Belgian Exceptionalism: Belgian Politics between Realism and Surrealism

This book examines Belgium's unique and often perplexing political landscape, exploring why it stands out internationally and offering a critical assessment of its strengths and weaknesses, including consociationalism, federalism, democratic innovations, Euroscepticism, government formation, and gender equality. It is based on cutting-edge research and will be of interest to scholars and students of Belgian politics, European Politics, and Comparative Politics.

Format: Hardback
Length: 218 pages
Publication date: 25 November 2021
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book takes stock of Belgium’s exceptional and – for some foreign observers –schizophrenic position in the political world and explains its idiosyncrasy to a non-Belgian audience.

Offering a broad and comprehensive analysis of Belgian politics, the guiding questions throughout each of the chapters of this book are: Is Belgium a political enigma, and why? Along which axes is Belgium "exceptional" compared to other countries? And what insights does a comparative study of Belgian politics have to offer? The book therefore provides a critical assessment of how Belgian politics "stands out" internationally, both in good and bad ways – including consociationalism, federalism, democratic innovations, Euroscepticism, government formation, gender equality, among others – and which factors can explain Belgium’s exceptional position.

Based on cutting-edge research findings, the book will be of wide interest to scholars and students of Belgian politics, European Politics and Comparative politics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Weight: 512g
Dimension: 163 x 241 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367610272