Between Controlling and Blocking: Federal Democracy at Work in Belgium

Federalism, beyond entrenching the distribution of political authority between federal and federated entities in a state, also aims at fulfilling the democratic ideal of introducing checks and balances in a political system. These checks and balances can serve as controls on power between institutions within and across federal levels. While envisioned in classical federal theory as controls between institutions, the contemporary democratic challenges stemming from authoritarian political actors – be they individuals or parties – invite us to extend our analyses of checks and balances in federal systems beyond institutions: to political actors which, when autocratic, may be hostile to democratic norms and institutions themselves. In this paper, we aim to contribute to this debate with reflections from the Belgian federation, which is untypical and interesting in two respects. First, its federal structure and institutions were enacted as a power-sharing arrangement between sub-state entities nourishing own political identities and pushing for greater sub-state autonomy. As a result, the Belgian federal institutions possess many consociational features, which entail checks and balances that push the idea of mutual control as far as to regularly lead to political deadlock. Secondly, contrary to most federations which encompass multiple federal entities and consequently experience multipolar federal dynamics, the Belgian federation is dominated by two communities – the Dutch- and the French-speaking –, which gives Belgian federal politics and its checks and balances a very bipolar dynamic. Through an analysis of Belgian federal institutions and the agency of its political actors, we aim to study how Belgian bipolar consociational federalism exerts checks and balances on political actors, when these checks are effective, when they are not, and when they even go beyond the ideal of control and lead to political deadlock. Beyond the Belgian case, the analysis informs other federations with consociational or bipolar traits, and speaks to the broader literatures on federalism, multi-level governance and democratic consolidation.