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Belgium is a federation with a multi-party political system, with numerous parties who factually have no chance of gaining power alone, and therefore must work with each other to form coalition governments.
Almost all Belgian political parties are divided into linguistic groups, either Dutch-speaking parties (see also List of political parties in Flanders), Francophone parties or Germanophone parties.
The Flemish parties operate in Flanders and in the Brussels-Capital Region. The Francophone parties operate in Wallonia and in the Brussels-Capital Region. There are also parties operating in the comparatively small German-speaking community. No party family has a realistic chance of winning enough seats to govern alone, let alone win an outright majority.
Political parties are thus organised along community lines, especially for the three main communities. There are no representative parties active in both communities. Even in Brussels, all parties presenting candidates are either Flemish parties, or French-speaking. As such, the internal organisation of the political parties reflects the fundamentally dual nature of Belgian society.
There are no significant parties left who exist, or operate on a national, Belgian level.
From the creation of the Belgian state in 1830 and throughout most of the 19th century, two political parties dominated Belgian politics: the Catholic Party (Church-oriented and conservative) and the Liberal Party (anti-clerical and progressive). In the late 19th century the Labour Party arose to represent the emerging industrial working class. These three groups still dominate Belgian politics, but they have evolved substantially in character.
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After World War II, the Catholic (now Christian Democratic) Party severed its formal ties with the Church. It became a mass party of the centre, somewhat like a political party in the United States.
In 1968, the Christian Democratic Party, responding to linguistic tensions in the country, divided into two independent parties: the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC) in French-speaking Belgium and the Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP) in Flanders. The two parties pursue the same basic policies but maintain separate organisations. The CVP is the larger of the two, getting more than twice as many votes as the PSC. The chairman of the Flemish Catholic party is now Wouter Beke. MP and Brussels Alderman Joëlle Milquet is president of the Francophone Catholic party. Following the 1999 general elections, the CVP and PSC were ousted from office, bringing an end to a 40-year term on the government benches. In 2001, the CVP changed its name to Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V). In 2002, the PSC also changed its name to Centre démocrate humaniste (cdH).
After the big losses in the 1999 general elections, when both CVP and PSC were banished to the opposition benches, some party members decided to leave the mother parties in order to form a new liberal-conservative party. In Flanders, the New Christian Democrats (NCD) was founded by Johan Van Hecke and Karel Pinxten. In Wallonia, the Citizens' Movement for Change (MCC) was founded by Gérard Deprez. Both parties soon joined the major liberal parties, respectively the VLD in Flanders and the MR in Wallonia.
The modern Belgian Socialist parties are the descendants of the Belgian Labour Party. They have lost much of their early Marxist trends. They are now primarily labour-based parties similar to the German Social Democratic Party and the French Socialist Party. The Socialists have been part of several postwar governments and have produced some of the country's most distinguished statesmen. The Socialists also split along linguistic lines in 1978. Bruno Tobback is the current head of the Flemish Socialist Party and Elio Di Rupo is the current president of the Francophone Socialists. In general, the Walloon Socialists tend to concentrate on domestic issues. In the eighties, the Flemish Socialists focused heavily on international issues, and on security in Europe in particular, where they frequently opposed U.S. policies. However, first with Willy Claes, then Frank Vandenbroucke and with Erik Derycke as Foreign Minister, all three Flemish Socialists, the party made a significant shift to the centre adopting less controversial stances on foreign policy issues.
The Francophone Parti Socialiste (PS) is mainly based in the industrial cities of Wallonia (Liège, Charleroi, and Mons). The Flemish Socialists' support is less regionally concentrated. The Flemish Socialists changed their party's name to Socialistische Partij Anders (SP.a) in 2002.
Recently, because of grassroots allegations about the party's "too little Socialist stand" in many political issues, a radical party wing broke away from the motherparty and formed, with support from smaller leftist parties, the Committee for Another Policy (CAP). Within the SP.a, the more marxist SP.a-Rood, is trying to change the course of the party.
The Liberal Parties chiefly appeal to businesspeople, property owners, shopkeepers, and the self-employed, in general. In the terms generally used in English-speaking countries, Belgian liberals would be called "moderate conservatives", "fiscal conservatives" and "social liberals".
There are two Liberal parties, formed along linguistic lines: The Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (VLD) who opened up their ranks to Volksunie and CD&V defectors some years ago, managed to break the dominance of CD&V over Belgian politics in 1999. The VLD is currently headed by Alexander De Croo. The Mouvement Réformateur (MR) on the Francophone side is headed by Charles Michel. The MR is a federation composed of the Christian-democratic split-off, MCC and the Brussels-based FDF which is particularly strong electorally in Brussels.
