Belgium Politics

Today's Belgium is based on the political foundations of a constitutional, popular monarchy and a parliamentary democracy which emerged in order to resolve the tensions routed out of the old political system. Particularly after WW2 the autonomy of the two main communities saw a sharp rise in intercommunal tensions which then led to the constitutional reforms which eventually took place in the 1970s and 1980s. A three-tiered federation was established leading to the creation of federal, regional, and linguistic community governments to eliminate as far as was possible any linguistic, cultural, and/or economic tensions.

The federal, bicameral parliament is today made up of the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives. The Senate comprises 40 directly elected members and 21 representatives who are appointed by the three community parliaments; the larger Chamber of Representatives has 150 elected members under a proportional voting system from 11 parliamentary areas. As voting is compulsary in Belgium, it has (perhaps unsurprisingly) one of the highest election turnout rates in the world.

Centre-right coalitions have dominated the political landscape since the 1970s although most recently this pattern was broken by a centre-left coalition. The politial scene is still dominated by the three main political parties, with smaller frational groups operating on the perifary.

The current King Albert II is the head of state although as is common in other European monarchies now, this position comes with very limited political powers. Officially he will appoint the prime and other ministers (as proposed by the Chamber of Representatives) to form the federal government. Interestingly, the Belgium constitution demands that there are equal numbers of Dutch- and French-speaking ministers in the government.

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