The Rise and Fall of the Belgian Regionalist Parties

Abstract

Regionalist parties were very successful in Belgium in the 1960s and 1970s. Their impact on the political system was important, since their regionalist agenda has led to a thorough reform of the state towards a federal logic and to a full split of the party system. Yet, today, the regionalist parties are either gone or struggling for survival and for a significant place in the political debate. In this article we describe the spectacular electoral rise of the regionalist parties and the subsequent search for an electoral niche in a party system where all parties are limiting their electoral presence to their own language group and have therefore all become, to a certain, extent regionalist parties.

Keywords:

• Belgium
• political parties
• regionalism

Acknowledgements

This research was performed as part of the Interuniversity Attraction Poles financed by the Belgian federal government.

Notes

There is also a third language community in Belgium: the German-speaking one. It has received the same powers as the other two communities, but with only 60 000 inhabitants it does not play a major role in Belgian identity conflicts.