Belgium: From Highly Constrained and Complex Bargaining Settings to Paralysis?

Abstract

While Belgium undoubtedly had the most complex coalition bargaining system in Western Europe during the period 1946–1999, it has become much more difficult for parties to form federal governments ever since. Contrary to a number of European countries, government formation complexity did not peak due the emergence of brand-new parties, nor of any new cleavage. Rather, in Belgium the main ingredients pre-existed: party system fragmentation—which was already high since unitary parties had split along linguistic lines—skyrocketed as the mainstream parties around which post-war coalitions were formed further declined in size, confronting some (in)formateurs with up to ten coalitionable parties. Their task has been further complicated by the growing saliency and Flemish radicalization of the community cleavage which led to the rise of the independentist N-VA, whose positions remain unacceptable for any French-speaking party. As a result, Belgium has often been left without a fully empowered government, the partisan composition of coalitions broke away from previous patterns, and the coalition compromise model, which was already solidly entrenched in the consociational norms and practices since the 1960s, was further elaborated. Coalition partners keep tabs on each other through compromise mechanisms and policy-monitoring devices such as long and detailed coalition agreements, the enhanced role of the inner cabinet composed of the PM and the vice-PMs of each coalition party, and strictly enforced coalition discipline in legislative matters. But, given the increasingly unbridgeable divides between Flemish- and French-speaking parties, the deadlock observed could well lead to the demise of Belgium.