Sample Chapter

Home , Catholic Party (Belgium), Elio Di Rupo, Frontpartij, Liberal Party (Belgium)

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First edition 2009

This edition published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries

ISBN: 978-1-137-03024-5 hardback ISBN: 978-1-137-02960-7 paperback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

10 9 8 7654321 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

Printed in China

Contents

List of Figures and Tables viii List of Abbreviations and Acronyms xi

1 Why Belgium? 1 Who needs Belgium? 1 Consociational democracy 5 Some kind of federal state 11 Trust and support 12 Plan of the book 15

2 A Short Political History 18 Union and separation of the Low Countries 18 The weight of history 22 1830–1848: Consolidation and ‘unionism’ 26 1848–1893: The social question and the Flemish question 28 1893–1918: The right to vote 32 1918–1945: More consociationalism and territorial division 35 1945–1995: Towards a federal state 38 After 1995: The federation at work 40 Conclusions 41

3 Territorial Organization and Reorganization 45 The steps towards a federal solution 46 The distribution of powers 59 The institutions of the federal state 62 Financing the regions and communities 69 Dealing with conflicts 72 A peculiar federation 74 4 Political Parties 78 The political parties 78 Party organization 102

Party finance 109 Conclusions 112

5 Voting and Elections 113 The electoral system 113 Election results 128 Substate elections 140 Local elections 142 Conclusions 147

6 The Government 148 The procedure at the federal level 149 The role of the King 154 The procedure at the regional level 156 The mechanics of coalition formation 159 A difficult and lengthy process 168 The functioning of the government 170 The survival of the government 173 Governing at the local level 175 Conclusions 179

7 The Parliament 181 Two houses of the parliament 181 The legislative function 186 Controlling the government 191 The use of language 194 The members of parliament 194 The regional parliaments 199 Conclusions 200

8 Policymaking 201 The political parties again 202 Segmental autonomy or pillarization 204 The social partnership 205 The social security system 209 The economic structure 217 The economic policies of the regions 221 Conclusions 224

Contents vii

9 Belgium in the World 225 The world in Belgium 225 Belgium big in Africa 228 Belgium in Europe and Europe in Belgium 233 The substate level abroad 237 Between principles and reality 240 Conclusions 241

10 Still Belgium? 242 Two stories 242 Distrust at the top 247 The uneasy consociation 249 New institutions and capacity for decision-making 252 Still Belgium? 256

Bibliography 261 Index 277

Chapter 1 Why Belgium?

Who needs Belgium?

In December 2011 Socialist Elio Di Rupo took the oath as the new Prime Minister of Belgium. This was a quite remarkable event. For the first time since 1972 a Walloon, an inhabitant of the southern French-speaking region of Belgium, took charge of the federal government. Elio Di Rupo is the son of Italian immi- grants, making him also the first ‘new Belgian’ to achieve the highest executive position. Most important, however, is the fact that it took no less than 541 days to put together his six-party coalition. This is a world record that is likely to remain unbroken for a while, unless of course Belgium breaks it again. The extremely long process of forming a government that started after the federal elections of June 2010 followed quite a few years of turmoil. After a period of relative stability, during which, between 1991 and 2007, four consecutive governments completely fulfilled their four-year mandate, 2007 marked the beginning of a new period of instability and gridlock and fierce discussions about language, territory and even the very survival of the country. The formation of a federal coalition after the elections of June 2007 took had taken 194 days and the government sworn in at the end of 2007 was only a transition cabinet, replaced by a new one in March 2008. Allegations that Prime Minister Leterme had interfered in a law case questioning the way in which the Fortis Bank had been dismantled to avoid bankruptcy forced him to resign in December 2008. He was replaced by Herman Van Rompuy, who handed the position back to Leterme when he was called to become the first president of the European Council in November 2009. But Leterme’s government fell apart in April 2010 after failing to find a solution for the decades-old discussion about the boundaries of the Brussels electoral district. The early elections of June 2010 produced a quite spectacular result. The largest party of the

