Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0035/00359.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 26KB | 433 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00359}
$Pretitle{370}
$Title{Belgium
Chapter 4C.   Political Parties}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{party
parties
social
political
national
brussels
state
flemish
cvp
flanders}
$Date{1984}
$Log{}
Country:     Belgium
Book:        Belgium, A Country Study
Author:      Rinn-Sup Shinn
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1984

Chapter 4C.   Political Parties

     Political parties play a central role in Belgian political life. They
provide organized channels through which candidates to public offices and
policy options are presented for public scrutiny and electoral support.
Equally important, they constitute an extensive network of linkage between
elites and masses, this network being a collection of various organizations
that serve as distributors of benefits derived from state sources.
Party-connected organizations provide cultural, medical, and social services
for their members. They can be seen in effect as extra-state organizations
performing vital intermediary services between the state and the grassroots.
A sound party system is regarded as essential to the maintenance of
parliamentary democracy in Belgium, and this is why the government continues
to grant subsidies to the parties proportionate to the number of deputies and
senators each party has in parliament.

     Although there were various minor parties and splinter groups, the three
traditional political groupings-the Social Christians, Socialists, and
Liberals-remained dominant in 1984. In the 1981 general elections the three
groupings accounted for about 80 percent of the lower parliamentary chamber
seats and about 73 percent of the national vote. In earlier years the
percentages for both categories were higher by about 10 percent. This margin
of decline was attributable to the rise of minor and new parties in the 1970s.
Through the mid-1970s two or more of the traditional groupings controlled the
seat of political power-the cabinet-more often than not in coalitions. As
products of compromise and harmonization, the coalition governments generally
militated against radical policy options. Frequently, the premium was on
pragmatism and cooperation. Another facet of such governments has been what
was known in Belgium as "immobilism" -the difficulty of finding lasting
solutions to complex problems.

     Two political groups-one the Catholics and the other the
Liberals-existed in Belgium at the time of independence, but they were not
formally known as parties. These two groups and the Socialist movement, which
entered the political scene later in the nineteenth century, evolved into
what became known as the traditional parties. Besides their ideological
distinctions, the traditional parties often mirrored cultural and regional
differences, particularly in matters relating to language. Long before their
formal split along linguistic lines after 1968, each had two wings or factions
based on linguistic identifications (see Consolidation of the System, ch. 1).

Social Christian Parties

     In 1945 the Catholic Bloc, as it was then called, was renamed the
Social Christian Party (CVP/PSC-known as Social Christians). Cutting its
formal links with the Catholic church, the party wanted to recast its image
as a broadly based mass organization. Dating back to the 1880s, the Social
Christians played a leading role in coalition with other parties for all
but a few years (1946-47 and 1954-58). In 1968 the party formally split over
a major linguistic dispute, becoming two separate parties-the CVP and the
PSC. In Flanders it became the Christian People's Party (CVP); in Wallonia
it remained the Social Christian Party (PSC).

     In the early 1980s both the CVP and the PSC remained moderate and
centrist and committed to the principle of "Christian personalism" -the
principle that every citizen should be accorded an ample opportunity to
cultivate his personality to its fullest potential free from the fear of
poverty, unemployment, sickness, and alienation. This principle was to be
realized through the reconciliation of class interests without resort to
the extremes of left and right and without overt reference to ecclesiastical
ties.

     The CVP and PSC did not compete with each other and confined their
activities to their respective regions. Brussels was an open territory, and
given the largely French-speaking population of the city, the PSC had a
distinct advantage. On the national level, however, the CVP was the much
larger of the two in terms of membership, seats in parliament, and popular
votes. Both appealed to broad strata of the population on almost identical
platforms, except where community and regional interests were concerned. On
the whole, the CVP was more left-leaning than the PSC because of its appeal
to industrial workers and their unions. In contrast, the PSC was perceived
to be more conservative and "bourgeois," having fewer supporters from the
ranks of industrial workers.

     The two were headquartered in Brussels and had nearly identical but
distinctly separate organizations. Technically, the national congress
was the supreme policymaking body for each; actually, the most important
national organ was the party bureau, chaired by the party president. The
president and some 20 select members of the bureau played a significant role
in policymaking, in day-to-day implementation of party decisions, in coalition
building, and in liaison between the CVP and PSC on the one side and with
other non-Social Christian parties on the other. The bureau members were
elected by the national council chosen earlier by the national congress, which
met every second month to discuss current policy issues and to carry out the
function of party supervision on behalf of the national congress. The
congress, council, and bureau organs also exist at the provincial,
arrondissement, and commune levels.

     Interparty coordination at the national level was maintained through a
liaison group composed of key party officials from both sides. Recommendations
of the group were usually endorsed by the leaders of each party. For the
purpose of coalition building, the two parties presented themselves as a
single CVP/PSC bloc. As the larger of the two in the Social Christian
grouping, the CVP has provided all the prime ministers since 1968, except in
1978-79, when the prime minister was from the PSC.

     In Flanders the CVP remained the dominant party in 1984, even though it
had suffered a major electoral reversal in 1981 (see Major Political
Developments, 1980-84, this ch.). Its nearest rivals were the Socialists. It
had a membership of 130,000 in Flanders and Brussels in the early 1980s,
drawing about one-half of its electoral support from workers and farmers. The
remaining support came from such middle-class categories as white-collar
workers, small businessmen and traders, shopkeepers, artisans, smallholders,
managers, and a small percentage of "bourgeois" elements. A majority of all
practicing Catholics in Flanders were believed to be voting for the CVP,
which, despite its "deconfessionalized" status, was widely viewed as the
Catholic party and as being more committed to the defense of church interests
than any other party.

     The CVP, like its French-speaking counterpart, appealed to all social
classes by taking a more or less centrist position. The diversity of
socioeconomic interests to which the parties appealed had its predictable
consequences: the existence of left-wing and right-wing schisms within both
the CVP and the PSC. For the 1981 elections the CVP supported the 1980 reform
of the state on condition that Brussels was not given a regional status on par
with Flanders and Wallonia. On other issues it advocated cuts in public
spending through cost-conscious methods of management, free enterprise, free
education, reduced state interventionism, adequate family allowances and
social services, and solidarity with the countries of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organizat