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This paper discusses the corona virus crisis legislation in Belgium, against the background of a political crisis. It raises the questions how a minority government could find legitimacy to take drastic measures that impact upon fundamental rights and how the political crisis impacted the position of Parliament. This is examined from the viewpoint of input, throughput and output legitimacy, and with a comparison to the position of Parliament in Belgium during earlier crises and in the federated entities. The conclusions point to the increased importance of expert advice, an over-use of ministerial police powers, but also to a more important role for Parliament than what we could have expected under the reign of a majority government. While the political crisis did not hinder firm intervention in an initial phase, it is, however, problematic to deal with the effects of the crisis over the longer term.

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This article, a pilot study, examines the behavior of courts in federalism disputes. It explores the circumstances that lead courts to take a centralist or, more interestingly, a non-centralist stance in disputes between national and subnational governments. Several hypotheses are tested, relying on a sample of eleven federations, with attention to institutional features such as the extent of subnational representation in federal policymaking, the degree of integration of the party system, the role of states in the appointment of judges and in the composition of the court, the extent of decentralization of the federal system, and the devolutionary and multinational nature of the federation. Courts seem more likely to take a non-centralist stance in the presence of a weak representation of subnational governments at the federal level, a low centralization gradient or, in particular, the context of a devolutionary multinational state. By contrast, low representation of the states in the selection of judges or the composition of the courts seem to encourage a more centralist stance.

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