At the provincial level, choice of sides was driven by the contest for power between members of the Regenten class.

Local groups often simply adopted the opposite position taken by their factional opponents, a reality made more complex by the rivalry between individual provinces.

The supremacy of the provincial States was first defended by François Vranck in his debate with Thomas Wilkes in 1587 during the rule of the Earl of Leicester as governor-general under the English protectorate, and later taken up by Hugo Grotius in his De antiquitate reipublicae Batavicae (On the Antiquity of the Batavian Republic).

[1]: 17 The doctrine of "True Freedom" was expounded by political philosophers like the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt in his "Deduction"[2] and Pieter de la Court in his the Interest van Holland (Interest of Holland) and De stadthouderlijcke regeeringe in Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt (History of the stadholders of Holland and West-Friesland).

In these works the doctrine was extended into a distinctly anti-monarchical and pro-republican direction as a justification for the de facto abolition of the office of stadtholder in most provinces as "superfluous" and "positively harmful to the general welfare.."[3]: 758–790 Some of the most important representatives of the States Party in the history of the Republic were: 1650 1650–1672 1702–1747