Belgian Federalism Research Articles

The Belgian Climate Case: From Federalism Idiosyncrasies to Arboreal Novelties

Abstract VZW Klimaatzaak v Kingdom of Belgium & Others is a climate lawsuit brought in Belgium in 2015. It was modelled on the famous Dutch Urgenda case. In this groundbreaking judicial procedure, over 60,000 plaintiffs argued that Belgian public authorities have undertaken insufficient climate action and called for its enhancement. On June 17, 2021, the Tribunal of First Instance of Brussels rendered its decision in partial favour of the plaintiffs, consolidating a climate ‘duty of care’ for public authorities. This article puts forward a succinct summary of the complaint introduced by the NGO Klimaatzaak and the main findings of the Tribunal. In doing so, it attempts to make the idiosyncrasies of Belgian federalism intelligible to an international audience. It also highlights a number of notable features of the case, including the Tribunal’s reliance on the Aarhus Convention to interpret broadly the provisions on legal standing for environmental NGOs, and a third-party intervention request introduced on behalf of over a hundred trees with long lifespans. Finally, the article focuses on an apparent flaw in the reasoning of the Tribunal in its 2021 judgment and points out what to look out for in the appeal proceedings that are ongoing at the time of writing.

Belgia jako laboratorium federalizmu bipolarnego

Having moved away from unitarism, Belgium is described as a federal state of communities and regions. A large number of interpreters of the Belgian Constitution believe that federalism is an essential element of its constitutional identity. However, a more detailed analysis is needed to interpret the political system of this state. The breakdown of the unity of the political community at the national level as well as the doubt about the existence of a political nation are of crucial importance. A striking identity and growing separateness of the two linguistic groups, Flemish and Walloon, are decisive factors behind the originality of the political system of modern Belgium. In the article, I point out that the distinctive feature of the Belgian federalism involves the bipolarity and domination of the constitutional mechanism based on co-determination and co-operation of the two linguistic groups as the actual subjects of the power in the state. The predominance of this mechanism has significant systemic effects, including the renunciation of reforms to rationalize parliamentarism. The article also shows the importance of the Constitutional Court, hitherto underestimated, in maintaining the Belgian unity.

Representation in demoicracies. Contributions from Belgian federalism to the future of Europe

AbstractThis contribution assesses representation in the EU through the lens of demoicracy, focusing on how the demos and the demoi are represented and how this interacts with the executive‐legislative balance and party politics. As the Belgian polity is a living case for the EU but often as flawed as the latter when it comes to democratic standards of representation, we examine whether and how reform proposals for the Belgian polity can inspire future reforms at EU level. We demonstrate that the direction demoicracies should head for when strengthening democratic representation should include a balanced representation of the demos and demoi via a bicameral system, a polity‐wide constituency to represent the demos, involvement of the legislatives of the constituent units at the encompassing level, and a specific role for polity‐wide parties.

Бельгия на пути к конфедерации: проблемы и перспективы

The article is about the Belgian federal system transformation, as well as the factors that aggravate or, on the contrary, restrain the centrifugal trends in the country. The specific nature of Belgian federalism determines its evolution from federation to confederation, but the answer to the question about the prospects of this transformation remains open. On the one hand, the Belgian Kingdom history, its geographical location, as well as economic and cultural-linguistic features predetermined the existence and deepening of dividing lines between the two main ethnic communities in the country – the Walloons and the Flemings. Decentralization, as a response to the aggravation of interethnic contradictions, allows political elites to partially control the process and minimize, as far as possible, the costs of this conflict of interest for the economy and the population, but at the same time, it feeds centrifugal tendencies. Reforms do not remove the problem of separatism from the agenda, but, vice versa, give the regions and communities all the necessary resources, reducing the central authorities’ competences. Each reform creates the basis for the next redistribution of power. The logic of the decentralization process predefines the dual, asymmetric, dissociative and improvisational nature of the federal system of Belgium, and contributes to its extreme complication. The main drivers of centrifugal tendencies remain Flemish nationalists when the institutions and mechanisms designed to unite the country do not function effectively enough. On the other hand, the scenario of a complete collapse of the Belgian federation is not something predetermined and inevitable. There are still internal and external factors unifying Belgians (the Senate, the King, the absence of a provision for a national referendum in the constitution, a special place in the federation of the Brussels-Capital region, the country’s membership in the EU), but their influence on the entire system is gradually decreasing. Belgium’s active participation in the European integration contributing to creation of a highly developed modern economic system and high living standards, as well as stable GDP growth (with exception of crisis periods), play an important role in stabilizing the Belgian federation. So, the European Union prevents a rapid development of separation process, but does not change its main trends. The EU accompanies the Belgian federal system transformation, in order to reduce its costs for society and the European integration, but does not set the task of inversing its evolution. At the same time, the unstable political situation in the country has a certain negative impact on the European integration, exacerbating the complexity of the decision-making process within the EU. The coronavirus pandemic became a catalyst for controversial political processes in Belgium, brought renewal of the social and environmental contract and a new view of European solidarity. However, the pandemic highlighted the main shortcomings of the existing federal system. The dissociation of the federation and its drift to a confederation is a peaceful and slow process, but the country’s unifying factors are gradually eroding. It is not yet clear whether and when a full-fledged confederate system will be created and the separation will be stopped, or whether the confederation will become the next stage on the Belgium’s way to the final division. It is impossible to completely exclude a rollback scenario of the strong federation restoration while reducing competencies of regions and communities, but it is obvious that its probability is extremely small.

