Belgian Exceptionalism: Belgian Politics Between Realism and Surrealism by Didier Caluwaerts & Min Reuchamps

Author:Didier Caluwaerts & Min Reuchamps [Caluwaerts, Didier & Reuchamps, Min]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367610272
Google: HsyMzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 58589406
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

7.4 Formation process and outcomes features

The previous section has shown that Belgium was exceptional in terms of bargaining complexity in the period under study, and that information uncertainty had also been high because of the relevance of the linguistic/community divide and the need to form federal coalitions with parties that compete (mostly) within their own community. A first consequence of the combined effect of those characteristics is its record-long government formation duration: for postelection cabinets in Western Europe 1945–2016, it took on average 104 days, a record held together with the Netherlands. However, the 2019–2020 government formation lasted 493 days, so Belgium would hold the European record of average duration of formation, as the Rutte III cabinet of 2017 took “only” 225 days to form. In any case, the European record of the longest single formation is also Belgian, with the infamous 541 days to form the Di Rupo government (2010–2011).

Simply put, this exceptionally long formation process is due to the large number of failed bargaining attempts. Often a set of parties start bargaining, but after some weeks or months, they realize that no coalition policy compromise is possible. Belgium holds the West European record in this regard as well, with close to three failed attempts before succeeding in forming a government in the 12 post-electoral formations since 1978. It took for instance no less than eight attempts to arrive at a viable coalition formula and coalition agreement for the Di Rupo coalition (2011–2014), and even 13 attempts for the 2019–2020 formation (Sägesser, 2020).

Belgium is the record holder on those two features reflecting the difficulty of the formation process because the combined effect of the bargaining complexity and information uncertainty factors described earlier largely determine the types of formation outcomes those processes would lead to. One of those outcomes is the size of the cabinet in terms of number of coalition partners, for which again Belgium scores highest in Western Europe: considering coalition cabinets only, the average number of cabinet parties in Belgium since 1970 sits at 4.54, the highest, with Italy and Finland coming second and third, with, respectively, 4.32 and 4.07 cabinet parties.

Another outcome, and additional cause for long formation duration, is the level of care that partners give to the policy agreement that seals their deal. Coalition agreements are the result of negotiations where each partner comes with its own policy demands and are likely to require several sessions to arrive at compromises, especially when a large number of sometimes quite ideologically distant parties are at the bargaining table. In the 1945–1998 period, Belgium had the longest government agreement (Martens VII in 1988 – known as Martens VIII in Belgium’s usual counting – 43,600 words), and also the highest average in Western Europe (14,180 words). Even though the Di Rupo and Michel agreement surpassed that earlier record (53,000 and 57,100 words, respectively), in the following period some countries started drawing even longer agreements, and Belgium had some surprising short ones. Taking this period as a whole, Belgium

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