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Abstract
Belgium is considered as a very divided multinational and federal state, with conflicts between representatives of its two main language communities regularly threatening its sheer existence. Moreover, at the outbreak of the COVID 19-crisis, Belgium was in the middle of a political crisis: ten months of failed attempts to form a new federal government left a minority caretaker government to deal with the crisis. When the second wave arrived, a new federal government was formed but its composition was strongly different than the Flemish government, which was lead by the Flemish-nationalist N-VA, a situation of incongruence between governments that generally reinforces political conflicts within Belgium. All this means that a very fragmented, divisive and conflictual COVID-response could be expected. Therefore, it is surprising that the response was largely uniform and national response. There was a political consensus that measures should be the same over the entire territory. This article details the institutions, policies and communication that created this national response and also explains the reasons for it. It also focuses on the problems that the distribution of competences posed to execute the response and what it means for the nationalist movement as well as for possible future constitutional reform.
Notes
1 Kris Deschouwer, The Politics of Belgium: Governing a Divided Society, 2nd ed. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (Yale: Yale University Press, 2012); Patricia Popelier, Dave Sinardet, Jan Velaers, and Bea Cantillon, België, Quo Vadis? Waarheen na de zesde staatshervorming (Antwerp/Cambridge: Intersentia, 2012); Mike Medeiros, Jean-Philippe Gauvin, and Chris Chhim, “Unified Voters in a Divided Society: Ideology and Regionalism in Belgium,” Regional & Federal Studies (2020): 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2020.1843021; Patricia Popelier, “Power-Sharing in Belgium: The Disintegrative Model,” in Power-Sharing in Europe. Past Practice, Present Cases, and Future Directions, edited by Soeren Keil and Allison McCulloch (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
2 Dave Sinardet, Lieven De Winter, Jérémy Dodeigne, and Min Reuchamps, “Language Identity and Voting,” in Mind the Gap: Political Participation and Representation in Belgium, edited by Kris Deschouwer (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2018), 113–32.
3 Dave Sinardet, “From Consociational Consciousness to Majoritarian Myth: Consociational Democracy, Multi-Level Politics and the Belgian Case of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde,” Acta Politica 45, no. 3 (2010): 346–69; Kris Deschouwer, The Politics of Belgium.
4 Jaak Billiet, Bart Maddens, and André-Paul Frognier, “Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture between Flemings and Walloons,” West European Politics 29, no. 5 (2006): 912–32; Dave Sinardet, “Is there a Belgian Public Sphere? What the Case of a Federal Multilingual Country Can Contribute to the Debate on Transnational Public Spheres and Vice Versa,” in Multinational Federalism: Problems and Prospects, edited by Michel Seymour and Alain-G. Gagnon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 172–204; Mike Medeiros et al., “Unified Voters in a Divided Society.”
5 Stefaan Walgrave, Benoît Rihoux, Sofie Marien, Emilie Van Haute, and Karen Celis, Note Based on the Represent Study: Vlaming en Walen stemden voor verschillende partijen maar verschillen minder van mening over het beleid dat ze willen (Brussels: EOS, 2019).
6 Dave Sinardet, “Federal Reform and Party Politics: The Case of the Fifth Belgian State Reform,” in Changing Federal Constitutions: Lessons from International Comparison, edited by Arthur Benz and Felix Kneupling (Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2012), 135–60.
7 Kris Deschouwer, The Politics of Belgium; Jean-Francois, Céline Mahieu, and Caroline Sägesser, “Federalism and Decentralization in Belgium,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Decentralization in Europe, edited by José Manuel Ruano and Marius Profiroiu (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 47–75; Anna Mastromarino, “Secessionist Claims in a Federal System,” in Claims for Secession and Federalism.
8 See also Patricia Popelier, “COVID-19 Legislation in Belgium at the Crossroads of a Political and a Health Crisis,” The Theory and Practice of Legislation 8, no. 1–2 (2020): 131–53.
9 Dave Sinardet, “Flemish Nationalism and the Left-Right Divide. Consequences for Constitutional Politics in Belgium,” in Constituional Politics in Multinational Democracies, edited by André Lecours, Nikola Brassard-Dion, and Guy Laforest (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), 132–57.