2 The Politics of Belgium country was now the Flemish nationalist N-VA (Nieuw-Vlaamse Allantie), defending a thorough reorganization of the Belgian federal system into a loose confederation and, in the longer run, into full independence for Flanders. Attempts to form a coalition uniting the Francophone Socialist Party of Di Rupo and the N- VA of Bart De Wever proved extremely difficult. One even wondered whether a federal cabinet would ever be formed and whether Belgium would be able to survive as a country. Newspapers and discussion programmes on radio and television kept voicing strong opinions about the future of Belgium, rang- ing from splitting it up between France and the Netherlands, over the creation of an independent Flanders and a smaller Belgium composed of Wallonia and Brussels, to the fierce and emotional defence of the survival of the country. Voices defending a final post-Belgium solution were stronger in Flanders; voices defending Belgium were stronger in the south and in Brus- sels. The idea of splitting the country was often referred to as Plan B, Plan A being the formation of a government. This was not the first time that existential debates about the very nature of the country had dominated the agenda. The 1970s and 1980s had already been rather difficult, eventually resulting in the transformation of a unitary Belgium into a federal state built on the language communities (and on their disagreement on internal boundaries and on the status of Brussels). Since 1995 Belgium has indeed been a federal state, and for a while that seemed to reduce the intensity of the conflict. But it came back full force. During these years of renewed tensions between the language groups in Belgium, the international press paid more attention than usual to Belgian politics. Many suggested that it might be time for Belgium to call it a day, to end the suffering and to split the country up. ‘Who needs Belgium?’ asked The Economist. This question is not easy to answer. But that is probably the case for most countries in the world. They happen to be on the map as a result of events and decisions that might possibly have been different but which define their very existence. In this chapter and throughout this book we will explain how and why Belgium is quite an interesting country. Obviously it is not its size that makes Belgium remarkable. It is indeed a small country, covering only 32,500 square kilometres and with 11 million inhabitants, hardly more than the population

Why Belgium? 3 of metropolitan Paris or Greater London. It holds 22 of the 736 seats in the European Parliament, or less than 3 per cent of the total number. Yet in the context of the European Union (EU) Belgium is more than just a small country. One could almost say that Belgium’s capital city, Brussels, simply is the EU. Brussels is where important political meetings are organized. Brussels is where the Commission has its headquarters. And Belgian politicians are quite visible in the EU, although they have also sometimes missed a few opportunities to become really big in Europe. Former Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene had strongly impressed his colleagues with the way in which he had chaired the EU in 1993. He was a man who could succeed Jacques Delors as the president of the Commission. However, his outspoken pro-European position did not please British Prime Minister John Major, who vetoed Dehaene’s candidacy in 1994. Former Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is another famous champion for a stronger and more integrated Europe. During his Belgian presidency in 2001 he convinced the European leaders to issue the ‘Declaration of Laeken’ (the location of the royal palace in Brussels), calling for a convention to make the European institutions more efficient, transparent and democratic. Former French president Valéry Giscard-d’Estaing formally chaired the convention, with the more than active assistance of former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato and, again, the Belgian Dehaene. The Constitutional Treaty that resulted from the convention was never ratified, but this did not temper Verhofstadt’s ambitions. He tried to become president of the Commission in 2004, but failed. A few years later he published a rather provocative booklet entitled The United States of Europe (Verhofstadt, 2006). It defends a truly federal Europe, and goes far beyond what is acceptable to many other European leaders. After his term as Belgian Prime Minister he was elected to the European Parliament in 2009, and as group leader of the European Liberal Democrats he never misses an opportunity to vehemently defend his ideal of a more deeply united and federal Europe. Belgian politicians have missed the chance to lead the European Commission, but when the implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 required the appointment of a perma- nent chair of the European Council, the ideal candidate appeared to be the Belgian Christian Democrat and then Prime Minister