High-stakes crisis management in the Low Countries: Comparing government responses to COVID-19

Like many Western European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands have been strongly hit by COVID-19. Almost simultaneously, the virus spread, caused a relatively high number of infections and severe lockdown measures were imposed; however, at the same time, the crisis management response has been sufficiently different to justify a systematic comparative analysis. We start with the premise that decisions made on the basis of incomplete information show the true nature of governments’ response to a crisis, which is conditioned by legacies arising from the past and organizational cultures, existing and new governance structures, and strategies used by specific actors. We show that the difference in crisis management echoes the countries’ different types of consociationalism, though also that Belgian federalism and Dutch decentralism impeded a truly coherent response. The cost of coordinating different government levels made a uniform approach difficult too. Actor strategies attempting to exploit the crisis seem to have influenced the response the least but did have an impact on perceptions of the response.Points for practitionersThe article unravels how the governments in the Low Countries responded to the COVID-19 challenge in the first half of 2020. It allows practitioners to better understand that under circumstances of an imminent crisis, specific governance structures matter. It also reveals that the cost of coordination between the federated and the federal level turned out to be quite high in Belgium. In the Netherlands, a lot of autonomy was left to federated and local authorities. This too impeded a more coherent approach. COVID-19 certainly offers possibilities for policymakers to exploit the crisis but opportunities are not always taken.

Belgian Federalism: Threats to Integrity

In the era of globalization, economically prosperous democracies are increasingly confronted with the problem of maintaining territorial integrity. The desire to gain independence, isolation, self-identification is a defensive reaction to the rapid integration processes that lead to increased migration flows, erosion of national identity. One of the effective ways to counter such destructive processes in multi-ethnic and multi-religious states is the formation of a federal form of government. However, the very nature of federalism often contains a number of threats that lead to the destruction of territorial integrity. This article analyzes the formation and development of the federalization process on the example of Belgium in order to identify threats and risks of the development of federalism. The main centrifugal and centripetal forces stimulating the development of contradictions in Belgian society are given. The author concludes that at present, the key factor in the emergence of the crisis of federalism is the presence of significant economic imbalances between the regions. The author proposes to introduce special economic zones to attract investment flows to the regions taking into account their characteristics, as well as to reform the existing model of federalism based on regional competition into federalism aimed at encouraging cooperation between regions, linguistic communities and institutions of federal and local authorities.

Changing your political mind: The impact of a metaphor on citizens’ representations and preferences for federalism

ABSTRACTFederalism is often presented through metaphors, but little is known about the impact of such metaphors. Two experiments were conducted in Belgium presenting federalism as Tetris – with control and treatment groups – in order to grasp the influence of this metaphor. The first experiment reveals that being exposed to text with the Tetris metaphor influences respondents’ representations of federalism towards a more institutional representation and towards more regional autonomy. The second experiment confirms the importance of the text, and more specifically of the metaphor, if political knowledge is taken into account. Respondents with a lower level of political knowledge are those who are influenced by the metaphor, whereas respondents with a higher level are not. Therefore, framing the future of Belgian federalism using the metaphor of Tetris does matter: it affects both individuals’ representations of the federalization process and, consequently, their preferences vis-à-vis the institutional future of the country.

Techniques for Protecting Minority Languages under Belgian Federalism

As one of the few countries in the Council of Europe, Belgium has, to date, not ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as well as the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Nevertheless, minorities are protected in Belgium due to its specific federal structure. Several instruments provide a balance between the two major language groups in the country: the Flemish and the French-speaking language group. This article focuses on these special techniques and situates them in the historical and specific judicial background of Belgium.

Folle machine ou solide relation « living apart together » ?

Cet article propose une analyse quantitative et qualitative de l’emploi des metaphores dans le discours politique citoyen. Basee sur des donnees issues de focus groups organises a la fois dans les communautes francophones et neerlandophones de Belgique et portant sur la perception citoyenne du federalisme, notre etude suggere que les citoyens ont frequemment recours aux metaphores quand ils parlent de processus politiques complexes, notamment pour expliciter leur(s) perceptions de ces processus. Parmi les domaines conceptuels mobilises, il apparait en outre que le domaine de la famille joue un role preponderant dans les perceptions citoyennes du federalisme belge.