10 Dave Sinardet, “From Consociational Consciousness.”
11 Nicole Huberfeld, Sarah H. Gordon, and David K. Jones, “Federalism Complicates the Response to the COVID-19 Health and Economic Crisis: What Can Be Done?,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 45, no. 6 (2020): 951–65; Markus Siewert, Stefan Wurster, Luca Messerschmidt, Cindy Cheng, and Tim Butte, “A German Miracle? Crisis Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Multi-Level System,” in PEX Special Report: Coronavirus Outbreak, Presidents’ Responses, and Institutional Consequences, edited by Inacio Magna and Aline Burni (Rochester, NY: SSRN, 2020); Jess Sargeant, Co-ordination and Divergence: Devolution and Coronavirus (London: Institute for Government, 2020); Fernando Jimenez Sanchez, The Political Management of the COVID-19 Crisis in Spain (Budapest: Foundation Robert Schuman, 2020); Alexandra Artiles, Martin Gandur, and Amanda Driscoll, The (Less) United States? Federalism & Decentralization in the Era of COVID-19 (PEX Executives, Presidents and Cabinet Politics, 2020).
12 Florian Bieber, “Global Nationalism in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Nationalities Papers (2020): 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.35.
13 See also Patricia Popelier, “The Impact of the Covid-19 Crisis on the Federal Dynamics in Belgium,” 2020, https://uacesterrpol.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/the-impact-of-the-covid-19-crisis-on-the-federal-dynamics-in-belgium/
14 Toon Van Overbeke and Diederik Stadig, “High Politics in the Low Countries: COVID-19 and the Politics of Strained Multi-Level Policy Cooperation in Belgium and The Netherlands,” European Policy Analysis 6, no. 2 (2020): 305–17.
15 For more details see Patricia Popelier, “COVID-19 Legislation in Belgium.”
16 Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
17 Cf. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995).
18 Mathias El Berhoumi, Laurie Losseau, and Sébastien Van Drooghenbroeck, “Vers une Belgique à quatre? Les compétences communautaires à Bruxelles après la sixième réforme de l’État,” in De Brusselse instellingen anno 2014/Les institutions bruxelloises en 2014, edited by Emmanuel Van Den Bossche (Bruges: Die Keure, 2017).
19 David Nice, Federalism: The Politics of Intergovernmental Relations (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987); Jan Erk, Edward L. Gibson, Ugo M. Amoretti, Nancy Bermeo, Alain Noël, R. Daniel Kelemen, Mikhail Filippov, Peter C. Ordeshook, Olga Shvetsova, Pradeep Chhibber, et al. “Does Federalism Really Matter?,” Comparative Politics 39, no. 1 (2006): 103–20.
20 Nicole Huberfeld et al., “Federalism Complicates the Response”; Kent Weaver, “The Nays Have It: How Rampant Blame Generating Distorts American Policy and Politics,” Political Science Quarterly 133, no. 2 (2018): 259–89.
21 Dave Sinardet, “Flemish Nationalism and the Left-Right Divide.”
22 Jonas Lefevere and Stefaan Walgrave, De Stemming: Onderzoek in opdracht van de VRT en De Standaard (Antwerp/Brussels: University of Antwerp/Free University of Brussels, 2020/2021).
23 Ibid.
24 Sinardet et al., “Language Identity and Voting,” in Mind the Gap.
25 Popelier et al., België, Quo Vadis?; Aube Wirtgen and Dave Sinardet, “De gezondheidscrisis, een aanzet tot efficiënt federalisme?,” in Post Viraal naar een nieuw normal, edited by M. Brengman (Antwerp: ASP/VUB Press, 2020), 57–65; Koen Algoed, De zesde staatshervorming en haar impact op de overheidsfinanciën doorgelicht (Leuven: Vives Research Center for Regional Economics, 2017).
26 Jérémy Dodeigne, Christoph Niessen, Min Reuchamps, and Dave Sinardet, “The Effect of Institutional Affiliation and Career Patterns on (De)Centralization Preferences in Advanced Multi-Level States: Parliamentarians’ Support for (De)Centralization in Belgium,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 51, no. 2 (2021): 262–82.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Dave Sinardet
Dave Sinardet is professor of political science at the VUB (Free University of Brussels) and at the Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles. His main research interests are (sub state) nationalism, federalism, multi-level politics and multilingual public spheres. He is also an expert on Belgian politics and on Belgium’s constitutional reform process.
Jade Pieters
Jade Pieters is a Master in Political Science of the Free University of Brussels (VUB). After an internship at the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the United Nations, he currently works as political advisor at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Brussels.