4 The Politics of Belgium

Herman Van Rompuy. He is a very experienced politician who reluctantly became Prime Minister after Leterme resigned in 2008. His choice for the role was certainly not based on his wild ideas about the future of the EU, but rather on his – probably typically Belgian – ability to lead negotiations and to reconcile conflicting opinions. Since 2011, the euro and eurozone crisis has given him far more work and a far higher profile than origi- nally expected. Belgium’s colonial past in central Africa is another element that makes the country more visible from time to time. It gives it the ambition to be an active player in the difficult and painful processes of state-building and peace-building in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Its colonial past in that area does give it the experience and expertise to play a meaningful role, but that same colonial past sometimes turns Belgium into a disturbing and not fully accepted partner in the former colonies. Belgian UN troops were in Rwanda when the genocide started in 1994 and they were immediately caught up in the action. Ten of them were killed, which led to the decision to end participation in mili- tary peacekeeping operations in the former colonies. However, it is not primarily its relevance on the international, European or African scene that makes Belgium an interesting country to study. It deserves attention for its domestic politics. Belgium does not feature in many handbooks of political science or comparative politics. The larger countries and important world powers seem at first sight more interesting. And yet there is much to be said about what is going on inside this small country. There are a number of interesting political developments and choices that deserve closer attention. If one wants to understand the origins and working principles of a consociational democracy, Belgium is a good place to start. It is therefore also an interesting example of a segmented society, of pillarization and of strongly developed neo-corporatist interest mediation. It is a real ‘partitocracy’, a system which gives a strong and central position to the political parties that are present in and control almost all aspects of policy-making. If one wants to unravel the logic of a federal state that came into being after a process of decentraliza- tion and devolution, Belgium is a good choice. If one wants to witness the impact of the world economy on a small country and the way in which a small country deals with increasing economic globalization, Belgium is the right place to be. If one wants to

Why Belgium? 5 understand how a deeply divided country can survive but also constantly put itself in question, Belgium is good destination.

Consociational democracy

What is remarkable about Belgium is not that it is a culturally divided society – most of the countries in the contemporary worlds are divided into separate and distinct cultural, religious, or ethnic communities – but that its cultural communities coexist peacefully and democratically. What is more, 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. (Lijphart, 1981b: 1)

The most thorough example is – according to Lijphart – also a very young example, only in place since 1970. Clearly, he refers to the way in which the relations between the language groups have been pacified. The first publications on the working principles and the conditions of consociational democracy in a number of countries – including Belgium – did, however, look back at a much older practice (Lijphart, 1969; Huyse, 1971; Andeweg, 2000). The reason for including Belgium in the category of consociational democracies was then not the way in which relations between the language groups were organized but the way in which Belgian democracy could survive despite deep religious and economic divisions. Belgium was seen as a segmented society (Lorwin, 1966; 1974a; 1974b). This segmentation refers to the existence of a dense network of organizations belonging to the same subculture and almost fully encapsulating its members. Memberships of organizations belonging to the same network thus overlap. The population is neatly divided into separate worlds: the segments or ‘pillars’ of society (Rokkan, 1977; Billiet, 1982; Hellemans, 1990; Andeweg & Irwin, 2005) provide their members with a variety of services, from the cradle to the grave. Societies displaying these deep and institutionalized divisions have a more vulnerable democracy. The deep divisions create a strong centrifugal logic because parties representing the segments in the electoral arena mobilize and support demands for which a common response is difficult to find. Consociational

