Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places

4. Electoral Engineering for a Stalled Federation

CHAPTER 4 Electoral Engineering for a Stalled Federation Kris Deschouwer and Philippe Van Parijs On June 13, 2010, a new Belgian federal parliament was elected. The elections had been held earlier than scheduled following the resignation of the federal government that had been unable to find an agreement between the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking parties on the boundaries of the Brussels electoral district. That issue remained on the table when negotiations started to form a new federal coalition, together with a possible change in the distribution of powers between the federal and the sub-state level, and a possible adjustment of the financial equalization mechanisms. Parties of both language groups in Belgium deeply disagreed on all these matters, and it took no less than 18 months—exactly 541 days—to find an agreement and put a new federal government into place. It was widely noticed that Belgian federal government formation managed to take even longer than in Iraq after its controversial elections of 2010. External pressure finally pushed Belgian parties toward a compromise, in particular the rising interest rates being paid for the financing of Belgium’s public debt and the downgrading of its status by the rating agencies. This story, following the long process of Belgian coalition-making of 196 days in 2007, shows that executive formation and the executive’s ability to function can be an exceptionally laborious enterprise. The most recent protracted government formation faced the usual challenge of bridging the different views and ideologies of the parties that have to govern together in a coalition, but the gridlock resulted from a clash between the conflicting de- Electoral Engineering 113 mands of two sets of parties, each corresponding to one of Belgium’s two main language groups. The Dutch-speaking political parties had promised their electorate that a government could only be formed on the condition that further devolution would be secured. On the other hand, the French-speaking political parties had promised their own electorate that they would not accept these new demands. Both tried as long as possible to stick to these electoral pledges, resulting in a situation in which neither party would give in. This kind of governmental crisis is not a new phenomenon in Belgium. To the contrary: long and painful negotiations between the two language groups have become a normal feature of the system. The gradual transformation of the unitary Belgium into a federal state was a long and sometimes painful process. For example, between 1977 and 1981 there were no less than seven cabinets, all falling apart because they were not able to find an acceptable compromise about the institutional hardware of a new Belgium. When in 1993 the first article of the constitution was changed to define Belgium as a federal state, political stability seemed to have been restored. Between 1991 and 2007 all four federal governments went to the very end of their term without being torn apart by the tensions between Francophones and Flemings. Yet the spectacular return of political gridlock in the aftermath of the June 2010 election suggests that there is still something wrong with Belgium’s institutional capacity to deal with its linguistic and territorial divisions. In this chapter we argue that the design of the electoral system is one of the major problems because it offers insufficient incentives to display the spirit of accommodation that is needed for a divided society to be smoothly governed. The first section offers a short background sketch of the basic ingredients of the Belgian divide. The second section describes the institutional solution that was gradually put into place at the end of the twentieth century. The third section identifies the solution as typically consociational, with full emphasis on segmental autonomy and power-sharing devices. However, emphasizing autonomy and inclusion of both groups in the decision-making process does not guarantee smooth functioning and even less a high ability for decision making and change. The last section presents an electoral reform—a countrywide electoral district—that we have been advocating along with colleagues from all Belgian universities that would go some way, we shall argue, toward remedying the shortcomings of Belgium’s federal setup. 114 Kris Deschouwer and Philippe Van Parijs Belgium’s Linguistic and Territorial Divide The conflict that led to the territorial transformation of the Belgian state is in the first place a linguistic matter. When Belgium was created in 1830 after seceding...