The “Belgian Tetris”

As metaphors not only reflect perceived reality, but can also function as cues through which citizens come to understand complex political processes, the aim of this study is to look at how specific metaphors might impact on the citizens’ framing of Belgian federalism. To measure the impact of metaphors on political representations, we conducted an experiment among 493 citizens based on an article published in the newspaper “Le Soir”, in which Belgian federalism was compared to a Tetris game in both a text and an image. The participants were distributed across four experimental conditions according to the type of input they had been exposed to (text and image, text only, image only, no input) and were asked to perform a free description task. The productions of the participants were analyzed using keyword and content analyses. The results suggest that the participants who had been exposed to the experimental text tended to frame their perception of Belgian federalism in different ways. They also show that reading the text had more of an impact on the representations than looking at the image, but that this impact was in both cases short-lived.

Belgian Federalism after the Sixth State Reform

Abstract This paper highlights the most important institutional evolutions of Belgian federalism stemming from the implementation of the sixth state reform (2012-2014). This reform inter alia included a transfer of powers worth 20 billion euros from the federal level to the level of the federated states, a profound reform of the Senate, and a substantial increase in fiscal autonomy for the regions. This contribution critically analyses the current state of Belgian federalism. Although the sixth state reform realized important and long-awaited changes, further evolutions are to be expected. Since the Belgian state model has reached its limits with regard to complexity and creativity, politicians and academics should begin to reflect on the seventh state reform with the aim of increasing the transparency of the current Belgian institutional labyrinth.

Combining Federalism with Consociationalism: Is Belgian Consociational Federalism Digging its Own Grave?

Belgian consociational federalism is often praised for its ability to deal peacefully with the country's internal divisions. Nevertheless, recent political stalemates raise the question: Is Belgian consociational federalism digging its own grave? This article argues that granting segmental autonomy effectively accommodates political conflicts that are currently on the agenda, but renders the process of intersegmental conflict accommodation increasingly more difficult in the long run. More specifically, federalism undermines the problem-solving capacity of the other power-sharing mechanisms in three ways: (1) it increases demands for more autonomy, (2) it decreases the potential for package deals and (3) it lowers the costs of non-agreements which induce a political stalemate. These evolutions are often overlooked, but go to the heart of the impasse Belgian politics has recently experienced.

Economic aspects of constitutional change: the case of Belgium

Is Belgium threatened by secession? In this article we highlight why Belgium is unlikely to experience the secession of Flanders and investigate Belgium’s journey to federalism. We first call upon tools provided by economic theory. Then we turn to facts,first having a look at Belgium’s history and second presenting the six reforms of the state which occurred between 1970 and 2013, progressively increasing the autonomy of Belgian regions and communities and making Belgian federalism an evolutionary, maybe endless, repeated game whose players have different strategies: an offensive one for the north and a conservative one for the south. Then we examine the contemporary dangers and discuss the outcome of Belgian game from the point of view of fiscal federalism and subsidiarity.

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.

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 Belgium's 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.

The Future of Belgian Federalism: An Analysis of Party Preferences

This article studies the political discourses regarding the future of Belgian federalism since the year 2000. Analysing party manifestos, it intends to identify patterns of preferences about the long-term evolution of Belgian institutions and the distribution of competences. The quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that the systemic duality of Belgian federalism largely explains the preferences of political actors: French-speaking parties overall oppose the broad state reform that the Dutch-speaking parties collectively support. Yet, each party has a specific position on the decentralization cleavage and a vision of Belgian federalism that cannot be reduced to its linguistic affiliation.

The Future of Belgian Federalism Through the Eyes of the Citizens

How do Belgian citizens see the future of federalism? In the typical consociational Belgium citizens have not had much to say about the federalization process, which has been largely elite-driven. And actually not so much is known about the future of Belgian federalism through the eyes of the citizens. Survey research shows some differences in identity and in institutional preferences between the two language groups, but also a low salience of the issue when they cast a vote. This article, therefore, looks at alternative methods to capture the perceptions of the citizens: focus groups, deliberative experiments and mental maps.

Conclusion: The Future of Belgian Federalism—Between Reform and Swansong?

This article summarizes the main arguments of the special issue. It also probes into the deficiencies of the Belgian federal system and argues that the most recent crisis of Belgian federalism (2007–11) is not the result of rising socio-economic differences between Flanders and Wallonia, but the consequence of building a bipolar federation on to a split party system. The article concludes by identifying some potential roadmaps (federal reform, confederalism, and the referendum) for the future.

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.

Bipolar Federalism and the Social Welfare State: A Case for Shared Competences

Comparative studies on the organization of the welfare state in federal systems have referred to Belgium as a model for future federalism, because of its devolutionary nature. In reality, its dyadic or bipolar nature turns Belgian federalism into a unique and highly unstable experiment. However, as long as Brussels obstructs the exit option, the two linguistic groups are doomed to coexistence. Therefore, for Belgium more so than for any other devolutionary state, accommodating both centrifugal dynamics and the need for cohesion is vital. We argue that although dual federalism, including the equality of federal and sub-federal entities and the exclusive allocation of powers, typifies bipolar federal states, a system of shared powers is more suitable when it comes to matters related to social security.