6 The Politics of Belgium democracy is, then, a set of practices that allow divided and segmented societies to survive. The basic practices are power- sharing between the elites of the segments and segmental autonomy. The latter allows each segment to organize its life and world according to its own principles, and it does away with the need for a common policy that fits all subcultures. Granting and organizing segmental autonomy further reinforces the segmentation, by giving organizations of the pillar network the means to offer state-sponsored services – like education or health care – to their members. Belgium does indeed fit nicely into this crude description of a typical consociational democracy. Its origins can be traced back to the end of the First World War. At that time it had become quite clear that a number of pressing problems lay on the table. Disagreements between the Catholic Church and its organizations on the one hand and defenders of a lay society on the other had already led to harsh conflicts about the way in which the Belgian school system could be organized. The growing labour movement had also claimed better wages and work conditions and, especially, the right to vote. The latter had been granted in a limited way in 1893, and that was enough to bring to the fore a strong Workers’ party built on the network of organizations of the labour movement. The introduction of proportional representation in 1900 made it even stronger. In 1918 King Albert I decided to bring together the leaders of the three political parties – Catholics, socialists and liberals – to discuss the way in which the country would deal with these deep and organized divisions. One of the important decisions was to introduce universal male suffrage for the first post-war elections, even if the constitution did not allow for it. This ‘Pact of Loppem’ (referring to the location of the castle where the King had invited the party elites) can be considered as the starting point of Belgian consociationalism. It introduced the practice that whenever really important matters have to be decided upon, the party leaders of the major societal movements try to find a common agreement. And that agreement involves a mix of subtle compromise for common policies and further granting of autonomy to the segments for policies and services. Giving the societal segments the right to organize their own services with state subsidies was already common practice towards the turn of the century and was very much the result of

Why Belgium? 7 the considerable impact of the Catholic party at that time. Rather than opting for the state to play a direct role, it encour- aged free initiative in the social sector. Health insurance and pensions were offered by private companies who received subsidies from the state. When the Workers’ party became stronger it did not deviate from that logic and organized, for instance, state subsidies for trade unions paying unemployment money to their members (Luyten, 2006). The development of the welfare state, with its system of social security after the Second World War did, then, further contribute to the strengthening and survival of the pillar organizations. The Catholics and the socialists thus created and incorporated a whole range of auxiliary organizations that formed two solid pillars. The Catholic pillar has always had the Church at its centre. It includes a wide variety of organizations that label themselves Catholic or Christian. The Catholic schools are an important part of it and the defence of the Catholic schools in the late nineteenth century was one of the important catalysts for the building of a solid Catholic network of organizations. Further, it includes hospitals, homes for the elderly, youth and sports organizations, banks and insurance companies and a wide range of professional organizations for farmers, industrial workers, civil servants and employers, with many of them also having their own women’s organization. The socialist pillar has been, from its very beginnings, much more party-related. It has no school system, but defends the public state-funded schools together with the Liberal party and pillar. The socialist pillar is simply the network of organizations linked to the socialist labour movement and held together by the Socialist party. There is also a much smaller liberal pillar. The Liberal party is, indeed, not built on a mass movement. There was never the need to unite the movement in strong and mutually linked organizations in order to gain or retain power. However, the party did build links with a number of liberal auxiliary organizations including a (smaller) liberal trade union, a liberal health insurance organization and many liberal cultural and philosophical organizations. The segmentation and pillarization of Belgium is thus built on both religious and social and economic cleavages. Yet the third Belgian cleavage – the division into two language groups – plays

8 The Politics of Belgium a crucial role in the way in which the pillars can function. The Pact of Loppem also had to discuss the demands voiced in the north of the country to have the Dutch language fully recognized as Belgium’s second official language. Indeed, in 1830 Belgium had, de facto, opted for French as the official language. Actually the constitution simply states that the use of language is free. At that time, however, that meant that French would be used, since that was the language spoken by the Belgian elite. And while the principle of freedom of the use of language remains in the constitution, it is very different in practice. From 1918 on, a territorial solution for the use of language was gradually put into place, and the granting of universal male suffrage after the First World War also gave the demographic majority of Dutch speakers more of a say. From 1918 on the problem of the use of language was here to stay. Yet the differences between north and south are not limited to the use of language, and these further differences are translated very clearly in the organization of the pillars. The Catholic pillar was very strong in Flanders, where indeed the vast majority of the population was Catholic and voted for the party-political expo- nent of the pillar. The Socialist party was very strong in the industrial areas of Wallonia, where it rapidly became the over- whelmingly dominant political force. The socialist pillar was thus very strong in Wallonia and quite weak in Flanders. The liberal pillar was weak in both regions. Today these pillars are less important and less integrated than in the early twentieth century, but the pillar organizations are still very visible and do play a role in political decision-making (see Chapter 8 for more details). The first experience with consociational logic in 1918 did, however, not mean that power-sharing between the three parties and their pillars became the normal daily practice. For a few more decades the Socialist party remained a less ‘traditional’ government partner. The full entrance of the Socialist party was achieved during and immediately after the Second World War. The development of the welfare state and of its social security system gave the socialist pillar – especially its trade unions – a secure place in the management of social and economic policies. Consociational techniques were again used in the 1950s, but only after a number of deep crises where attempts were made by the Catholic movement and then by a coalition of liberals and socialists to really ‘win’ the battle in a purely majoritarian way.

