The Failure of Conservative Politics in Belgium

Abstract

Belgium became an independent state in 1830 after a successful rebellion against Dutch rule. It was born a highly centralised and unitary state whose population was made up of two distinct language groups: Dutch (Flemish) speakers in the largely agricultural and Catholic north of the country, Flanders; and French speakers in the relatively industrialised and free-thinking south, Wallonia. Although numerically preponderant, Dutch speakers quickly came to occupy the status of second-class citizens in the new state. While the Constitution granted equal status to both languages, French became the official language of state, a development that reflected both the conviction that political, cultural and linguistic homogeneity was an absolute prerequisite of national unity, and the common acceptance among the country’s social and political elite of the primacy of French. Accordingly, Belgian political life was dominated after independence not by language, but by the longstanding clerical conflict between Catholics and Liberals. Initially, this conflict was suppressed as both sides worked together to consolidate the fragile integrity of the new state. Consolidation was achieved under British tutelage in 1839 and this ‘Union of Oppositions’ weakened and eventually disbanded in the mid-1840s.2KeywordsUnitary StateParty SystemAmerican Political Science ReviewNational UnityFrench SpeakerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.