This is not a federation

Five hundred and forty-one days. Belgium was certainly not experiencing its first political crisis, but the crisis that followed the elections of June 2010 was one for the books, if only because of its length. What is the nature of Belgian federalism today? How has it changed? What is it becoming? “Belgian federalism”, a work co-directed by the political scientist Geoffroy Matagne, analyzes the singular politics of “le plat pays”.

“Your Highness, there are no Belgians; there are only Walloons and Flemings”. In 1912, back when Belgium was an undivided State, politician Jules Destrée wrote about the emerging linguistic tension between the northern and southern parts of the country. His famous letter to King Albert I still seems applicable 101 years later. That is no doubt because during the intervening century there have been six different reforms applied to the Constitution (occurring between 1970 and 2012), but they have not succeeded in solving the communitarian problems that remain, sometimes bubbling beneath the surface, sometimes in full view…

Political crises followed the elections of June 2007 and also the elections of 2010; these are only the latest examples. But they are extreme examples, because it took 194 days (beginning in 2007) to form a government with full powers – a government that would finally fall because of a dispute over the matter of the separation of the BHV (Brussels-Hal-Vilvoorde) arrondissement. Following that event, 541 additional days were required to resolve the impasse created by the elections. This kind of thing had never been seen before. 

Two consecutive periods of upheaval could not be overlooked by political scientists. Furthermore, federalism Belgian style, a sort of UFO in comparison with other political systems in the world, has not often been analyzed in a political science context. Le fédéralisme belge. Enjeux institutionnels, acteurs socio-politiques et opinions publiques(1) intends to correct that lacuna.

“We had the feeling that these questions had up to now been mainly dealt with from a socioeconomic or legal perspective, and there had been less treatment purely in terms of political science”, said Geoffroy Matagne, co-author, researcher and lecturer in the Political Science department at the University of Liège. “This book is being published in a collection sponsored by the Political Science Association of Francophone Belgium, and is intended to be a synthesis of ideas concerning the past and the future of Belgian federalism. Our purpose is to make this development clear for readers who are not specialists”.

Belgium for people who know nothing about it

The title of the book could just as well have been “Belgium for people who know nothing about it”, in view of the efforts the 12 authors represented here have made to render a complex subject clear and simple. At times they refer to the institutional structures that have existed between 1830 in the present day, especially to those associated with Brussels. At times they focus on socio-political actors (analyses of political platforms of the parties, or on the careers of parliamentarians and social partners); they also discuss the representations of these things published in the media, and their effect on public opinion.

The authors first conceived of this project in 2008. “We said to ourselves that we would wait until the crisis was over to publish”, Matagne recalls. “But it ended up lasting 541 days. Every six months we would discuss whether we should wait for an agreement establishing a government or not!” They waited until December 6, 2011, the date on which the Di Rupo Government came into existence. The book’s chapters also deal with certain elements of the Sixth Reform of the State, which is still being worked on.

The sixth and the last? Naturally, it is impossible to predict the future. No one can tell how elections will turn out. Just the same, we can easily imagine that the most recent modification of the Constitution will once again fail to reconcile the disputes involving one and another side of the linguistic frontier. “Every time, we get a little further”, says Matagne. “for example, when we look at the first platform of the Volksunie, everything they said they wanted has come to pass. Eating improves the appetite. But we don’t know at what point that appetite will be satisfied…”

From revolution to institutionalization

Time passes, but certain claims continue to be pressed, although their substance may change. In the beginning, the demands of the Flemish were intended to protect a language they judged to be in danger, and they were also efforts to gain power within institutional structures that were in their view dominated by the francophone bourgeoisie, to the detriment of the Flemish people. This view is typical of the period from 1960 to 1980, which is referred to as revolutionary by the authors. In 1993 Belgium became a Federal state. This step formalized the transition into a period of institutionalized conflict. Discourses that made claims, and that once came primarily from outside the institutional and traditional political sphere (social movements, cultural or economic associations, editorial positions, marginal groups associated with a party in the government,…) were now to be integrated into that sphere. The parties took over the job of pressing various claims, and these claims began to be represented in party platforms. Questions about languages or autonomy gave way to questions about the division of responsibilities within the government, good governance, the subsidiary character of some institutions and effectiveness in a socioeconomic context below the national level.
 