Recently, the Flemish liberal party faced several high-ranking elected officials breaking away in order to found new "right-liberal" parties: MEP Ward Beysen (Liberaal Appèl, LA), senator Leo Govaerts (Veilig Blauw), senator Hugo Coveliers (VLOTT), VLD board member Boudewijn Bouckaert (Cassadra vzw) and senator Jean-Marie Dedecker (Lijst Dedecker, LDD).
The first communist party in Belgium was founded by the more radical elements of the Belgian Labour Party in 1921 and was named the Communist Party of Belgium (KPB-PCB). The party was a member of the Comintern and entered parliament in 1925. It received its highest score in the post-war elections of 1946, when it won 12,7% of the popular vote and took part in the next coalition government. With the start of the Cold War the party started its decline and after the elections of 1985 it was no longer represented in the Belgian Parliament. The party eventually disbanded itself in 1989, but two minor parties, the Kommunistische Partij (KP) in Flanders and the Parti Communiste (PC) in Wallonia, see themselves as the successors.
The most successful Maoist movement to emerge in Belgium was All Power To The Workers (AMADA-TPO) at the end of the 1960s during a time of students protests at the University of Leuven. In 1979 this movement evolved into the Workers' Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB), which is at the moment the biggest communist party in Belgium and is represented in various municipal councils, but not in any of the parliaments in Belgium.
Other minor communist or radical left parties are the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (LCR-SAP) and the Left Socialist Party (LSP-PSL).
A specific phenomenon in Belgium was the emergence of one-issue parties whose only reason for existence was the defence of the cultural, political, and economic interests of one of the linguistic groups or regions of Belgian society. See Flemish movement.
The most militant Flemish regional party in Parliament in the 1950s and 1960s, the Volksunie (VU), once drew nearly one-quarter of Belgium's Dutch-speaking electorate away from the traditional parties. The Volksunie was in the forefront of a successful campaign by the country's Flemish population for cultural and political parity with the nation's long dominant French-speaking population. However, in recent elections the party has suffered severe setbacks. In October 2001 the party disintegrated. The left-liberal wing founded Spirit, later called the Social Liberal Party, while the more traditional Flemish nationalist wing continued under the banner Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA). After a disappointing result in the regional elections of 2009, the Social Liberal Party decided to fuse with the Flemish ecologists of Groen!
The Fédéralistes Démocrates Francophones (FDF) is a Brussels French-speaking Belgian political party that aims to defend and expand linguistic rights of French-speaking people in and around Brussels. It has affiliated with the Mouvement Réformateur, a liberal alliance party.
The Union des Francophones (UF) is an electoral list combining the major Belgian Francophone parties for the regional elections.
The Flemish (Agalev) and Francophone (Ecolo) ecologist parties made their parliamentary breakthrough in 1981. They focus heavily on environmental issues and are the most consistent critics of U.S. policy. Following significant gains made in the 1999 general elections, the two green parties joined a federal coalition cabinet for the first time in their history, but were ousted after the next elections. Agalev subsequently changed its name to Groen!
The foremost Flemish party in Belgium is the Vlaams Belang, which was founded in 2004, after its predecessor was condemned by a High Court for "permanent incitation to discrimination and racism." On the far right, the Flanders separatist party Vlaams Blok steadily rose in the 1980s and 1990s. The other parties except the fortuynist party VLOTT maintain a cordon sanitaire on the Vlaams Belang as they did the Vlaams Blok.[1][2] Although other parties in Belgium are supportive of Flemish and Dutch cultural issues, the Vlaams Belang is most strident in pursuing a secessionist agenda, for Flemish independence.
In Wallonia, the Front National (FN) is the largest Wallonian party, having a largely anti-immigrant agenda. Officially, it is a bilingual party, but in reality, it is a purely French-speaking group, although it does support Belgian federalism.
The German speaking parties do not play an important role on federal level. The main German speaking parties are the christian-democratic Christlich-Soziale Partei (CSP), the liberal Partei für Freiheit und Fortschritt (PFF), the social-democratic Sozialistische Partei (SP) and regionalist Pro deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft (ProDG).
After the installation of a 5% electoral threshold, with private funding close to forbidden and public funding only for parties with at least one representative in parliament, some of the smaller parties have made alliances with a larger, more traditional party, especially in the Flemish Region. Parties in any alliance remain independent, but they would field candidates on one combined list at elections. In general, the smaller party/parties would be assured of gaining seats, and the larger party would be assured of obtaining a larger overall share of the vote. This was especially true for the CD&V/N-VA alliance, whereby CD&V became the largest party by votes in the Flemish regional elections, so therefore it could initiate coalition talks and the party could appoint the leader of the Flemish regional government. The VLD/Vivant alliance did not perform well in the polls. The proposed SP.a/Spirit/Groen! alliance did not happen, instead the SP.a/Spirit alliance went to the polls, although the tripartite cartel became reality in some constituencies on the local level in the October 2006 municipal elections.
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