Manu Mus

The Future of Belgian Federalism as Seen Through the Eyes of the Social Partners: A Continuing Obstacle to Social Policy Decentralization?

In this article, we take a look at the discussion on the devolution of social policy. Despite the pressure of strong nationalist movements to decentralize socio-economic matters, the federal welfare state does not erode. In their study up to the early 2000s, Béland and Lecours explain this relative standstill by pointing to the institutionalization of neo-corporatistic organizations. These organizations, which are strongly involved in the management of the welfare state, have not split along language lines and prevent the decentralization of socio-economic policies in order to preserve their power. Based on empirical evidence, this paper shows that federal social partners are an important obstacle to social policy decentralization in Belgium while the regional social partners have differing opinions on the devolution debate.

Perfect match or missing link? An analysis of the representativeness of trade union representatives in Belgium

Insights from the representation literature were applied to industrial relations in order to study the representativeness of union officials. Based on a member-survey in a major Belgian trade union, we found that union representatives mirror quite well their followers in descriptive (except for gender) and substantive terms (issue congruence).