Why Belgium? 9

The awareness that the majoritarian strategy would be very disruptive for the country in the end brought the elites of the three parties and movements back to the negotiating table for a consociational compromise. The 1950s in Belgium are a nice illustration of the ‘self-denying prophecy’ identified by Lijphart as one of the mechanisms through which divided societies learn that majoritarian devices should be replaced by consociational techniques (Lijphart, 1969; 1977). Confrontation with the devastating effects of a majoritarian strategy convinced the political elite to change the rules of the game. The first crisis occurred in 1950, when a referendum was organized to decide whether King Leopold III – who was not in the country when it was liberated from German occupation – could return to the country and to the throne. The issue had been poisoning political debate since the end of the war and divided the political landscape into two camps. On the one side there were the Christian democrats who wanted the King to come back. On the other were the socialists and the liberals (and the communists) who believed that the decisions taken by the King under the German occupation did not allow him to return to the throne. The referendum – a purely majoritarian technique – produced a ‘yes’ vote of 57 per cent. But the unequal territorial strength of the two camps meant that the majority had come from the north of the country, while Brussels and (most places in) Wallonia had voted against the return of the King. The King did come back, but after violent riots, where three people were killed, the elites of the three large political movements got together and convinced King Leopold III to leave the throne for his son Baudouin. The winning of the referendum by the Catholic movement had proved to illustrate the fact that a majority is not the best decision-making device in a divided country (Stengers, 1980; Luyckx, 1985; Mabille, 1986; Dumoulin et al., 2006; 2007). Between 1950 and 1958, first the Christian democrats governed alone and when they lost power, an anti-Catholic coalition of socialists and liberals was formed. It tried to promote state-sponsored secondary schools, to the detriment of the Catholic school network. Massive protest by the Catholic pillar did, however, put an end to yet another attempt to play a majoritarian game. A ‘School Pact’ was concluded in 1958, accepting once and for all the presence of both private (that is, Catholic)

10 The Politics of Belgium schools and of schools organized by the public authorities (Tyssens, 1997). This is again a textbook example of the granting of segmental autonomy – let both have the schools of their choice – as a device that avoids the need for one policy for all. The working and evolution of consociational democracy in a country that fits very nicely the patterns described (and prescribed) by consociational theory makes the study of Belgian politics worthwhile, not only because of its historical development, but even more because of its consequences for the current functioning of the political system. The cleavages on which the pillarized organization of Belgian society was built have now been deeply eroded. Yet the weight of the three old political parties – even if they are today all split up along the language divide – is still considerable. Their grip on government, parliament and public administration is deep and solid. Social and economic policies and the management of the welfare state and the social security system have largely devolved to Christian, socialist and liberal pillar organizations. The consociational responses to the old societal divisions have been deeply institutionalized. The old pillar organizations have become part of the state and remain strong and rich thanks to it. The consociational democracy has been transformed into a ‘depoliticized’ or ‘cartel’ democracy, where the practices of consociational democracy are continued in a society that no longer needs these pacifying and protecting devices (Lijphart, 1977). A depoliticized democracy is likely to be challenged and questioned for its lack of debate, flex- ibility and performance. Political movements criticizing the principle of consociational power-sharing, with its blatant lack of alternation in power, might find fertile ground in old consociational democracies. In Austria the grand coalition between the socialist SPÖ and the Christian-democratic ÖVP was one of the targets of the populist FPÖ movement, led by Jorg Haider. Forming that coalition time after time, even if both parties lost at the polls, made it quite easy to question the true democratic nature of consociational Austria (Luther & Müller, 1992). In the Netherlands the elitist and closed nature of the system was one of the central criticisms of D66 (Democraten 66) in the 1960s and even more fiercely so of the Lijst (List) Pim Fortuyn in 2002 (Pennings & Keman, 2003). Belgium is – like Austria and the Netherlands – another country where we can observe this type of challenge to the very heart of the system.

