ABSTRACT
Before discussing the ideological differences between parties as well as their issueguided behaviour, we will briefly describe the development of the major parties within each party system. Among the Benelux countries, Belgium has the longest history of a full parliamentary democracy in terms of a directly elected parliament to which government is responsible. It took until 1868 to reach this stage in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, when the principle of responsible government was introduced de facto. Hence parties emerged first as parliamentary groups as well as electoral organizations between 1846 and 1885 in Belgium (Dewachter 1987: 287), whereas in Luxembourg and the Netherlands the process of party formation took a different course (Koole 1995: 25-8).
