As long as we are on the subject of countries tooting their own horns (but in their own languages, and thus mainly to a domestic audience), did you know that Belgium is #1 in the world when it comes to globalization? That’s the word from the leading Flemish daily De Standaard, and the authority bestowing this accolade is the KOF economic research institute of Switzerland. That evaluation is based on three globalization sub-scores: economic (self-explanatory), social (how many foreign people and firms are there), and political (how active it is in international organizations/cooperation). Belgium is not #1 in any of those individual sub-scores (it’s #5, #10, and #3 respectively) but combined they are enough to give it a “Globalization Index” of 91.51 and put it on top of the world’s nations, just ahead of Ireland and the Netherlands. (If you’re interested, the US ranks far down the list at #38, behind even Jordan and Malaysia.)

“Alright, but isn’t this the same country where no one wants to serve as prime minister?” you might be asking at this point, particularly if you followed along with coverage on this weblog last summer of yet another Belgian political crisis that unfortunately coincided with the National Holiday. And, of course, you’re right. So it is no surprise – even if it is kind of amusing – to see on the website of that very same newspaper, De Standaard, on the very same day a headline in English, “Something is rotten in the state of Belgium.” That fronts an article that is all about Belgian politician Bart De Wever and his dominant (in the Dutch-speaking part of the country, that is) N-VA or Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie party. De Wever tells reporter Peter De Lobel that 2008 was for his party “the year of the great disillusionment.” He laments that “this country doesn’t work any more,” and points out that the major Belgian bank KBC had to get a €2 billion bailout from the Flemish regional government a few weeks to avoid bankruptcy – the Belgian federal government was supposedly uninterested in helping out what De Wever claims it looked askance at as a “Flemish and Catholic” bank.

That sort of squabbling over a major financial institution in trouble is a measure for you of how divided politics are in contemporary Belgium, no matter how “globalized” the country may be.

As I noted in this previous post, July 21 – yesterday – is each year the Belgian National Holiday: think along the lines, for example, of the 4th of July in the US. Except that yesterday in Belgium the occasion was more like America on 4 July 1860: then, Abraham Lincoln had just been nominated to be the Republican Party candidate for the upcoming presidential election in November, and it was evident that, while he had a good chance of sweeping the more-populated Northern states with his party platform forbidding any more slavery in US territories, nobody in the South would vote for him. Indeed, if he turned out to win the presidency nonetheless (which of course he did), there was very likely to be serious trouble, yet it was hard to think of any alternative scenario by which the presidency could be won by any of the other candidates, each of which were politicians backed by yet-narrower sections of the country. Likewise, there was precious little of any “national” nature to be celebrated in Belgium on its “National Holiday” yesterday, even as one can assume that any similar implicit prospect of violence does not apply in this modern case.

When last we left portly, avuncular old King Albert II, he had received Prime Minister Yves Leterme’s resignation but had yet to decide whether to accept it. (more…)

Don’t look now – but Belgium is once again in a governmental crisis. Prime Minister Yves Leterme yesterday evening (Monday, 14 July) submitted his resignation to King Albert II, after having served in that capacity for thirteen months. You’ll recall that Leterme – leader of the Flemish political party Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V) – had been the compromise candidate for prime minister in the first place, voted in by the kaleidoscope of Dutch-, French-, and German-speaking parties of the Belgian political landscape pretty much in desperation after nine months of haggling after the latest national elections of June, 2007. July 15 (i.e. today) was the deadline he had set to be able to present a new plan for re-structuring Belgium’s governmental structure. It seemed that the deadline was coming up fast and little to no progress on forming such a plan had been made. So Leterme resigned. The Economist weblog “Certain ideas of Europe” is keeping on top of developments with an summary entry Time to dissolve Belgium?. (more…)