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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Federalism
• nationalism
• confederalism
• divided society
• consociationalism
• institutional design

Notes

However, the 1992 reform could be interpreted as the third and final phase of the 1988 agreements which consolidated the formation of Brussels as a third Region and strengthened the competencies of the Regions and Communities—the missing bit, i.e. the direct election of the Regional parliaments was the defining feature of the 1992 agreement.

Furthermore, since the French minority community initially sought to shape (and control) the Belgian ‘nation’, it had sufficient political clout to claim a stake in any decisions affecting the reconstruction of the Belgian state and nation even before the process of federalization got underway in 1970. In this sense, the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland was in a historically very different position; strict power-sharing in Northern Ireland was not imposed until 1999, until after the majoritarian “control strategy” (Lustick, 1979) of the unionists which prevailed between 1921 and 1972 and sparked sectarian violence.

I owe this point to Jan Erk and John McGarry who, in conversation or in commenting, emphasized the absence of an explicit reference to pluri-nationalism in the Belgian constitution (see also Erk (2013)).