There is much to be criticized and improved in Belgium’s political institutions. Yet there is also plenty to appreciate. Enough to justify the annual celebration of Belgium’s anomalous yet secure democratic existence.
Philosopher Philippe Van Parijs reflects on current debates in Brussels, Belgium and Europe.
Pathetic Belgium versus brilliant Britain?
21 July, Belgium’s national holiday. Something to celebrate? Many will wonder, both at home and abroad. Especially as Belgian politicians, in the aftermath of the 9 June federal elections, are once again engaged in the laborious and likely lengthy attempt to form a Federal Government.
A rather pathetic show, you may be tempted to say, especially compared with the impressively swift formation of the British government after the 4 July general elections. It took less than two days for an enthusiastic new team to take office. Brilliant! But is this really something to be proud of?
The Labour Party won 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, up from 202. Because of a spectacular increase in Labour’s popularity? Not at all. Relative to the previous election, Labour’s support dropped by nearly 600.000 votes. The doubling of its seats is actually the reflection of a massive shift towards the far right.
By attracting 14% of the vote away from the Conservative Party, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party prevented the right’s electoral superiority (38% of the vote, compared to Labour’s 33.7%) from translating into a parliamentary majority. Taking the low turnout into account, Labour’s huge absolute parliamentary majority rests on the support of a mere 21% of the electorate.
Wonderful if you are a Labour supporter, but what if you believe in democracy? The Green Party, for example, won a record number of four seats, instead of the forty it would have won had its share of seats been proportional to its share of votes.
These are just a couple of illustrations of the perversity of an electoral system denounced as early as 1861 by the UK’s foremost political theorist, John Stuart Mill. Such a system is “diametrically opposed to the first principle of democracy, representation in proportion to numbers,” he writes in his Considerations on Representative Government. By organising the election in single-member local constituencies, the voter is forced to choose from “the assortment of two or three perhaps rotten oranges, which may be the only choice offered to him in his local market”.
Mill was confident that a switch to a far more sensible proportional system would happen soon: “I do not think that the people of England have deserved to be stigmatised as insurmountably prejudiced against anything which can be proved to be good either for themselves or for others.“
A small price to pay for a healthy democracy
To what would have been Mill’s dismay, the UK is still stuck with the same winner-takes-all system. Belgium also used such a system for decennia but got rid of it in 1899, when it became the first country in the world to introduce a system of proportional representation.
Luckily. Had the British system been in place in Belgium today, all 87 Flemish seats in the recently elected Federal Parliament would have been allocated to a Flemish nationalist party — either the far-right Vlaams Belang or the right-of-centre N-VA, save for a couple of Green seats in Ghent and Leuven. The 47 Walloon seats would have been shared between the liberal MR, the socialist PS and the Christian-democratic Engagés, with no representation whatsoever of their Flemish sister parties in the Federal Parliament.
With such a system in place, Belgium would have been the scene of far more divisive conflicts throughout the 20th century and would have been unlikely to make it to the 21st.
One unavoidable implication of proportional representation is that a parliamentary majority is generally out of reach unless two or more parties manage to form a coalition by each making concessions that none of them is eager to make. (The only exception, certain not to be repeated, was in 1950, when the Christian-democratic party, still unified, managed to get an absolute majority because of its support for the return of King Leopold III.)
But in Belgium and in the many countries that followed its example, this is a small price to pay, Mill would have said, for a fair and healthy democracy.
The Belgian anomaly
There is, however, a far more specific and more serious problem that plagues Belgium’s political life. It was insightfully diagnosed by Mill in a famous passage of the same book: “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of representative government cannot exist.”
In other words, a linguistically divided country faces an uncomfortable dilemma: it must either renounce democracy or split along its linguistic divides. The falling apart of the Austrian and Ottoman empires, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia provides compelling illustrations of Mill’s thesis.
Belgium is an anomaly. For long? Yes, for long. Even with two separatist parties having become Belgium’s strongest parties? Even with the president of one of them — N-VA’s Bart De Wever — in charge of forming the next Federal Government? Definitely. This unprecedented appointment is even part of the mechanism that keeps Belgium in one piece.
