ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Belgium profiles of longstanding democracies and of the European Union, and provides essential detail on history, electoral system, political parties and cleavages, and governments. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830. It was established as a religiously homogeneous Catholic polity. With the decline of the pillars and rise of nationalist parties, the language issue has been at the centre stage of Belgian politics since the 1960s. On no less than four occasions–1970, 1980, 1988, and 1993–the constitutional was amended, so that since 1993 Belgium has been a federal state. In the nineteenth century Belgium was one of the most industrialized countries in Europe, and in 1885 the Belgian Labour Party (POB) was formed. In 1946, after World War Two, the POB was relaunched as the Belgian Socialist Party. The Catholics and Socialists were the two main parties in what was a two-and-a-half party system. The “half” was that of the Liberal Party.
