Abstract
Following the Belgian revolution of 1830 aimed at leaving the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the independent territory of Belgium was established in 1831. Belgium is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system and a strong form of consociationalism. An important factor in Belgium’s state reform process has always been the language cleavage between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia. Since 1970, Belgium has consequently evolved from a decentralised unitary state into a federal state through six substantial state reforms. Belgium has a particular twofold structure of its federated entities: three culturally structured communities competent for so-called person-related matters and three territorially structured regions competent for place-related and economic matters.
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Sources and Further Reading
As general sources of empirical data, the following works have been used, most notably the papers by Hendriks and Goossens referred to below. Quite useful were also the documents and materials provided by the editors of this volume. General references are used in this section, as almost each of the following works touches on each of the paragraphs presented above
Supplementary material
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Goossens J (2017) Electoral reforms in Belgium's sixth state reform: historic Split of electoral constituency BHV, reform of the senate, and coincident elections. Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 16(2):316–324
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Quantitative and Statistical Materials
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Goossens, J., Hendriks, F. (2021). Belgium. In: Martí-Henneberg, J. (eds) European Regions, 1870 – 2020. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61537-6_3
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