent Dutch parliaments in and after 1814, after the end of the annexation to the First French Empire by Napoleon I of France in 1813. These had, however, little resemblance to the States General under the Republic. Beginning with the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands the States General was a unicameral legislature, without executive functions, in which the 55 representatives no longer represented the States-Provincial (though those newly constituted entities elected them, now acting as electoral colleges), but the entire people of the Netherlands and without (the Netherlands had become a unitary state under the Batavian Republic and the federal structure of the Dutch Republic was not restored). The States General became a bicameral legislature under the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, in which the 50 members of the Senate were appointed for life by the new King from the resurrected , representative bodies of the aristocracy, and the 110 members of the House of Representatives (55 for the North and 55 for the South) were elected by the States-Provincial (in their new form).
An important question is whether the relationship between cabinet and parliament should be dualistic or monistic. That is, whether ministers and leaders of governing parliamentary parties should prepare important political decisions. According to the dualistic position, members of parliament of governing parties should remain independent of the cabinet. The term "monism" is used to refer to a stance that important decisions should be prepared by the people of the governing coalition in order to promote political stability.