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![Azure, billetty Or a lion with a coronet Or armed and langued Gules holding in his dexter paw a sword Argent hilted Or and in the sinister paw seven arrows Argent pointed and bound together Or. [The seven arrows stand for the seven provinces of the Union of Utrecht.] The shield is crowned with the (Dutch) royal crown and supported by two lions Or armed and langued gules. They stand on a scroll Azure with the text (Or) "Je Maintiendrai" (French for "I will maintain".)](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/State_coat_of_arms_of_the_Netherlands.svg/300px-State_coat_of_arms_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png)
This article lists political parties in the Netherlands, which has a multi-party system with numerous political parties, in which any one party has little chance of gaining power alone, and parties often work with each other to form coalition governments.
The lower house of the legislature, the House of Representatives, is elected by a national party-list system of proportional representation. There is no threshold for getting a seat, making it possible for a party to get a seat with only two-thirds percent of the vote—roughly one seat for every 67,000 votes.
No party has won a majority of seats since the election of 1894,[1] and no party has even approached the seats needed for a majority since the current proportional representation system was implemented in 1918. All Dutch governments since then have been coalitions between two or more parties. However, there is a broad consensus on the basic principles of the political system, and all parties must adjust their goals to some extent in order to have a realistic chance at being part of the government.
