The Belgian Case: Does a contemporary Belgium exist of it is characterised by increasingly significant divergences than convergences? (original) (raw)
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Does Belgium (still) exist? Differences in political culture between Flemings and Walloons
West European Politics, 2006
The emergence of two separate political systems in Belgium is the logical consequence of a gradual cultural and social divergence between Flanders and Wallonia. It is particularly in Flanders that Belgian nationhood is being put under pressure by a subnational identity. At the same time, there are still widespread emotional ties to Belgium, albeit stronger in Wallonia than in Flanders, that act as an important counterbalance to both the social and institutional centrifugal forces. Church involvement was traditionally higher in Flanders, but the stronger decline in the latter region has levelled off this difference. In both regions, the impact of pillarisation on voting behaviour is diminishing. As concerns the attitude towards foreigners, Flemings are more concerned about maintaining their own culture, while the Walloons are more concerned about the alleged economic and social threat. Other differences with regard to values exist, but are relatively small from a comparative perspective.
Belgium: Less than Sum of Its Parts
Belgium has moved from a model to be studied to a counterexample to be avoided. Belgians have superimposed a federal structure on preexisting constitutional compromises between Flemings and French speakers, which has led to a deeply polarized political and social landscape. The combined effect of consociative and federal institutions, along with Belgium’s key role in the European Union, provide much of the context for the Belgian drama. This article examines Belgium’s divisive institutions, such as its linguistically divided political parties, its purely proportional electoral system and its consequential need for coalition governments, its polarized and reductive political debates, its weak federal government, and its divided civil society. It then explores the possibility of Belgium’s units gaining independence within the European context. Finally, it closes with lessons for other divided societies.
The Crisis of Belgian Federalism
When a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves, and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes'.
Fédéralisme Régionalisme, 2019
Despite Flanders is often presented as a handbook example of strong regionalism, the organization of a referendum on Flemish independence has never been on the political agenda. This article explains the reasons for the absence of a self-determination referendum in Flanders and shows that, since the 2000s, the omnipresence of the self-rule issue at the top of the political agenda is not – per se – a direct response to regionalist demands of Flemish voters or the Flemish political class. Instead, it is the consociational features of the Belgian political system that enhance intra-community party competition and contribute to the escalade of inter-community conflicts. This mostly explains the deep constitutional crises of the late 2000s and early 2010s. In this context, we can better understand why Flanders independence is supported neither by a majority of the population (9.5 percent), nor its representatives (except those belonging to one of the two regionalist parties, N-VA and VB).
The Opportunities and Limits of Regional Policy-Making - some Critical Remarks on the Belgian Case
In our paper, we deal with the dynamic and consequences of the federal structure and the dual party system for the policy capacities of Flanders, one of the three regions in the Belgian federal state. Since 1993, the Belgian constitution officially states that Belgium is a federal state. The process of state reform began in 1970, after the birth of linguistic parties in the sixties. One of the main characteristics of the Belgian party system is the absence of Belgian political parties and the asymmetry of the regional party systems. The specific functioning of political parties in ‘Belgium’, in other words in its regions, has some important consequences for the scope for policymaking of those regions. The differences between the regional party systems are the product of the region-specific social and economical features. In spite of the unequal economic performance of the two main regions, the ‘high speed’ North and ‘slow speed’ South, and the different economic challenges and possi...
Belgium: from federalism to confederalism or to a Big Bang in 2014
Revista Cuadernos Manuel Gimenez Abad, 2012
In a previous contribution to this journal, we presented the long road from the unitary francophone dominated state to the establishment of a fully fledged federal state in 1993. In this article, we will present the evolution of the community conflict with a focus on the last decade. We will identify the factors that fuelled the conflict, its main actors and major accommodation policies in terms of state reforms towards federalism, and beyond.