Separatist dreams
First, take the far-right Vlaams Belang. It has a simple two-step plan for the splitting of Belgium. Once Vlaams Belang and N-VA achieve a majority in the Flemish parliament (which they very nearly did on 9 June, when they won 62 out of the 124 seats), they unilaterally declare the independence of Flanders, with Brussels as its capital. This independence would become effective five years later after details are settled with the Walloons.
In a widely viewed and discussed TV debate, Bart De Wever ridiculed this plan so ruthlessly that it left Vlaams Belang president Tom Van Grieken speechless. No wonder: even he cannot seriously believe that this scenario has the slightest chance of materializing.
What about De Wever’s N-VA? True, according to article 1.1 of its 2001 Statutes, it “opts for an independent republic of Flanders, Member State of a democratic European Union”. But De Wever is realistic enough to know that it would be impossible for Flanders to secede with Brussels and clever enough to realize that it would be silly for Flanders to secede without Brussels.
Since 2014, the N-VA has therefore come to terms with Flanders remaining part of EU Member State Belgium and instead proposed a “confederal” restructuring of the federal State.
Just as 20th century socialist leaders made sure they did not shout too loudly that they had abandoned their party’s original ambition of nationalizing the means of production, today’s N-VA leadership has so far not shouted too loudly what its hardliners would not like to hear – namely that the “confederal turn” amounts to accepting that the dream of an independent Flanders will forever remain a dream.
If De Wever manages to make it from formateur to Belgium’s Prime Minister, he will be under strong pressure to state this far more explicitly than he has so far: the clothes make the man.
The delicate art of running a divided country
Belgium’s survival is secure. But the problem sketched by Mill in the passage quoted above — and echoed by De Wever’s routine reference to Belgium’s “two democracies” — is real.
Making a hybrid democracy work is tricky. It requires complicated arrangements for which typical nation states have no need, such as an equal number of ministers from each of the two language groups in the Federal Government or multiple governments competent within the territory of the federal capital.
Since the splitting of Belgium’s national parties in the 1970s, this has meant, for example, that government coalitions have needed far more than two parties in order to achieve the required majorities: seven in the outgoing Federal Government, five in the one currently being negotiated.
The institutional arrangements imagined and implemented through a succession of state reforms are often complicated, sometimes counterproductive, and increasingly illegible for the ordinary citizen. Therefore, proposals keep being formulated to help make the country’s institutional framework simpler and more efficient.
Re-Bel, a bilingual network of academics was set up to stimulate and discuss such proposals in a critical yet open spirit. The N-VA’s confederal model is one of them. My book, Belgium. Une utopie pour notre temps, offers another.
Not all proposals go in the same direction and major changes require a two-thirds majority in the Federal Parliament and a majority in each of its two linguistic groups. Decisive breakthroughs, therefore, are not for tomorrow. This constantly breeds frustration. But it should not make us despair. Nor make us ashamed. Here is why.
'Belgium’s ability for fair play'
In August 2019 I visited a school in a village located about one hour north of Hyderabad, in the Indian state of Telangana. Having replied “Belgium” when pupils asked me where I came from, I was about to start explaining where on the map they could find this tiny country they had presumably never heard of. No need.
Not only did they know that Belgium existed, they also knew that it possessed three linguistic Communities, including a small German-speaking one, each with its own parliament and government, and that the Dutch-speaking minority enjoyed a guaranteed representation in the parliament of the Brussels region. Why did they know so much about us?
A long section of their textbook Social Studies is titled “Democracy: majoritarian versus inclusive”. Sri Lanka provides the bad example of a divided country organised as if it were a typical nation state. Outcome: civil war.
Belgium, by contrast, provides the good example. “You might find the Belgian model very complicated. But these arrangements have worked well so far,” the textbook concludes.
Indeed, the flattering choice of Brussels for the headquarters of the European Union is said to reflect “the faith placed in Belgium by the European Community and an acknowledgement of its ability for fair play and justice”.
Much still needs improving. But there is no reason to be ashamed. Hence, without too many qualifications:
Vive la Belgique! Leve België!
