NationStates Jolt Archive

I need to write an essay for a course in my college on a foreign culture. I was thinking of writing about the Flemish-speakers and French-speakers of Belgium and the apparent divide between them but i'm a bit worried that it might be too sensitive an issue to write about:i don't really have much prior knowledge on it. And even then, i'm not sure if there would be much information about it anywhere.

Just wondering if someone could shed some light on the subject.

Thanks. :/

No?

I'm not belgien, but felt sorry for you!
Found an article: http://www.agbu.org/agbunews/display.asp?A_ID=94
This sheds some light on the history and language divide in Belgium. Not sure how useful it is, but it's the best I can do!

Interesting to see foreign interest.

Your average Belgian is not going to be pissed off about any "sensitive" issue like this. At least not to the degree of i.e. Israël vs. Palestine.

Most Belgians on this forum are Flemings.
(The Walloon education system is crap and English is only an option there.)

So if you get any response from Belgians, it will mostly favour Flanders.



To get you started, here's some links I had bookmarked:

http://www.therfcc.org/flanders-27140.html

http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/Flanders

http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&q=wallonia+flanders+conflict&btnG=Zoeken&meta=lr%3Dlang_en

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/be.html

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/BELGCUL.html

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/BELGCUL2.html


Oh and I still have this on my hard drive. It's from an essay I had to make for English class. Mind you I'm not perfect. Some details may be flawed and there is some bias.
from me:


Belgium, its politics and structure

To begin I’d like to explain why I chose this subject. Belgium looks complicated to outsiders, and its structure is very complex for such a small country. In New York, there is one city council for 10 million people. In Belgium, there are 6 governments for 10 million people. It can only be explained through history and culture.

History teaches us that putting 2 peoples in 1 country will lead to conflict. If two peoples must really live together, give them as much independence as possible. This approach of decentralisation seems to work in Switzerland and Canada.

France in comparison, is much more centralised. There are many different peoples within the French boundaries such as the Basques, the Bretons, the Catalans, and the Flemings.

Structure

Belgium was founded as a Unitarian kingdom, over the years it has involved into a federal state. Since 1993 it is a federal parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch. It is divided into communities and regions. King Albert II is the current head of state. Belgium has 3 regions, 3 communities and 10 provinces. Some of these entities overlap each other.

We can compare the provinces with counties, while the regions and communities correspond with the German Länder, or the American States.

The governments of the regions are responsible for land based matters such as structure and environment, while the governments of the communities are responsible for person based matters like language and culture.

Belgium contains the Flemish region, the Walloon region, the Brussels capital region, the Dutch speaking community, the French community and the German community.

The Flemish community and the Flemish region are fused and have one government In Flanders it takes care of both personal and land based matters, while in Brussels they only provide for the person based matters of the Dutch speaking inhabitants. The capitol of Flanders is Brussels.

The French community is responsible for person based matters of the inhabitants of Walloon and the French speaking inhabitants of Brussels. Its capital is Brussels.

The German Community is responsible for the person based matters of the German speaking inhabitants in the east of Walloon. Its capital is Eupen.

The Walloon Region is responsible for land based matters in Walloon including the German speaking minority. Its capital is Namur.
The Brussels Capital Region takes care of land based matters of Brussels You can compare it to Washington D.C. in the U.S.A.. Brussels is a quadruple capital: from the European Union, from Belgium, from Flanders and from the French Community.

Belgian political structure is similar to federations or confederations like the quadrilingual Switzerland. Switzerland has kantons, comparable to states, and four official languages, being French, German, Italian and the Rheto-Roman dialects.

Some argue that Belgians don’t really need such a complicated system. Some even say that it irritates Belgians, and that the separations were created by political parties who want more power in their part of Belgium. Among the accused are the Flemish Christian democrats and the Walloon socialists. There are no more federal political parties of any significance left. One example I can think of is the BUB, Belgian unionists. The old federal political parties all divided themselves into Flemish and Walloon parties. Because the parties had become smaller, it became even harder for one party to form a new government. This is why we get these coalitions of two to four parties, and this is also why small parties melt together with larger parties.

There are other things that recently began to reshape the Belgian political process, and these things could stir up debates. I am talking about the cordon sanitaire, the larger voting districts and the 5 percent threshold.

The so called cordon sanitaire is an agreement between all other political parties that states that no party will form a coalition with the Vlaams Blok, which means Flemish Block. They are a xenophobe Flemish separatist radical right wing party.

The larger voting districts together with the 5 percent threshold are measures taken to simplify the democratic process, by making it, in my eyes, less democratic. I’ll try to explain. In the provinces, a small party must get 5 % of the vote to get a seat in the parliament. Before, a party could get in when they got 5 % of the vote even when the votes were spread all over the country.

