Publication: Daedalus
Publication Date: 01-JAN-07
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Mnookin, Robert H.
Article Excerpt
Because of mass demonstrations objecting to the presence of any francophone curriculum within a university situated in Dutch-speaking Flanders, the Belgian government negotiated a deal in 1968 that split the five-hundred-year-old Catholic University of Leuven into two institutions. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U. Leuven) remained in the old college town and became an entirely Dutch- (and English-) speaking university. A completely independent French-speaking Universite Catholique de Lou-vain (U.C. Louvain) was formed and moved to a brand-new campus in Louvain-la-Neuve, a new town created in the Walloon (or French-speaking) region, about an equal distance from Brussels.
With the split, the existing library had to be divided. The disputants negotiated a typically Belgian compromise: those volumes with even call numbers went to U.C. Louvain and those with odd call numbers went to K.U. Leuven.
When I arrived in Leuven in February 2006 as a visiting scholar, (1) I was aware of this history and knew about Belgium's language cleavage and linguistic frontier. (2) But I thought the conflict between the Flemish and Walloon peoples was a thing of the past, of little contemporary relevance to my interest in ethnic conflicts in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. Two experiences were soon to suggest I might be wrong on both counts.
The first relates to the controversy concerning the "Manifesto for an Independent Flanders within Europe."3 The argument of the 252-page manifesto can be easily summarized:
1) Flanders and Wallonia have divergent needs and goals because they have profound differences--political, economic, social, and cultural.
2) The two regions are artificially held together only by a "maladjusted and inefficient" federal governmental structure with antimajoritarian restrictions and a "chaotic distribution of powers."
3) As a result of this structure, rational and efficient policymaking is impossible, and Flanders is unable to adopt those policies necessary to maintain economic competitiveness and ensure future economic growth in the face of the socioeconomic challenges of an aging population, ever-growing globalization, and increasing international competition.
4) A further result of this structure is that, at the national level, bad compromises are negotiated, which require the Flemish people to make "exorbitant and inefficient" financial transfers amounting to over 10 billion euros per year (about 1,734 euros for each Fleming) to Wallonia and Brussels. If Flanders remains part of Belgium, these subsidies are only likely to increase. (4)
5) The only durable solution is the full independence of Flanders. Because of its economic and social development since World War II, Flanders has the identity and self-sufficiency to be a full-fledged national community with all the characteristics of an independent member state of Europe. (5)
The manifesto was neither shrill nor highly rhetorical. Nor was it created and endorsed by persons thought to be extreme Flemish nationalists, such as the leaders of the Vlaams Belang, a political party on the far right that is hostile to immigrants and has long called for Flemish independence. Instead, people who can best be described as Flemish members of the business and academic establishment, including Herman de Bode, the president of the Harvard Club of Belgium and the chairman of McKinsey and Company in the Benelux, were responsible for the document.
The manifesto provoked an immediate outcry from the francophone community. Because of a francophone client's protest, de Bode was forced to resign as chair of McKinsey. Naturally, this controversy piqued my interest in learning more about the conflict between the Flemish and the Walloons, the present institutional structure of Belgium, and the prospects for the nation's survival as a single state.
The second experience relates to interviews I conducted during my visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories in late February 2006. It had never occurred to me that the conflict between the Flemish and the Walloons, and Belgium's governmental structure, would be thought relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But on two different occasions, after learning that I was temporarily residing in Belgium, Palestinian intellectuals stated that the resolution of the conflict should involve the creation of a single secular state modeled after Belgium's--with language communities and largely autonomous regions that would give both Jews and Palestinians substantially independent control over their own destinies within the framework of a single binational, federal state. (6) The irony of this suggestion did not escape me.
I have since discovered some surprising similarities between these obviously very different ethnic conflicts. As it turns out, the size of Israel and the Palestinian territories combined is almost exactly the same as Belgium, both in terms of square miles and population. (7) Both can be seen as conflicts between two peoples--with roughly equal numbers--where the issue can be framed as whether the appropriate resolution should involve two states or only one. Finally, in both disputes, if there is to be a two-state solution, a contentious and complicated issue is the fate of the capital--Brussels or Jerusalem.
Yet what makes the comparison fascinating is not these similarities but a conspicuous difference. Belgium presents a remarkable example of an ethnic conflict without a single death or any mass violence over a thirty-year period. During that time, a Belgian political elite on opposing sides of the language divide stitched a series of compromises into a complex federal system. This new federal regime may not be sufficient to hold the Belgian state together, but no one believes the conflict between the Flemings and Walloons will become violent. This stands in striking contrast to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where during the same period negotiations have repeatedly failed and thousands have died. Many believe that the outline of a two-state solution that would better serve the interests of most Israelis and most Palestinians is reasonably clear. President Clinton outlined its basic terms in 2000. But since the collapse of the Oslo peace process at the end of 2000, more than one thousand Israelis and three thousand Palestinians have died in this seemingly intractable conflict.
The contrast with Belgium poses two general questions: Why do some ethnic cleavages with territorial dimensions lead to violent breakups or civil war (e.g., Yugoslavia) while others are resolved peacefully through negotiations (e.g., Czechoslovakia)? There obviously is not a single answer to this question, but the study of Belgium and the contrast with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can suggest some useful hypotheses and inform speculation. (8)
A second general question relates to federalism and the extent to which, through institutional design, a nation with ethnic cleavages can be created or held together. Here the study of Belgium leads me to somewhat more pessimistic conclusions. The Belgium case suggests that federal structures allowing for decentralized decision making may exacerbate centrifugal forces. Moreover, consociational safeguards, which give each ethnic group veto power over policies and changes, may lead to policy deadlocks that hasten the eventual breakup of a nation. If this is so in Belgium, is there any hope that such a structure can provide a solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians, or in other countries (such as Iraq or the Congo) with ethnic cleavages that have territorial dimensions and where there is a long history of violence? (9)
Belgium only became a nation in 1830, and its creation was not the culmination of a single people, with a shared sense of Belgian identity, achieving nationhood. (10) Before that year, the territory that makes up Belgium (with the exception of Liege) consisted of an amalgam of separate provinces--some francophone and some Flemish--controlled first by the Spanish, later by the Austrian Hapsburgs, then by the French, and finally by the Dutch. The nation's founding was thus not a love match but an arranged marriage between spouses who had little in common--the product of a nineteenth-century compromise among great powers interested in creating a neutral buffer state. In 1831, the Belgian National Congress wrote a 'liberal' constitution that contemplated a strong unitary parliamentary state with a constitutional monarch. A German noble closely related to both the British and French royal families was invited to become the first King of the Belgians.
When Belgian independence was declared, language reflected social-class differences more than a cultural cleavage. French was the language not simply of the Walloons but also of the Flemish elite. Although the Flemings always outnumbered the French speakers, the francophone Belgians dominated the new country culturally, politically, and economically. While the Belgian constitution contained words suggesting language liberty, the new parliament, dominated by this elite, made French Belgium's "single official language"--the only language to be used in the national legislature, in governmental administration, and in the courts. It...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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