Belgium’s language divide between predominantly French-speaking Wallonia, and predominantly Dutch-speaking Flanders, is one of the key features underpinning the country’s party system. Régis Dandoy notes that while the language issue continues to be a major part of Belgian politics, the country’s political landscape has nevertheless undergone a significant change over the last decade, underlined by the outcome of the 2014 Belgian federal elections. He writes that the tendency to ensure symmetry in Belgian governments between ‘sister parties’ from the same party family has gradually become displaced by a new framework which has the potential to substantially alter the dynamics of Belgian politics

Dandoy, Régis

LSE Research Online

Credit: jpellgen (CC-BY-SA-3.0)18/02/2015The demise of symmetry between ‘sister parties’ has opened upa new chapter in Belgian politicsblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/02/18/the-demise-of-symmetry-between-sister-parties-has-opened-up-a-new-chapter-in-belgian-politics/Belgium’s language divide between predominantly French-speaking Wallonia, and predominantlyDutch-speaking Flanders, is one of the key features underpinning the country’s party system. RégisDandoy notes that while the language issue continues to be a major part of Belgian politics, thecountry’s political landscape has nevertheless undergone a signiﬁcant change over the last decade,underlined by the outcome of the 2014 Belgian federal elections. He writes that the tendency toensure symmetry in Belgian governments between ‘sister parties’ from the same party family hasgradually become displaced by a new framework which has the potential to substantially alter thedynamics of Belgian politics.Belgium held federal elections in May 2014 and while the subsequent coalition negotiations did not match the recordof 541 days of negotiations that followed the previous federal election in 2010, the outcome was signiﬁcant for analtogether diﬀerent reason. The 2014 vote constituted another blow to the principle of ‘symmetry’, wherebygoverning coalitions have typically contained a balance between ‘sister parties’ from either side of Belgium’slanguage divide. Now approaching a year on from the elections, the country looks set to enter a new chapter of itspolitical history, with the traditional rivalries between party families being replaced by new rivalries among politicalparties from within the same language group.Belgium’s simultaneous electionsThe 2014 elections were only the second time in the country’s history that Belgium had organised European, federal,community and regional elections on the same day. One of the justiﬁcations for this simultaneous holding ofelections related to ﬁnancial cost. Organising elections requires a signiﬁcant budget, so by holding all four electionson the same day, the country intended to reduce the ﬁnancial burden.The decision was also aimed at reducing the humancost, both in terms of cutting the workload for staﬀ atthe Ministry of Interior and for staﬀ in each pollingstation. Voters similarly stood to beneﬁt from thedecision, which ensured they only had to vote twice ina ﬁve year period: once for the European, federal,community and regional elections and once forprovincial and municipal elections (which are set for2018). While Belgium’s compulsory voting has anobvious impact on turnout, the relative scarcity ofBelgian elections may also help encourage voters tohead to the polls.Yet the decision to hold simultaneous elections alsohad a political motivation. Some political partiesviewed the process as a unique opportunity tomaximise their electoral results and their participationin government. Research has shown that major (andgoverning) parties typically obtain poorer results in1/3so-called ‘second-order’ elections: mainly European and sub-national elections. Organising these elections on thesame day as the federal election was therefore anticipated to generate better outcomes for Belgium’s largestparties. And as the election results in each vote were likely to be fairly similar, it was expected to make it easier forthe winners to enter coalitions at all levels of government, with the losers consigned to opposition.Symmetry: a Belgian trademarkThe concept of sister parties has been central to the Belgian political system. Political parties are traditionallyclassiﬁed into ‘party families’, such as the Christian democrats, liberals, socialists, and green party families. Themembers of these families are political parties that have certain ideological traits in common and share someprogrammatic priorities. Since the end of the 1970s, the Belgian party system has in turn been split into twosubsystems: Dutch-speaking and French-speaking. Within each language group, two political parties often coexistwithin each family. These parties are generally referred to as the ‘sister parties’ of each other.The main sister parties in Belgium are the socialists (Socialistische Partij Anders and Parti Socialiste), Christiandemocrats (Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams and Centre démocrate humaniste), liberals (Open Vlaamse Liberalenen Democraten and Mouvement