Index

Antwerp consociational democracy 4, city 13, 20, 95–6, 145–6, 167 5–12, 15–16, 35, 38, 55, 76, harbour 28, 218–19, 229, 204, 224, 227, 249–52, 239 256–8 province 46, 114, 120, 177 corporatism 4, 205, 224 Austria 10, 19, 24, 119 Daens, Adolf 33, 80 Brabant Dehaene, Jean-Luc 3, 150, 153, province (Flemish and Walloon) 155, 170, 233 46, 58, 100, 114–15, 128, distribution of powers 59–77, 176 222–3, 239, 253 revolution 19, 24 Di Rupo, Elio 1–2, 84, 99, 153, Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV) 158, 170 51, 54, 114–15, 125–6, 190, 246–7 election results 11, 16, 30, 82, Burundi 4, 35, 193, 225, 227, 84, 88, 99, 128–45, 150, 178, 230–2 183, 250, 255–6 employers’ organizations 7, 38, Catholic party 7, 29, 30, 33–4, 206–9, 223, 239 80, 83, 86, 90, 136 employment 7, 17, 60, 62, 201, Christian democratic parties 210–16, 219–21, 223–4, 242 (CVP/PSC/CD&V/CDh) 3, European Union 1, 3, 4, 17, 40, 9, 10, 13–14, 34, 38–9, 41, 71, 117, 213–20, 228, 233–8, 43, 50, 55, 79–83, 86, 88, 241–2, 253, 257–8 91–2, 101–3, 119–20, 130–1, Eyskens, Gaston 54, 152, 233 133, 141, 144–5, 152–3, export 33, 60, 99, 218–19, 221, 158–9, 164–6, 168 228, 236, 239 cleavages 7, 10, 15, 41, 149, 168, 173n, 204–5 federalism 15, 27, 45–77, 91, clientelism 245 238 coalition agreement 150, 157, First World War 6, 8, 16, 33–4, 159, 170, 173, 178, 180, 189, 83, 90, 155, 225–6, 230 202 Flanders Fields 226 Communist party 36, 79, 85, 89, Flemish Movement 31, 34–5, 39, 133, 152, 163, 167 48, 55, 87, 90, 93, 95, 97 compulsory voting 116–17, 121 Congo 4, 32–3, 35, 40, 155–6, gender quota 116, 126–7, 193, 217, 225–32, 240 198–9

