Blueprint for a better Belgium: a call for proposals
Blueprint for a better Belgium: a call for proposals
14 October, 2011 Brussels, Belgium
Application Deadline: 15 September, 2011
Organised by: Vereniging voor Politieke Wetenschappen Association belge de science politique - Communauté française
The trouble with Belgium Belgium does not have a good press these last few years. “If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it?” asked the Economist in 2007. Since 2007 there has been another federal election and after more than one year no new federal government has been formed yet. The stumble block to do so is the lack of agreement between the two language groups about the way in which the Belgian federation should be organized. There is disagreement about the powers to be devolved, about the financial equalization system, about the location and meaning of the internal (language) boundaries, about the relative importance of territorial regions and language communities, about the role and status of Brussels. Yet Belgium is also often – or has often been – cited as a model, as an ethno-federation that does not collapse or end into secession and civil war, as a textbook example of how consociational devices can keep a deeply divided society alive. It should therefore be equipped to deal with diverging opinions and conflicting interests. At this point something does however seem to be wrong. There must be a construction error somewhere in the system. Joint decision making does not work and that means that even an agreement on further devolution as a pacification technique cannot be found. Is there a way to (re)build the Belgian institutions in a way that make them less prone to fall into the joint decision trap? Is there a way to rethink the territorial organization – including the very existence of the state – that could guarantee a smoother co-existence of Francophones, Flemings, (Belgian and other) inhabitants of Brussels and German speakers? Blueprint for a better Belgium: a call for proposals On October 14 2011 the Flemish and the Francophone associations of political science in Belgium organize a conference on ‘The state of the federation’. The aim is to take stock of results of scientific research on the different aspects of the Belgian federation, and at the same time reflect about its institutional future. On the occasion of this conference the two associations launch a call among political scientists for proposals for a blueprint for a better Belgium. We look forward to receive creative suggestions for the governing of a divided society and its apparently stalled federal system. An international jury will select the best proposal and the winning blueprint will be presented at the conference on October 14. Proposals – with a maximum length of four pages – should be sent to Kris.Deschouwer@vub.ac.be by September 15 2011 the latest.