Meanwhile.

On wall street, wooden shoe future tumble...

The whole damn government huh?

Anarchy for the NL.
It's coming sometime and wot the hell

I blame the dykes.

It's great that this one is signed off goodnewsfortheinsane.

What a weird bit of news.

Am I alone in not understanding how an entire government could choose to resign, or what would make it do so? Are we talking about a more narrow definition of "government" than the one I'm used to?

I read both of the links in the original post and I still don't get it.

I think it means "government" in the British Parliamentary sense. The head of government resigns, and an election will be announced, to be held in a few weeks.

Let's hope it's catching.

Indeed. In Canada too (fat chance of that happening though).

Yeah, the "government" = the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Now the President will choose a new PM who will attempt to form a new government, possibly with many of the same people, or not. The Dutch are fond of coalition governments that include two or more parties, because they don't have a couple of dominant parties. In this case, there was a coalition, one of the parties quit, and now the remainder don't represent a majority in Parliament. They'll have to recruit a new party, or be replaced by an entirely different coalition.

See Parliamentary system.

There's no real US equivalent, but it's similar to what happens when the majority in a house of Congress changes, and they elect a new Majority Leader or Speaker.

(The green is looking awfully pale today. Hmmm.)

Oh, I was wrong -- the Queen of the Netherlands still has a role and will be the one to initiate the process.