Abstract
Belgium became an independent state in 1830 after a successful rebellion against Dutch rule. It was born a highly centralised and unitary state whose population was made up of two distinct language groups: Dutch (Flemish) speakers in the largely agricultural and Catholic north of the country, Flanders; and French speakers in the relatively industrialised and free-thinking south, Wallonia. Although numerically preponderant, Dutch speakers quickly came to occupy the status of second-class citizens in the new state. While the Constitution granted equal status to both languages, French became the official language of state, a development that reflected both the conviction that political, cultural and linguistic homogeneity was an absolute prerequisite of national unity, and the common acceptance among the country’s social and political elite of the primacy of French. Accordingly, Belgian political life was dominated after independence not by language, but by the long-standing clerical conflict between Catholics and Liberals. Initially, this conflict was suppressed as both sides worked together to consolidate the fragile integrity of the new state. Consolidation was achieved under British tutelage in 1839 and this ‘Union of Oppositions’ weakened and eventually disbanded in the mid-1840s.2
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Notes
See V. R. Lorwin, ‘Belgium: Religion, Class and Language in National Politics’ in Robert A. Dahl (ed.), Political Oppositions in Western De-mocracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966) pp. 147–88
and A. Mughan, ‘Modernisation and Regional Relative Deprivation: Towards a Theory of Ethnic Conflict’ in L. J. Sharpe (ed.), Decentralist Trends in Western Democracies (London: Sage Publications, 1979) pp. 279–312.
A good general history in English is E. H. Kossman, The Low Countries 1780–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Carl-Henrik Höjer, Le Régime Parlementaire Belge de 1918 à 1940 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1946) passim.
For an anlysis of the rise and changing character of support for these parties, see A. Mughan, ‘Modernisation and Ethnic Conflict in Belgium’, Political Studies, 27 (1979) pp. 21–37.
This phrase was used by Leo Tindemans, a leading member of the Social Christian party and Prime Minister of Belgium in the mid-1970s. The theme is developed in Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘Splitting the Difference: Federalisation without Federalism in Belgium’ in Milton J. Esman (ed.), Ethnic Conflict in the Western World (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977) pp. 103–42.
Samuel P. Huntington, ‘Conservatism as an Ideology’ American Political Science Review, 51(1957) p. 455. Of course, this characterisation obscures a number of conservatism’s more specific philosophical principles. Quinton, for example, distinguishes three such principles: traditionalism, organicism and political scepticism. He argues, however, that these combine to produce a Conservative philosophy whose basic principle is that man, because of his intellectual imperfections, particularly with regard to knowledge of society, should trust the wisdom that is embodied in established institutions.
See Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection (London: Faber and Faber, 1978).
This theme is elaborated in Noel O’Sullivan, Conservatism (London: Dent, 1976) ch.1.
Obviously the left-right approach is best suited to the analysis of ideology in relatively straightforward, two-party systems like the American or pre-1974 British ones. My argument here, however, is not that it does, or should, lend itself equally effectively to the study of conservatism in complex party systems reflecting multiple dimensions of social cleavage. Rather, all that I am saying is that it seems to inform, perhaps no more than implicitly, studies of conservative politics in such party systems. A good example is Malcolm Anderson, Conservative Politics in France (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974).
One reason for this tendency to view complex party systems from a unidimensional left-right perspective might be that this is precisely what electorates tend to do, See Ronald Inglehart and Hans D. Klingemann, ‘Party Identification, Ideological Preference and the Left-Right Dimension among Western Mass Publics’ in Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe and Dennis Farlie (eds.), Party Identification and Beyond (London: Wiley, 1976) pp. 243–73.
See André-Paul Frognier, ‘L’axe gauche/droite’, Res Publica 17 (1975) p. 475; idem, ‘Party Preference Spaces and Voting Change in Belgium’ in Budge et al., op. cit., pp. 189–202;
and Arend Lijphart, ‘Religious vs. Linguistic vs. Class Voting: The “Crucial Experiment” of Comparing Belgium, Canada, South Africa and Switzerland’, American Political Science Review, 73 (1979) pp. 442–58.
For a cautionary word on the analytical technique used by Lijphart, however, see Mark N. Franklin and Anthony Mughan, ‘The Decline of Class Voting in Britain: Problems of Analysis and Interpretation’, American Political Science Review, 72 (1978) pp. 523–34. Perhaps a more persuasive reason for not viewing the Social Christian party as a right-wing, conservative party is that such a view is not part of its own self-image. In an interview with me, for example, a high-ranking party official vigorously denied that it made sense to describe his party as conservative in the sense that the term is applied to, say, the British Conservative party. This distinction is elaborated in R. E. M. Irving, ‘Christian Democracy in Europe: Conservatism Writ Large or Distinctive Political Phenomenon?’. West European Politics. 2(1979) no. 53–68.