277

278 Index government 127, 129–31, 133–4, 137–9, duration 152–3, 168–9, 174 141–2, 144–5, 149, 152–3, formation 1, 43, 72, 149, 154, 158–9, 162, 164–9, 171, 202, 156–69, 192, 202, 246, 250 223, 235, 246, 250 functioning 170–3 Liège green parties (Ecolo/Agalev/Groen) city 26, 28, 98 14, 16, 43, 79, 85, 88, 96–9, princebishopric 19–20, 27, 47 101–2, 106, 112, 115–16, province 47, 51, 57, 119–20, 119, 122, 130–3, 137–9, 126–7, 190 141–2, 144–6, 150, 153, Lumumba, Patrice 193, 230 161–7, 168–9, 171, 198, 246 Martens, Wilfried 149–50, 153, House of Representatives 26, 30, 174 34, 54, 56, 58, 59, 92, 100, members of parliament 194–8 109, 111–14, 120–2, 125–6, municipalities 27, 30, 50–2, 59, 128, 130, 133, 140, 149–51, 71, 93–4, 100, 114–15, 154–5, 160, 181–92, 194–9, 142–6, 177–9, 215, 248, 251 215, 244 NATO 110, 219–20, 240–1 Kernkabinet 172–4 kings pillarization (pillars, pillar Albert I 6, 36, 155, 227 organizations) 4–10, 13–15, Albert II 155–6, 184, 239 38, 105–6, 134, 204–5, Baudouin 9, 38, 42, 155–6 210–11, 245 Leopold I 23–4, 26, 28, 32, populist radical right parties 155 Front National 95–7, 102, Leopold II 16, 32, 155, 228–9 111, 119, 133, 139, 141, Leopold III 9, 33, 36–8, 42, 145, 149 155, 181 Vlaams Blok, Vlaams Belang role of 154–6 13, 91, 95–7, 102, 106, 111–12, 122, 130–1, language border 39, 43–50, 52, 133–4, 139, 141, 144, 146, 57, 62, 114, 126, 138–9, 169, 149, 157–8, 163, 167–8, 176 234, 246, 258 language facilities 39, 51, 57, 61, preference votes 57, 117–18, 115, 248, 251 121–6, 179 Leterme, Yves 1, 4, 82, 126, proportional representation 6, 153, 158, 170, 215 16, 33, 41, 44, 86, 113–14, liberal parties (LP/PL/PVV/PRL/ 120, 126, 128–31, 136 VLD/MR) 6, 9, 13–14, provinces 19–20, 27, 45–7, 58, 26–30, 33, 38, 41–4, 55, 100, 114, 125, 127–8, 142–3, 78–9, 81, 83–4, 86–9, 92–4, 146, 151, 175–7, 182 98–9, 101–3, 105, 107, 109, public debt 17, 61, 201, 214–16, 113–14, 117, 119, 121–2, 234–6, 243, 253, 259

Index 279 referendum 7, 8, 36, 40, 220 92–5, 98–9, 101–2, 105, 107, regional governments 156–9 109–10, 117, 120, 122, 127, regionalist parties 129, 130–1, 133–4, 136–7, Brussels (FDF) 51, 55, 87–9, 139, 141–2, 144–5, 152–3, 93–4, 101–3, 133, 153, 158–69, 171, 202, 221, 227, 161, 167 245–6, 250 Flanders (Frontpartij/VNV/ social security 7–8, 10, 17, 38, Volksunie/N-VA/Spirit/ 60–2, 179, 201, 209–17, 219, VlaamsProgressieven) 2, 228, 242 36, 39, 55, 82, 85, 88–96, Société Générale de Belgique 102, 106, 112, 120, 122, 217–18, 229–30 130–1, 133, 138, 141–2, Spain 46, 74, 148, 160, 213, 144–5, 153, 158–9, 161–4, 216, 242 168–9, 246–7 successor list 14, 36, 115, Wallonia (RW) 92–3, 99, 133, 117–18, 122–7, 154, 157, 145, 152, 160–1, 167 185, 195, 236 regional parliaments 199–200 Rex 36 trade unions 7–8, 14, 29, 38, Rwanda 4, 35, 186, 193, 225, 83–4, 87, 205–7, 210–11, 227, 230–2 223 trust (in political system) 12–15, school wars 29, 38, 42–3 44, 91, 243, 246–9, 257, 260 Second World War 7–8, 16, 33, 37–8, 44, 47, 80, 83, 85, 90, unemployment 7, 210–13, 129, 163, 205, 210, 217, 225, 219–21, 224 227–9 Union Francophone 127, 130, Senate 26–7, 43, 56, 58–9, 73, 199 76, 109, 112, 120–1, 125–6, United Kingdom 11, 19, 32, 140, 154, 181–90, 193–5, 46–7, 226 198–9, 231 social elections 207–8 Verhofstadt, Guy 3, 13, 87–8, socialist parties (BWP/POB/BSP/ 153, 169–70, 193, 233, 246 PSB/PS/SP/SP.a) 1, 2, 6–10, 13–14, 33, 38–9, 43–4, 50, Walloon Movement 39, 93 55, 57, 66, 78–9, 81, 83–8, White March 14, 245–6