Ethnic conflicts: Flemings & walloons, Palestinians & Israelis

Daedalus

Volumn 136, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 103-118

  Mnookin, Robert H ^a,b,c,d  

^a American Academy   (United States)

^b HARVARD LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

^c Harvard Negotiation Research Project   (United States)

^d Center for Advanced Study

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847017759     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.103     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. I am grateful to the Francqui Foundation for the opportunity to have spent a semester at K.U. Leuven as the holder of the International Francqui Chair. This essay reflects my ongoing collaboration with Alain Verbeke, rny host at K.U. Leuven, to whom I am deeply indebted. I would also like to acknowledge the research assistance of Ariel Heifetz, Columbia College 2004, and Eli Schlam, Harvard Law School 2009.
2. See Kenneth D. McRae, Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Belgium (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), 17. In the south-Wallonia-nearly everyone speaks French; in the north - Flanders - the language is Dutch. In a population of 10.5 million, about 44 percent speak French arid about 56 percent speak Dutch. In one small area obtained from Germany after World War I, with a population of about fifty thousand, German is the principal language.
3. In de Warande, "Manifesto for an Independent Flanders within Europe," Brussels, Belgium, November 2005. The report was 'drawn up' by the 'Reflection Group' - sixteen Flemish businessmen and academics who had studied Belgium's problems at the 'Warande,' the elite Flemish men's club in Brussels located next to the residence of the American ambassador to Brussels. The manifesto also carries the names of an additional fifty people who "subscribe[d] to [its] conclusions... and principles."
4. Ibid., 155. See, generally, ibid., 132-177. The amount of transfers, as well as the reasoning of the "Manifesto," is contested in Giuseppe Pagano, Miguel Verbeke, and Aurélien Accaputo, "Le manifeste du group In de Warande," Courrier hebdomadaire du CRISP 8-9 (1913-1914) (2006).
5. Recently, Rudy Aernoudt, a prominent former Flemish public servant, wrote a book with both Dutch and French editions, suggesting policies that might improve the national economy and hold the country together, contrary to the "Manifesto." See Rudy Aernoudt, Vlaanderen Wallonië. Je t'aime moi non plus (Roeselare: Roularta Books, 2006);
6. Rudy Aernoudt, Wallonie. Flandre. Je t'aime moi non plus (Roeselare: Vif/Roularta Books, 2006). On his website, www.aernoudt.com, over three hundred persons, including many prominent Flemings, endorsed his perspective.
7. See Victoria Tilley, The One State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (Arm Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
8. This seems to have been the favored resolution of the late Edward Said. See Edward Said, "Truth arid Reconciliation," in The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (New York: Vintage, 2001), 318.
9. Belgium is 11,787 square miles; Israel and the Palestinian territories are 10,548 square miles. Belgium's estimated 2006 population is about 10,500,000, while that of Israel arid the Palestinian territories is approximately 11,100,000. Population Reference Bureau, 2006 World Pop ulalion Data Sheet, http://www.prb.org/pdf06/06WorldDataSheet.pdf.
10. James Fearon and David Laitin have done important, systematic empirical work on ethnicity and violence. See James Fearon and David Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97 (i) (January 2003): 75-90;
11. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity," International Organization 54 (4) (Autumn 2000): 845-877.
12. See Ugo M. Amoretti and Nancy Borneo, eds., Federalism and Territorial Cleavages (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1004).
13. This is not to say that after the creation of Belgium, some historians did not attempt to reconstruct a Belgian history demonstrating the prior existence of some sense of peoplehood. See Louis Vos, "Reconstruction of the Past in Belgium and Flanders," in Secession, History and the Social Sciences, ed. Bruno Coppieters and Michel Huysseune (Brussels: VUB Brussels University Press, 2002).
14. Kris Deschouwer, "Kingdom of Belgium," in John Kincaid and C. Alan Tarr, eds., Constitutional Origins, Structure and Change in Federal Countries, vol. 1 (Montreal: McGill-Queens, 2005), 49.
15. M. Camille Huysmanns, "The Flemish Question," Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 9 (5) (1930).
16. McRae, Conflict and Compromise; Huysmanns, "The Flemish Question";
17. Liesbet Ilooghe, "Belgium: Hollowing the Center," in Does Federalism Matter ? Political Institutions and the Management of Territorial Cleavages, ed. Nancy Bermeo and Ugo Amoretti (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2,003), 62-76, 58.
18. In. 1893, the Belgian constitution was amended to give all men over twenty-five one vote, with additional votes (up to a maximum of three) going to older men who owned homes, had sufficient savings, or held a university degree. A 1920 amendment created universal male suffrage where all had a single vote. Suffrage was not extended to women until 1948. There is a vast literature on the Flemish movement. See François Nielsen, "The Flemish Movement in Belgium After World War II: A Dynamic Analysis," American Sociological Review 45 (1) (1980);
19. Huysimanns, "The Flemish Question"; Theo Hermans, Louis Vos, and Lode Wils, The Flemish Movement: A Documentary History, 1780-1990 (London: Athlone Press, 1992).
20. See McRae, Conflict and Compromise, 28.
21. GDP per capita in Flanders is approximately $33,500, while it is about $24,500 in Wallonia. Eurostat Regional Database, http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/portal/page?-pageid=0,1136162, 0_45572076&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL. The 2005 estimate for the United Kingdom and Germany is approximately $30,100; in France it is $29,600, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.
22. See Hooghe, "Hollowing the Center." The November 2006 issue of West European Politics is devoted to Belgian politics and has the transformation, of Belgium from a unitary state to a federal system as its connecting theme.
23. Flanders decided early on to combine the language-based 'Flemish community' parliament with the Flemish regional parliament. The result is that there are a total of six, rather than seven, parliamentary-style elected legislatures, each of which has a government.