See R. E. M. Irving, The Christian Democratic Parties of Western Europe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979) esp. ch. 5.
See also Maurice Vaussard, Histoire de la Démocratie Chrétienne: France, Belgique, Italie (Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1956) ch. 5.
A. Simon, Le Parti Catholique Belge 1830–1945 (Brussels La Renaissance du Livre, 1958) chs 1–3.
Ariside R. Zolberg, ‘Belgium’ in Raymond Grew (ed.) Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1978) p. 120.
Jean Beaufays, Les Partis Catholiques en Belgique et aux Pays-Bas 1918–1958 (Brussels: Bruylant, 1973) pp. 82–8.
Auguste E. de Schryver, ‘The Christian Social Party (P.S.C.)’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (September 1946) p. 9. Mr de Schryver was the first president of the Social Christian party.
Beaufays, op. cit., pp. 133–5. See also David M. Rayside, Linguistic Divisions in the Social Christian Party of Belgium and the Liberal Parties of Canada and Quebec (University of Michigan unpublished Ph.D. disser-tation 1976) ch. 3.
M. P. Herremans, ‘La Volksunie’, Courrier Hebdomadaire du CRISP, 148 (May 1962) pp. 4–5.
For a fuller account see E. R. Arango, Leopold III and the Belgian Royal Question (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961).
See J. Meynaud, J. Ladrière and F. Périn, La Décision Politique en Belgique: Le Pouvoir et les Groupes (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1965).
See Michel Quévit, Les Causes du Declin Wallon (Paris: Editions Vie Ouvrière, 1978).
Quoted in Pierre Maroy, ‘L’Evolution de la Législation Linguistique Belge’, Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique en France et à l’Etranger, 82 (1966), p. 477. That this ‘settlement’ was to be unitarist in inspiration and intent is clearly indicated, however, by the Social Christian Prime Minister’s statement a few months later that there was only ‘one economy, one society, one Belgian nation’.
V. R. Lorwin, ‘Linguistic Pluralism and Political Tension in Modern Belgium’, Canadian Journal of History, 5(1970) p. 15. More detail on the reaction to the linguistic laws can be found in Meynaud et al., op. cit., pp. 108–28.
Quoted in Franz Coppieters, ‘The Community Problem in Belgium, 2nd edn (Institut Belge d’Information et de Documentation, 1974), p. 24.
The best account of this dispute is found in five editions of the Courrier Hebdomadaire du CRISP: ‘L’affaire de Louvain’, 333–4 (September 1966); ‘Evolution et implications de l’affaire de Louvain (I)’, 358 (March 1967); ‘Evolution et implications de l’affaire de Louvain (II)’, 364–5 (April 1967); ‘Les derniers développements de l’affaire de Louvain (I)’, 394 (February 1968); and ‘Les derniers développements de l’affaire de Louvain (II)’, 398 (March 1968). A summary account in English is D. Coombes and R. Norton-Taylor, ‘Renewal in Belgian Politics: The Elections of March 1968’, Parliamentary Affairs, 22 (1968–69) 62–72.
A full account of these constitutional revisions can be found in Robert Senelle, The Reform of the Belgian State, memo from Belgium, no. 179 (Brussels: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1978). The most important of these reforms are set out in articles 3B, 3C, 59B and 107D of the revised Constitution. All have now been implemented except for the highly contentious article 107D which, rather vaguely, provides for the establishment of regional bodies ‘composed of elected representatives with the power to decide on such matters as Parliament shall decide’. Since the Constitution was revised to include this article in 1970, however, little progress has been made in setting up these bodies because it has proved impossible to reach agreement on their powers. In particular, some Flemish politicians refuse to accept that Brussels should be treated as a co-equal region with Flanders and Wallonia since such an arrangement would mean that two constituent parts of a federal system would be controlled by French speakers, who are no more than a minority of the total Belgian population. It is also feared that French influence in what remained of the central government would be commensurately enhanced. See, for example, J. Brassine and X. Mabille, La crise politique d’octobre 1978’ (I) & (II), Courrier Hebdomadaire du CRISP, 817 and 819 (November and December 1978). For a summary version in English, see
Andrew MacMullen, ‘The Belgian Election of December, 1978’, Parliamentary Affairs, 32 (1979) 331–8.
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Mughan, A. (1982). The Failure of Conservative Politics in Belgium. In: Layton-Henry, Z. (eds) Conservative Politics in Western Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16252-9_8
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