Abstract
Consociational democracies seek to pacify societal divisions through political inclusion and compromise. Militant democracies seek to neutralize threats to democracy and liberal values by excluding anti-system parties from power. As one type of democracy is based on inclusion and the other on exclusion, militant consociational democracy would seem a contradiction in terms. However, Belgium presents just this perplexing combination of features. The same parties that work together across the country’s linguistic divisions in an elaborate consociational federation have systematically boycotted the Flemish and francophone extreme-right parties. This chapter is the first to examine the phenomenon of “militant consociational democracy”, tracing its historical roots and considering its implications.
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Notes
- 1.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented in the workshop on How Do Compromise and Democracy Get Along?, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, April 26–27, 2018; the conference on Diversity and Democratic Governance: Legacies of the Past, Present Challenges, and Future Directions?, organized by IPSA RC14 Politics and Ethnicity in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, June 12–15, 2019; and the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, October 11, 2019. The author thanks all participants, and especially Nenad Stojanović, for their helpful comments.
- 2.
- 3.
All translations from Dutch and French are by the author. Both extreme-right parties have changed their name: the Vlaams Blok is now Vlaams Belang and the Front National is currently called Démocratie Nationale. This chapter uses the latest English version of these party names, Flemish Interest and National Democracy respectively, throughout.
- 4.
This paradox is also visible in Downs (2002: 38) notion of “blocking coalitions”, described as “‘grand coalitions among most or all of the established parties to exclude the far right from any share of executive authority”. In other words, an exclusive grand coalition! One example comes from the city of Antwerp, where the victory of Flemish Interest, still falling short of a majority, forced an exclusive grand coalition consisting of an “uncomfortable amalgam of Socialists, Liberals, Christian-Democrats and ecologists” (p. 40). Jacoby (2017) calls this the “sterilization” logic of grand coalition, one of three reasons for forming a grand coalition.
- 5.
See the special issue of the Swiss Political Science Review (25/4, 2019) on “Half a Century of Consociationalism: Cases and Comparisons”, edited by Matthijs Bogaards and Ludger Helms.
- 6.
Bourne and Casal Bértoa (2017: 227) also categorize Belgium as following a legitimacy rationale for the 2004 “ban” of Flemish Interest, which they admit is a “rather ambiguous case” (p. 230).
- 7.
Rummens and Abts’s (2010) strategy of a concentric containment of political extremism, where the screws are tightened the closer extremists come to power, while seemingly nuanced and flexible, is premised on the idea that “democratic parties should be committed to the unrelenting imposition of a civilizing pressure on extremist parties” (p. 657), thus assuming a clear distinction between democratic and undemocratic parties. As does Golder (2016: 478), who equates radical with anti-system parties and extreme with undemocratic parties.
- 8.
There is also evidence of self-exclusion, with Flemish Interest declining to take up a position it was entitled to and making unrealistic demands in exchange of support of a minority government (Coffé 2005b: 211–212).
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- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Delwit (2007: 147) describes National Democracy as adopting an “anti-system or anti-political establishment strategy”.
- 13.
To what extent is the attitude of especially francophone parties to Flemish Interest informed by the tainted past of Flemish nationalism? One reason why Flemish Interest is so much stronger than National Democracy is that it could build on and emerged from a nationalist, extreme-right, organizational landscape (Art 2008). This could be a double-edged sword, as the ties to Flemish nationalism, discredited by its collaboration in World War II (WWII), hindered its acceptance.
- 14.
The cordon is not necessarily limited to the extreme right. In Wallonia, the electoral success of the radical left Parti du Travail de Belgique/Partij van de Arbeid van België (PTB/PvdA) has once again raised the question whether the mainstream parties should cooperate with this former Maoist outfit with roots in militant trade unionism (Meijer 2015: 77). Tellingly, Delwit (2012) discusses Flemish Interest, National Democracy, and the PTB/PvdA together, though, surprisingly, in the context of populism.
- 15.
Walgrave and De Swert (2004: 485) identify four issues that characterize Flemish Interest in its party program and among voters: Flemish nationalism, immigration, antipolitics, and crime.
- 16.
In Capoccia’s (2005) typology of anti-systemness, Flemish Interest would have to be classified as a “polarizing party” because of its relational, not ideological, anti-systemness. This would put the party in the company of the French Gaullists in the Fourth Republic and the German Party of Democratic Socialism, the communist successor party in the former East Germany. However, it is not clear what is gained by doing so.
- 17.
For an overview of the relationship between consensus democracy and consociational democracy and voting for the extreme right, see Bogaards (2017).
- 18.
In Finland and Czechoslavakia, the other two interwar democracies that successfully defended their democracies against anti-system parties, anti-extremist legislation was “strong”, whereas in Belgium it was only “medium” (Capoccia 2005: 311).
- 19.
Cf. Hodgson’s (2006: 2–3) definition of institutions in terms of rules and rules in turn in terms of normative dispositions.
- 20.
Whether this can explain the radically different choices made by other West European consociational democracies in their dealings with the extreme right will be explored in a comparative study.
- 21.
The same is true for deliberation between ethnic Belgians and recent immigrants. Mudde (2004: 203) is critical about the ostracizing of the Arab European League (AEL), a “tiny organization that blends Arab nationalism and relatively orthodox Islam”.
- 22.
In the Brussels Capital Region, since 1989 a default procedure is in place that allocates specified portfolios in a specified order among the language groups in case no consensus on government formation among the parties in the regional parliament can be found (Bodson and Loizides 2017: 93). This article was updated in 2014 but has never been used. Different from Northern Ireland, it is language groups that choose, not parties, and the law does not specify how the language groups reach their decisions. Although at one point Flemish Interest was the largest Flemish party in the Brussels parliament, it always remained a minority. Finally, the procedure provides mainstream parties with a strong incentive to reach an agreement among each other, preserve the cordon sanitaire, and prevent the unwanted inclusion of the extreme right into the regional government for procedural reasons.
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Bogaards, M. (2020). Militant Consociational Democracy: The Political Exclusion of the Extreme Right in Belgium. In: Baume, S., Novak, S. (eds) Compromises in Democracy. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40802-2_8
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