Talk:Municipal politics in the Netherlands

Alderman vs Counciler
I've read through this article multiple times, and still do not understand the difference between the council of aldermen and the general council. When it says that the city council elects alderman, does it mean that they elect them from within their own ranks, or do they/can they elect people not in the city council? This is confusing, as I'm not sure we have anything like this municipal setup in the United States, where many cities have an popularly elected executive and a popularly elected city council with all department heads being chosen from outside of the city council. Is there perhaps anyway this could all be further clarified? --Criticalthinker (talk) 09:28, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have tried to clarify the text. The system is much like parliamentary government where the parliament appoints ministers to implement policy. Aldermen cannot be member of the city council, but many of them are recruited from the city council. (Note this used to be different). See also College van Burgemeester en Wethouders. I hope this helps. C mon (talk) 14:51, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * When they are recruited from the city council, does that mean that the city counciller must first resign, and does that also mean that a special election has to be held to fill that seat? BTW, in most parliamentary-styled governments that I'm familiar with it is the prime minister, not the parliament, that gets to appoint the policy ministers/cabinent. --Criticalthinker (talk) 03:53, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It indeed does mean they have to resign from the city council first. The vacant seat is then filled by the next person on the list of that party, because in municipal elections in the Netherlands, the party list method is used. In the Netherlands, the prime-minister-to-be (in the role of the formateur) forms a cabinet, which has to be approved by the House of Representatives. This is because the Netherlands doesn't have a two party system: in a two party system, one of them gets the majority, so the prime minister can be almost sure he is backed by a majority. You're right that Dutch ministers aren't appointed directly by the parliament, there are negotiations between the formateur and leaders of parties he wants to form a coalition with (those leaders are in the parliament), about which ministers are suitable. Mtcv (talk) 14:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Part of the problem is the extremely confusing use of the term "alderman" in this articles (and other articles). I'm going to amend this article to improve this aspect of it. This the translation given for wethouder in Van Dale, but even Van Dale explains that the term alderman is not used anymore in the UK. In the US it is used most often to refer to ordinary members of the gemeenteraasd. Schildewaert (talk) 22:55, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Editing requirement
I see that this page requires serious editing for language problems and clarity. Also, the terms used in English are not really that clear or even correct. I'm going to spend time to edit this page over the next few days. Schildewaert (talk) 23:06, 25 September 2009 (UTC)