Kris Deschouwer

The politics of Belgium

Why Belgium? A Short Political History Territorial Organization and Reorganization Political Parties Voting and Elections The Government The Parliament Policymaking Belgium in the World Still Belgium?

And the peace goes on? Consociational democracy and Belgian politics in the twenty-first century

Belgium has long been considered a copybook example of consociational democracy. In this article we first explore the nature of this ‘old’ Belgian consociationalism. We conclude that consociational decision-making was not a permanent feature of the system, but rather a technique of decision-making at moments where deep conflicts severely threatened the stability or even survival of the political system. Next, we ask whether Belgium can still be labelled a consociational democracy today. If so, one must be aware of the fact that the societal segments are in the first place territorial. It is the federal construction that still displays the typical characteristics of consociational decision-making. However, its stability so far cannot be simply explained by referring to elite attitudes, but rather to institutional features making the absence of a negotiated compromise unattractive to all partners.

Veto Players and Electoral Reform in Belgium

During the past two decades, various attempts have been made to implement changes in the Belgian electoral system. While most of these attempts met with failure, some minor changes were successful. This article considers three cases in depth: demands for the abolition of compulsory voting; the ongoing discussion about splitting the Brussels electoral district according to linguistic lines; and the introduction of an electoral threshold. It demonstrates that legal barriers and veto players are instrumental in explaining the odds that attempts at electoral reform will be successful. Belgiums consociational system does indeed impose the use of supermajorities for some reforms and the in-built obligation of power-sharing grants veto power to major but also to smaller political parties in every language group. The case studies also demonstrate that political parties often fail to estimate in a reliable manner the consequences of reform.

The Rise and Fall of the Belgian Regionalist Parties

Regionalist parties were very successful in Belgium in the 1960s and 1970s. Their impact on the political system was important, since their regionalist agenda has led to a thorough reform of the state towards a federal logic and to a full split of the party system. Yet, today, the regionalist parties are either gone or struggling for survival and for a significant place in the political debate. In this article we describe the spectacular electoral rise of the regionalist parties and the subsequent search for an electoral niche in a party system where all parties are limiting their electoral presence to their own language group and have therefore all become, to a certain, extent regionalist parties.

The Belgian Federation at a Crossroad

In the introduction, the editors present the special issue and, in particular, the issue at stake: the future of Belgian federalism. Despite the agreement on the sixth state reform, four key issues remain for Belgiums future: decision making, distribution of powers, intergovernmental relations and the role of the parties. Drawing on past and present investigations of this topic, they present the state of the federation and, in so doing, they set the stage for the remaining papers.

Coalition Formation and Congruence in a Multi-layered Setting: Belgium 1995–2008

One of the concepts with which the relation between governments at different levels can be analysed is the congruence of the coalitions. This article analyses the dynamics of government formation in Belgium from that perspective. The Belgian case is interesting because the recent decoupling of the electoral cycles from 2003 on allows us to see how the parties are trying to adapt to the possibilities and consequences of incongruence. The Belgian case is also rather exceptional. The absence of state-wide parties makes it indeed impossible for parties to define strategies at one level without assessing consequences at the other level. Congruence then seems to be the preferred strategy, although incongruence can offer interesting opportunities. Smaller parties, however, appear to be unable to play the double role imposed by incongruent coalitions.

Party Strategies, Voter Demands and Territorial Reform in Belgium

This article examines the determinants of the positioning of parties on the question of territorial reform in Belgium. It argues that one cannot explain the high salience assigned to the issue of decentralisation among political parties by looking only at voter demands. Instead, it is the dynamics of party competition that has encouraged parties to adopt an electoral and territorial logic of action. The article shows that the main driver of territorial reform in Belgium has been the continuous relevance of regionalist parties in the Flemish party system, which have compelled mainstream parties to accommodate their demands for territorial autonomy, and, more recently, independence. Regionalist parties have capitalised on a strong sense of Flemish national identity, itself shaped by long-run structural factors. The article also shows that the adoption of an electoral and territorial logic has been strengthened by the split of the Belgian party system and the reinforcement of social cleavages, and, more recently, by the increasing competitiveness of elections and the opening up of party competition at multiple levels.

Drawing Belgium: Using Mental Maps to Measure Territorial Conflict

Governing divided Belgium is not an easy affair. Traditional tools of political research have provided insights about the dynamics of Belgian federalism but they have fallen short in exploring the territorial dimension of the conflict and its political representations within the population. Mental maps, scarcely used hitherto by political scientists, offer an innovative research tool to dig into territorial conflict dynamics since they aim at capturing the mental representation an individual has of a given object or space through the materialization of their representation with a drawing. This article discusses drawings of Belgium made by over 5000 first year higher education students in this country. The drawings confirm the importance of the two most prominent—and thus symbolic—elements of the territorial conflict in Belgium: the internal language border and the position of Brussels. In triangulation with responses to a questionnaire collected simultaneously, the analyses show that differences between the two language groups in Belgium are not very high, but that opposed visions on the country are reflected by those who exclusively identify themselves with Belgium or with Flanders. We state that if used with caution to ensure both internal and external validity, mental maps can prove to be an innovative but robust research tool for the study of territorial conflict broadly speaking. Because of their flexibility and their openness, mental maps capture the shortcuts citizens use to forge their political and territorial representation of their country.

Greens in a rainbow. The impact of the governmental participation of the Green parties in Belgium

1. Comparing Newly Governing Parties 2. The Organizational Costs of Public Office 3. Newly Governing Parties in Italy: Comparing the PDSI/DS, Lega Nord and Forza Italia 4. The Short Road to Power - and the Long Way Back: Newly Governing Parties in the Netherlands 5. Close but no Cigar? Newly Governing and Nearly Governing Parties in Sweden and New Zealand 6. Greens in a Rainbow: The Impact of Participation in Government of the Green Parties in Belgium 7. Moving from Movement to Government: The Transformation of the Finnish Greens 8. Independents in Government: A Sui Generis Model? 9. The Electoral Fate of New Parties in Government 10. Populists in Power: Attitudes toward Immigrants after the Austrian Freedom Party Entered Government

The Life and Death of New Political Parties in the Low Countries

Numerous new parties have emerged since voters became less loyal to established political parties. A number of these survived and have been analysed intensely, especially green and radical right parties; many other new parties disappeared and have been neglected by party research. This article analyses the fate of all 30 political parties that entered parliament in the Netherlands or Belgium between 1950 and 2003. Qualitative comparative analysis is used to identify characteristics of both surviving and disappeared new parties. Conditions related to party origin (roots in civil society, organisational newness, initial programmatic profile) are scrutinised, as are conditions pertaining to the party’s developmental process (party organisational strength and the occurrence of defections or party splits). Surviving parties are characterised by strong, rooted organisations that have not suffered defections. Most disappeared parties lacked a strong organisation and roots and have experienced shocks that they could not absorb. Organisational newness makes new parties vulnerable.