Any satisfaction obtained by the removal of one thorn from the communitarian paw – like that of BHV – seemed to last only a moment. Other points of contention emerged. “There are points of conflict that recur”, Matagne notes. “Like social security, interpersonal solidarity, the question of Brussels or of Europe”. The political dynamic remained essentially unchanged: the Flemish wanted to move forward, while the Francophones, saying that they were “asking for nothing”, finally accepted the necessity of a reform, but still wanted to limit its scope. The eventual agreement was an effort to avoid anyone being identified as the clear winner or loser of the negotiation. This is the recipe for a Belgian-style compromise.

Briefly, then, Belgian federalism is dualistic (it includes two communities and two visions about the way they are to live together, but these visions are opposed to each other), dynamic (meaning it is always changing, and is not the result of a deliberate choice) and centrifugal (it is not the result of the will of two entities to unite, but rather of a desire for emancipation). It has been realized through a bipolar federation (at the level of the institutional structures of the Federal state, and also at the level of the system of the federated entities) that changes frequently (a reform of the State takes place, on average, every 7 years) and that is asymmetrical (the institutional structures in the north and in the south, in the centre and in the east are different).

Brussels, a disputed capital

Brussels is a particularly apt symbol of this asymmetry. “[It is] a little Belgium, in inverted order”, writes Min Reuchamps, a professor of political science at the UCL, in a chapter on the institutional structures of Belgian federalism. “The institutions of Brussels are bipolar, asymmetrical and likely to change, but in a different proportion, since [it has] a majority of French speakers living with a Dutch-speaking minority”.

The capital has long embodied the disagreements between the north and the south. This is not accidental; 18 years of negotiations were required before Brussels, in 1989, was designated a separate region by itself. Today it is still a disputed city. Flemish people dislike having a Francophone “grease spot” in the middle of the Flemish region, and Francophones don’t want to share any more of the responsibility for managing a city they would prefer to manage alone. Rather than planning for Brussels to expand, the parties have preferred the option of a “metropolitan community”, something that was decided within the framework of the sixth reform of the State. This reform provided for collaboration between the capital and its periphery with regard to subjects of inter-regional concern (jobs, mobility, management of the territory…)

A new aspect of uniqueness, thus, in a political system that already had quite a bit of it… In contradistinction to other types of federations that exist in the world, Belgium is the only one that does not have national or unitary parties, with the exception of the Green Party, which is referred to as Écolo in the south and as Groen in the north, but which still constitutes a single political group. Belgium also does not have national media outlets. Each region has its own media outlets, as the political scientists Régis Dandoy (ULB), Dave Sinardet (VUB) and Jonas Lefevre (University of Antwerp) observe in their chapter devoted to the analysis of media coverage of the campaign leading up to regional and European elections in June 2009. Unsurprisingly, they conclude that the newspapers belonging to each linguistic community devoted more coverage to the political parties and personalities that belonged to that community. If things were treated differently on one side or the other, this difference is not related to the particular linguistic community that media outlets belong to, but rather to an editorial distinction between mainstream newspapers and tabloids.

Nonetheless, in recent years media outlets belonging to one community have made attempts at a better understanding of the other community. Francophone politicians have been given opportunities to express themselves in the Flemish press, and vice versa; Francophone journalists have gone to Flanders to report on events, and regular features of the type “the view from Flanders” have appeared. The editorial boards of newspapers from the two communities have attempted to collaborate on several occasions. “There have been many initiatives of this type”, Matagne says. “But the question is: is this a matter of the media simply becoming conscious of a ‘problem’, or is this a tendency that might one day lead to lasting change?” 

