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Cet article est une étude sur les essais de l'élite politique belge de résoudre les conflits entre Flamands et Wallons en offrant à chaque groupe une certaine autonomie dans le contrôle de leurs affaires économiques et culturelles. Malgré le fait que la réforme constittitionnelle établissant les principes généraux de cette décentralisation ait eu lieu en 1970 et que les institutions pour permettre l'autonomie culturelle aient été établies tout de suite après, ce n'est qu'en 1980 qu'on a promulgué la loi établissant l'autonomie régionale. Entre 1970 et 1980 six gouvernements ont mené des négociations pour tenter d'arriver à un accord sur la question, cependant, comme résultat des conflits soulevés par leurs essais, ils ont tons échoué et ils sont tons tombés.Dans cet article, l'auteur affirme que la littérature courante axée sur le conflit ethnique, mettant l'accent sur la gestion du conflit et limitant le rôle de l'élite politique à la solution de ce conflit, ne constitue pas une voie valable pour comprendre le processus de négotiation constitutionnelle. L'auteur soutient qu'une approche fondée sur des modèles de négotiation internationale, mettant l'accent sur le déroulement du conflit ainsi que sur sa gestion dans le processus de négotiation, est plus utile pour comprendre le succès on l'echec des négociations constitutionnelles en Belgique. Dans cet article on applique deux de ces modèles aux deux des plus récents tours de négotiations constitutionnelles: un cadre d'analyse général et une théorie de jeux dérivés d'un ensemble de matrices.

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This article examines the impact of economic crisis on the process of regionalization in Belgium and the influence of both on the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces in the Belgian political system. It argues that the usual approach to this suject, which identifies centripetal forces with the national government and centrifugal forces with regional governments, misses the possibility that important proponents of further fragmentation may be located at the national level. The economic crisis of the early 1980s did lead to an increase in centrifugal pressures in the system but not to an increase in the power of the new regional executives. Rather, it led to a major rearrangement of the economic policy-making process at the national level.

Since 1968, the unitary form of the Belgian state has been under almost continuous question. In that year, after a series of demonstrations and a government crisis, the French section of the University of Louvain, located in the Dutch-speaking region of the country, was forced to move to the French-speaking side of the border between the two languages. The move initiated a period of ongoing crisis, punctuated by three revisions of the constitution, in 1968, 1980, and 1988-1989. The periods between the revisions were marked, not by quietus, but by a series of unsuccessful attempts to implement the revisions just completed, or to achieve further revisions. The most recent revision, that of 1988, with its accompanying laws of Implementation, is itself incomplete.This article will examine the way in which Belgian political actors came to attempt to resolve the quarreis between Dutch-speaking and Frenchspeaking citizens of the country through the process that I have called constitutional engineering. It will also consider the factors that influenced the course and outcomes of the constitutional revisions. Because there is an abundant literature on the earlier constitutional revisions I will concentrate on the most recent revision, that of 1988. 1 Constitutional engineeringConstitutional engineering is one of a ränge of possible responses to the divisions in a given state. It involves making formal changes to the organization and Operation of government institutions via changes to the country's constitution. It is this requirement for formal change in the constitution that distinguishes constitutional engineering from other ways of dealing with political issues.For example, increasing working-class participation in the political life of Belgium required formal constitutional engineering, in the form of the revisions of 1894 and 1919 that provided for manhood suffrage and