One consequence of so much different political parties in the federal government is that it encourages a so-called partycracy, a system where political parties divide public jobs and influence in public institutions for themselves. This way it is not always the most competent people who get a public job, but often incompetent people with the right connections with ruling political parties. This, in its turn, could encourage not only incompetence but corruption as well. On the other hand, I think there’s not really much you can do about it. It’s only logical that those in power give their people the job.

But, in comparison with neighbouring countries, and the rest of the world, I think Belgium is doing just fine. I really dislike static systems like in the U.S. and the U.K. where you have two parties that have too much in common. Our politicians are experts in making compromises, even if these are just the lesser of two –or even three- evils. The proposed compromises are so complicated that none of the involved parties fully understands it, but by lack of a better alternative, the compromise will be accepted.
I do feel that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Foreign politicians admire the peaceful way conflicts are solved here. They sometimes visit to look how it works, or the other way round, a Belgian delegation visits their nation. Not so long ago for instance, federal foreign affairs minister Louis Michel visited Cyprus.

My final conclusion is that everything worked out quite well. I feel that some improvement is needed. I’d like to see even more autonomy for Flanders and Walloon, and the evolution of Belgium into a confederacy.

The Belgian federal government

The chief of state is King ALBERT II. The head of government is Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.

It is a bicameral parliament consisting of a senate and a chamber of deputies. There is a evolution in this system. The power of the senate is slowly being reduced, and in time, the Belgian federal parliament may evolve into a unicameral system. This system already exists in at least on Scandinavian country

The political parties of Belgium.

VLD, the Flemish liberal party. They are mostly the party of the self-employed, the traders and the rich. In Belgium, the label “liberal” is very different from it’s Anglo-Saxon meaning, where it’s often the near synonym of left wing. In reality, the liberal philosophy does not really fit on the classic left to right scale. There are liberals who have right wing ideas and there are liberals who have leftist ideas. Their Walloon counterpart is the MR.

SP.a: Flemish socialists. The name says it all really, they’re the working man’s party. The Walloons call their socialist party PS.

Agalev or Groen are the Greens. That’s Ecolo for Walloon.

Until recently these three parties resided in the government coalition. The coalition is referred to as purple-green, a combination of the symbolic colours of the parties, namely blue, red and green.

Senate - percent of vote by party - SP.A-Spirit 15.5%, VLD 15.4%, CD & V 12.7%, PS 12.8%, MR 12.1%, VB 9.4%, CDH 5.6%; seats by party - SP.A-Spirit 7, VLD 7, CD & V 6, PS 6, MR 5, VB 5, CDH 2, other 2 (note - there are also 31 indirectly elected senators); Chamber of Deputies - percent of vote by party - VLD 15.4%, SP.A-Spirit 14.9%, CD & V 13.3%, PS 13.0%, VB 11.6%, MR 11.4%, CDH 5.5%, Ecolo 3.1%; seats by party - VLD 25, SP.A-Spirit 23, CD & V 21, PS 25, VB 18, MR 24, CDH 8 Ecolo 4, other 2

AGALEV (Flemish Greens) [Dirk HOLEMANS]; Christian Democrats and Flemish or CD & V [Yves LETERME]; note - used to be the Flemish Christian Democrats or CVP; Ecolo (Francophone Greens) [Jean-Michel JAVAUK, Evelyne HUYTEBROECK, Claude BROUIR]; Flemish Liberal Democrats or VLD [Karel DE GUCHT]; Francophone Humanist and Democratic Center of CDH (used to be Social Christian Party or PSC) [Joelle MILQUET]; Francophone Reformist Movement or MR (used to be Liberal Reformation Party or PRL) [Antoine DUQUESNE]; Francophone Socialist Party or PS [Elio DI RUPO]; National Front or FN [Daniel FERET]; New Flemish Alliance or NVA [Geert BOURGEOIS]; note - new party that emerged after the demise of the People's Union or VU; Social Progressive Alternative Party or SP.A [Steve STEVAERT]; note - was Flemish Socialist Party or SP; Spirit [Els VAN WEERT]; note - new party that emerged after the demise of the People's Union or VU; Vlaams Blok or VB [Frank VANHECKE]; other minor parties




Don't copy it. Just use it as a resource.

Thanks for going to all that trouble - and don't worry, i'll only use your essay as a resource, as you say.

Dank u wel.

Thanks for going to all that trouble - and don't worry, i'll only use your essay as a resource, as you say.

Dank u wel.
O.K.
Glad I could help. :)