Permeability

The world of the media changes in a discontinuous fashion, and the same is true of change which affects political elites. This is true not only because the hypothesis of a Federal circumscription, which has been put forward at times, has never come to pass, but also because the negotiations intended to set up a governmental majority at the Federal level have remained almost the only occasion on which politicians from all parties regardless of language meet to discuss these matters (with the exception of collaboration within the Federal government or in Parliament).

This permeability is also observed within federated entities. The multiplication of directly elected assemblies (from 2 – the Chamber and the Senate – to 6 at the present time) which was the result of the process of federalization has modified the arc of development associated with the careers of politicians; this was underlined by Jean-Benoit Pilet (ULB) and Stefaan Fiers (KULeuven) in their analysis of the careers of members of Parliament in Belgium. If there ever was a time when election to the Federal government was considered to be the apogee of a political career, this time seems to have passed, at least in part. Belgium today has a constitution that distinguishes between Federal and regional members of Parliament, and there are very few cases of passage from one level to the other. “Only a minority of regional deputies become members of the Senate or the Chamber of Representatives, and only a very small number of Federal representatives (deputies) or Senators later become representatives in regional parliaments”, according to these scholars.

We may add that it is not rare for elected officials to show up on ballots in elections for offices at a different level from the one they currently hold – offices which they may have no intention of assuming, should they win the election. The lack of regulation in this area causes much confusion among elected officials and also among voters, who may find that they had voted for someone who has no intention of taking up the office. Pilet and Fiers also emphasize that a Federal system must find a proper equilibrium between autonomy and coordination, between common interests and particular ones. Mobility for politicians is properly considered a part of this equilibrium. “In fact, when an elected official takes a seat in an assembly he or she learns to understand the interests of the entity that he or she represents, and develops relationships with other members of the assembly at the same level of government. These two achievements can go with the representative if he or she is elected to an office at a different level of the government, and this oils the gears of Federalism”, they write. In the absence of such lubrication, it is not surprising that the gears seize up so often…

Hidden face

After all is said and done, what do the people think of such a succession of crises? Do the political claims that are put forward in a crisis correspond to the real demands of the people? Not always, if we can credit the analysis carried out by André-Paul Frognier and Lieven De Winter (UCL), based on opinion surveys that were conducted between 1970 and 2007. In the final chapter of the book, they observe that the installation of Federalism in Belgium was not only something that corresponded to the desires of the Flemish people; it was also desired by many Walloons. Astonishingly, Belgian federalism has not caused the population to think of itself as belonging less to Belgium and more to Flanders, Wallonia or Brussels. “In the three Regions, the ‘Belgican’ position came in first, and in proportions that did not differ very greatly by Region”, according to these authors. In their conclusion, they claim to reveal “one of the (hidden) faces of Belgian politics”, and they compare the aspirations of the people to the expectations of the political elites. This confrontation appears to produce a “democratic deficit” in the sense that the pro-Belgian segment of the population of Flanders cannot find a significant political party that is willing to defend such a conception of Belgian federalism”.

This is unlikely to slow down the development of Belgian federalism in the future. Will that future adopt some form of “confederalism”, to use a term that is frequently and strategically employed by some Flemish parties? The elections of May 2014 should provide some answer to this question at the level of Belgian national politics. If this possibility becomes a reality, it will be another new wrinkle added by Belgium to the definition of federalism as it is known in the world today. Existing examples of confederations are the result of the unification of independent States, or of sovereign states that conserve their sovereignty. In other words, these confederations are the result of centripetal forces – not centrifugal forces, as is the case with Belgium. Politically speaking, it is certainly the case that “le plat pays” is anything but typical.

(1) Régis DANDOY, Geoffroy MATAGNE, Caroline VAN WYNSBERGHE et al., Le fédéralisme belge. Enjeux institutionnels, acteurs socio-politiques et opinions publiques, Louvain-la-Neuve, Academia-L’Harmattan, coll. Science politique, 2013