Consensus Democracy and Bureaucracy in the Low Countries

Abstract

Consensus democracy and bureaucracy in the Low Countries Taking Lijphart’s work on consensus democracies as our point of departure, we signal a major shortcoming in Lijphart’s focus being almost exclusively on the political hardware of the state structure, leaving little attention for the administrative and bureaucratic characteristics of governance systems. We propose to expand the Lijphart’s model which overviews structural aspects of the executive and the state with seven additional features of the bureaucratic system. We argue that these features are critical for understanding the processes of policymaking and service delivery. Next, in order to better understand the functioning of the Netherlands and Belgium as consensus democracies, we provide a short analysis of the historical context and current characteristics of the political-administrative systems in both countries.

Interest Representation in Belgium

“…In short, while interest mobilisation differs across government levels, also the variation in lobbying strategies reflects the multi-level structure of the Belgian polity. Moreover, the clear prominence of the administration as a lobbying target seems to be a persistent feature of neo-corporatist and consensual policymaking in Belgium (see also van den Berg et al, 2014;van der Meer et al, 2019). This finding matches the assessment of 'corporatist resilience' observed in other small European countries Christiansen et al, 2018).…”

“…While some longitudinal research conducted in other neo-corporatist European countries found that the parliament as a lobbying target has gained substantial importance since the heyday of corporatism (Gava et al, 2017;Rommetvedt et al, 2013), this seems to be less markedly the case in Belgium. Belgium is still characterised by a weak parliament, 'politicised' government administrations and large personal cabinets of ministers (van den Berg et al, 2014;van der Meer et al, 2019). Second, most contacts are initiated with the administration, especially at the subnational level.…”

“…Hence, it is doubtful whether traditional concepts of Belgian interest representation, such as consociationalism and neo-corporatism, still adequately characterise the overall pattern of state-society relations. After all, similar developments have also affected the Belgian party-political landscape and the overall political-administrative system (De Winter et al, 2006;Deschouwer, 2012;van der Meer et al, 2019;Van Haute & Wauters, 2019).…”

Deep antiquity of seagrasses supporting European eel fisheries in the western Baltic

“…Despite these contributions, we know little about their respective long-term stability prior to the twentieth century. For instance, while seagrasses have long been used as a building material [ 16 ] and are thought to be a key source of Blue Carbon storage [ 17 ], their role in supporting human ecosystems prior to steep declines by the early 1900s remains undocumented [ 18 ]. Likewise, while European eel populations have been decimated (a 98% decline) since 1980 [ 19 ], eels have long been harvested as a cosmopolitan, highly desirable food species [ 20 ].…”