College van Burgemeester en Wethouders
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In the Netherlands, the upper council of a municipality is called the College van Burgemeester en Wethouders (College van B&W for short), or Board of Aldermen. It consists of the government appointed mayor (burgemeester) and the aldermen (wethouders).
Aldermen are elected by the City Council. City council members all have their own portfolio on which they prepare, coordinate, and plan policy and legislation for the Council and carry out legisation. The Board of Aldermen have the duty to report to the City Council on all aspects of their policy. Functioning as a board, most decisions are made by consensus. An alderman will lose his position if the city council adopts a motion of no-confidence against him.
The aldermen can be appointed in two ways: as part of either a program council ("programcollege") or mirror council ("afspiegelingscollege"). A program council is based on a clear political program and a majority in the town legislature whereas a mirror council represents all (major) parties represented in the town legislature. Until 1970, all municipalities were mirror municipalities, since then and especially after the cohabitation in municipal politics most aldermen boards have become programmatic. Those executives often include two or more parties with ideological links. For example, from 2002 to 2006, the council of Rotterdam included the CDA, the liberal VVD and the local Leefbaar Rotterdam. The social-democratic PvdA, the second largest party of Rotterdam, was kept out of the council because of ideological conflicts with Leefbaar Rotterdam. The same happened in Groningen where a left-leaning council was appointed on 26 April 2006. It consists of the PvdA, the socialist SP and the green Groenlinks.
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