Réformateur) and Greens (Groen and Ecolo). These sister parties have a key rolein Belgian political life, especially in times of government formation. The table below illustrates this picture.Table: Sister parties in Belgian politicsNote: For more information on the parties see: Socialistische Partij Anders (sp.a), PartiSocialiste (PS), Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V), Centre démocrate humaniste (cdH),Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (Open Vld), Mouvement Réformateur (MR), Groen,Ecolo.In Belgium, the traditional form for federal and regional governments is the coalition. Absolute majorities at theselevels of power are extremely rare (the last single-party government was in 1958) and all regional and federalexecutives are now composed of at least two parties. But the main feature of the federal government in Belgium isthe ‘symmetry’ in the selection of political parties that enter the federal cabinet. A symmetric government means thatsister parties are together in the government or together in opposition. Indeed, cabinets often include an ‘extra’party, which is not mathematically required to establish a coalition, simply to ensure the linguistic balance ispreserved.Since the linguistic split of the party system, sister parties have always been together in government or in oppositionat the federal level. Regionalist parties have occasionally participated in these governments without theircounterpart on the other side of the linguistic border, but it is diﬃcult to speak of sister parties when dealing with theregionalist party family given these parties advocate either greater autonomy or outright independence for theFlemish or Francophone parts of the country.On the Flemish side, the most important regionalist parties have been Volksunie (VU), which split into the New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and ‘Spirit’ in 2001. On the French-speaking side, the Fédéralistes DémocratesFrancophones (FDF) and Rassemblement wallon (RW – ‘Walloon Rally’) have been the most signiﬁcant. Among theonly other examples of sister parties not serving together in government is Ecolo leaving the federal government in2/3May 2003, abandoning its sister party Groen (then called ‘Agalev’) for two months. This was largely explained,however, by a short-term strategy of the French-speaking green party, rather than by a desire to break up with itspartner.The importance of sister parties remained intact until the formation of Guy Verhofstadt’s (Open Vld) interimgovernment in 2007. This cabinet – which ultimately survived until 2010 – incorporated, among others, thefrancophone PS, while the socialists’ Flemish sister party, the sp.a, remained in opposition. Even if this event couldbe partly explained by the political crisis of 2007 and the six months it took to form a federal government, thisexception to the symmetry rule was nevertheless notable.2014: the end of symmetry?Since 2014, doubts are no longer permitted about the demise of the sister party model. While one of the mainobjectives of the decision to hold simultaneous elections was the formation of parallel regional and federal cabinets,the direct result has eﬀectively been to bring about an end to the symmetry between sister parties that had for solong deﬁned the Belgian party system.The move to simultaneous elections has facilitated intergovernmental relations between the regional and federallevels by harmonising coalitions, rather than encouraging inter-community dialogue between sister parties on eitherside of the linguistic border within the federal government. The end of symmetry after the 2014 elections wasunderlined by the Christian democrat party family, which had participated in almost all Belgian governments in thepost-war period, becoming divided over the idea of joining the federal cabinet for the ﬁrst time in its history. In theend the CD&V took up the challenge to stay in the federal cabinet, while the cdH decided to go into opposition.After the green parties (2003), the socialists (2007) and the Christian democrats (2014), the liberal parties are nowthe last party family to have consistently respected the symmetry rule in the federal government. In all likelihood anew chapter of Belgian political history began in 2014, replacing the traditional rivalry between party families with arivalry between political parties from the same language group, particularly when they sit together in regional andfederal cabinets. Recent tensions that have emerged between the Flemish governing parties at the federal levelmay soon become the rule rather than the exception.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1LaCyEY _________________________________About the authorRégis Dandoy – University of LouvainRégis Dandoy is a Belgian political scientist and currently Marie Curie Researcher at theDepartment for Political Science at the University of Louvain (UCL – Belgium). He is also visitinglecturer at the University of Brussels (ULB – Belgium).3/3

The demise of symmetry between ‘sister parties’ has opened up a new chapter in Belgian politics

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online