Federalism and the Sustainability of Belgium
2010
between north and south, but past crises had been quite successfully accommodated in the traditional consociational way. 1 The unitary state was transformed comparatively rapidly into a fully fledged federal state. This radical transformation was achieved by entirely peaceful and constitutional means, in spite of some periods of heated mass mobilization by both camps. So what happened to the almost genetic sense of compromise of the Belgians, so much appreciated in EU circles? Second, in spite of the fact that the centreperiphery cleavage between Flemish and Francophones had been reversed by the 1960s, the Flemish conquest of the Belgian state did not deradicalise Flemish calls for further self-government. This challenges the hypotheses that devolution may reduce calls for further self-government. 2 Finally, the deep community conflict in the "heart of Europe", in an interface zone between "Latin" and "Germanic" cultures 3 , seems anachronistic given the dominant post nationstate Zeitgeist induced by European integration and globalization. The heated conflict currently driven by socioeconomic differences in a relatively rich area of the EU certainly challenges integrationist calls for an "ever closer union of peoples of Europe" (preamble of the European Draft Constitution). Given the complexity and changing nature of the community conflict in Belgium and federal adaptation, for analytical clarity we will divide our presentation into three phases, and for each phase we identify the factors that fuelled the conflict, 1 "Belgium can legitimately claim to be the most thorough example of consociational democracy, the type of democracy that is most suitable for deeply divided societies"; see Arend Lijphart (ed.), Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium: The Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society
Nationalist versus regionalist? The Flemish and Walloon movements in Belle Époque Belgium
Region and state in nineteenth-century Europe : nation-building, regional identities and separatism / Augusteijn, Joost [edit.]; e.a. - ISBN 978-0230313941 - Basingstoke, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012, p. 209-226 , 2012
Scholars often situate the difference between regional(ist) and national(ist) movements in the latter's search for sovereignty and complete independence and in its more historicist, ethnocultural and territorialised nature. Using the Belgian case, this chapter argues that this distinction is hard to ascertain in practice because both types of movement may don each other's characteristics to various degrees. The only 'hard' distinguishing factor often turns out to be their 'self-description', whether they term themselves 'national(ist)' rather than 'regional(ist)' or vice versa. As both types of movements may or may not invoke separatism, the latter term does not necessarily clarify the conceptual vagueness. Both the Flemish and Walloon movements developed out of Belgian nationalism, rather than being Ancien Régime remnants of some older regional configurations. The Flemish movement explicitly described itself as 'national' while its Walloon counterpart chose 'regional' to label itself. To an important extent the ‘wallingant’ desire to clearly distinguish itself from the ‘flamingants’ inspired this self-description. In the Belgian case the Belle Époque is a significant turning point in the development of regional(ist) and/or national(ist) movements. The conflict between the Flemish and the Walloon movements came to the fore for the first time. Up to the 1880s the Walloon movement had been a folkloric and cultural concern linked to the Walloon dialects. Afterwards it became a francophone Belgian-nationalist protest movement against the ‘flamingant’ language demands. ‘Wallingants’ believed that the Flemish movement threatened the linguistic and symbolic unity of the Belgian nation. Up to the Second World War we therefore might describe Walloon regionalism as a form of 'residual' Belgian nationalism. After the 1880s, the Walloon movement's cultural interest in folklore and dialects was channelled into a new direction. The themes and tropes of the older cultural movement were reappropriated and redefined. The Walloon dialects, for instance, were reinterpreted as proof of the perennial Latin nature of Wallonia. The distant past was gleaned to find evidence of the resistance of Walloons against Germanic intrusions. In the process the Walloon movement not only developed a highly historicist, ethnocultural and territorialised discourse, it also donned itself with the outer trappings of a national movement (a flag, emblem, motto and holiday). Sovereignty was not a popular demand of ‘wallingants’ before the First World War, but neither was it among ‘flamingants’. Scholars agree that neither seriously challenged the unity of the Belgian fatherland during the Belle Époque. What was also lacking to qualify the Flemish movement unhesitatingly as nationalist was an unequivocal link between the Flemish soil, language and people. Prior to 1914 many ‘flamingants’ still believed in the bilingual (Dutch-French) nature of Flanders and they did not question Belgium's right to existence. This all points to the difficulty of disentangling regions/regionalism from nations/nationalism. Their extremes can be clearly distinguished from one other, but there is a considerable 'grey area' where both fuse. Regardless of whether we term the Flemish and Walloon movements nationalist or regionalist, the fact remains that in Belgium - as opposed to the situation in other European countries - only two opposing language groups of roughly the same size emerged, with all the inherent potential of total antagonism. In Germany, Spain and France, all regional movements were movements of a comparatively small demographic minority. Another difference in the Belgian case is the firm left-wing grounding of the Walloon movement (as opposed to, for instance, the more rightist French regionalisms). This was a direct result of the Belgian political landscape that put a conservative-voting Flanders in opposition to a more progressive-leaning Wallonia. With all the previous qualifications, remarks and criticisms in mind, this chapter suggests a broad characterisation of regionalism in which its relationship to nationalism is stressed. Considering that both phenomena are clearly interrelated and climaxed during the Belle Époque, we might define regionalism as the work of dissatisfied local elites that were at the margins or left out of stronger national movements or dominant nation-building efforts. As the latter had already laid a solid claim to the epithet 'national', these 'regionalists' vied for influence by emphasizing their region while at the same time upholding the one and only fatherland.