24. The authority of the communities includes matters relating to education, language, and culture, including support of the arts. The regions have authority for abroad range of policies relating to economic development, environment, agricultural and housing policy, water, energy, and transport.
25. Lieven DC Winter, Marc Swyngedouw, and Patrick Dumont, "Party System(s) and Electoral Behavior in Belgium: From Stability to Balkanization," West European Politics 29 (5) (November 2006): 933-956.
26. See also Liesbet Hooghe, "A Leap in the Dark: Nationalist Conflict and Federal Reform in Belgium," Occasional Paper 27, Western Societies Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1991. Since 60 percent of the population is Flemish, the unstated presumption has been that the prime minister will be Flemish-not since the 1970s has a Walloon had the top position.
27. Hooghe, "Hollowing the Center," 59.
28. Brendan O'Leary, "Debating Consociational Politics: Normative and Explanatory Arguments," in Sid Noel, ed., From Power Sharing to Democracy: Post-Conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies, Studies in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005);
29. Brendan O'Leary, "An Iron Law of Nationalism and Federation: A (Neo-Diceyian) Theory of the Necessity of Federal Staatsvolk and of Consociational Rescue, "Nations and Nationalism 7 (3) (2001);
30. Kris Deschouwer, "And the Peace Goes On? Consociational Democracy and Belgian Politics in the Twenty-First Century," West European Politics 29 (5) (November 2006): 895-911;
31. Kris Deschouwer, "Falling Apart Together: The Changing Nature of Belgian Consociationalism, 1961-2001," Acta Politica (37) (1-2) (Spring - Summer 2002);
32. Rudy B. Andeweg, "ConsociaLional Democracy, " Annual Review of Political Science 3 (2000): 509-536;
33. George Tsebelis, "Elite Interaction and Constitution Building in Consociational Democracies, "Journal of Theoretical Politics 2 (1) (January 1990): 5-29.
34. In 2002 the Belgian high court ruled that having Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde as a single electoral district was inconsistent with certain provisions of the present Belgium constitution that contemplate territorially based electoral districts, and remanded the matter to the national parliament for remediation. The result has been a deadlock. The Flemish parties insist that the borders of the Brussels-Capital Region remain fixed, and that the electoral district be split so that voters in the Halle-Vilvoorde areas are no longer attached to the Capital Region for any voting purposes. The francophone parties oppose the split, and also ask that, six communes with a number of francophone residents be given language facilities and be added to Brussels proper. While the conflict has substantial symbolic importance on both sides of the language divide and might be used for purposes of political mobilization, its practical importance is minor. With respect to national electoral power, little turns on how the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde electoral district is reformed.
35. Bea Cantillon, Veerle de Maesschalk, Stijn Rottiers, and Gerlinde Verbist, "Social Redistribution in Federalised Belgium," West European Politics 29 (5) (November 2006): 1034-1056.
36. 5(1993): 47.
37. Hooghe, "Hollowing the Center," 65; See J. Billiet, B. Maddens, and A-P. Frognier, "Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture Between Flemings and Walloons," West European Politics 29 (5) (November 2006): 912-932.
38. On the cultural clichés and stereotypical perceptions, see Aernoudt, Wallonie. Flandre. Je t'aime moi nonplus, part I.
39. For a recent study suggesting that these differences in religiosity are being eroded, and that the entire country is becoming more secular, see Billiet, Maddens, and Frognier, "Does Belgium (Still) Exist?"
40. Ibid, 914.
41. Ibid., 915. Citing F. Bartiaux and C. Wattelar, "Nuptialiteit," Algemene Volks-en Woningtelling op 1 maart 1991, Monograph n. 5A (Brussels: National Statistical Institute, 2002).
42. W. Swenden and M. Jans, '"Will It Stay or Will It Go?' Federalism and the Sustainability of Belgium, " West European Politics 29 (5) (November 2006): 890.
43. Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber, "La Dynamique Des Langues En Belgique," Regards Economiques 42 (June 2006).
44. "The youngest generations of Flemings, unlike their parents and grandparents, have grown, up and become socialized in a mono-lingual Dutch environment.... They are much more focused on the Anglo-Saxon world, which means that French has become a foreign language." Billiet, Maddens, and Frognier, "Does Belgium (Still) Exist?"
45. See Lieven de Winter and Patrick Dumorit, "Do Belgian Parties Undermine the Democratic Chain of Delegation?" West European Politics 29 (5) (November 2006): 957-976.
46. Called the Court of Arbitration, this court has ultimate responsibility for adjudicating jurisdictional conflicts between various levels of government and ruling on the allocation of governmental authority within the federal system. By law, this twelve-person court must have an equal number of French-speaking and Dutch-speaking judges.
47. Principle VIII of the Helsinki Final Act adopted by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975 states: "The participating States will respect the equal rights of peoples and their right to self-determination, acting in all time in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with the relevant norms of international law, including those relating to the territorial integrity of States" (emphasis added). The "right of self-determination" for purposes of this Act has not been interpreted to give an internal minority people the right to secede. For further analysis, see Antonio Cassese, Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 278-291.
48. I have written about the importance of these internal conflicts. See Robert H. Mnookin and Ehud Eiran, "Discord 'Behind the Table': The Internal Conflict Among Israeli Jews Concerning the Future of Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza," Journal of Conflict Resolution 1 (2005): 11-44;
49. and Robert H. Mnookin, Ehud Eiran, and Sreemati Mitter, "Barriers to Progress at the Negotiation Table: Internal Conflicts Among Israelis and Among Palestinians," Nevada Law Review 6 (Winter 2006): 299-366.
50. Eurostat Regional Database; CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.