Dave Sinardet (Antwerp, 6 October 1975) is a Belgian political scientist, author and columnist.
Dave Sinardet (Antwerp, 6 October 1975) is a Belgian political scientist, author and columnist.
Since 2007, Dave Sinardet is a professor at Saint-Louis University, Brussels. In 2009, he also started giving lectures at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. At the University of Antwerp he is a post-doctoral research fellow of the FWO (National Fund for Scientific Research). [1]
He is also an op-ed columnist for several Belgian papers, amongst them the Dutch-speaking newspapers De Standaard , De Tijd , and the French-speaking newspaper Le Soir .
Dave Sinardet's research concentrates on comparative federalism, nationalism, language politics, consociational democracy, multi-level politics, public sphere and political communication. His PhD thesis dealt with the role of media in the representation of Belgium's political language conflict and more generally with the question of how a public sphere functions in a federal multilingual country such as Belgium.
He has published in political science journals such as West European Politics, Acta Politica or "International Journal of Political Science", Regional and Federal Studies and Governance.
He is also an active participant in the Belgian public debate on federalism and nationalism in both French and Dutch languages. He is also regularly interviewed by international media on Belgian politics.
He is a member of the Pavia group, a Belgian academic think tank which promotes a federal electoral district for Belgium, so that inhabitants could vote for the same parties, Flemish and French. Sinardet is also in favour of an EU-wide electoral district for the election of part of the members of the European Parliament, as a way to reduce the EU’s democratic deficit’.
Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics, and history, and sometimes involving neighbouring countries. The demonym associated with Flanders is Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish. The official capital of Flanders is the City of Brussels, although the Brussels-Capital Region that includes it has an independent regional government. The powers of the government of Flanders consist, among others, of economic affairs in the Flemish Region and the community aspects of Flanders life in Brussels, such as Flemish culture and education.
The politics of Belgium take place in the framework of a federal, representative democratic, constitutional monarchy. The King of the Belgians is the head of state, and the prime minister of Belgium is the head of government, in a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Federal legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives. The federation is made up of (language-based) communities and (territorial) regions. Philippe is the seventh and current King of the Belgians, having ascended the throne on 21 July 2013.
Flemish Brabant is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut and East Flanders. Flemish Brabant also surrounds the Brussels-Capital Region. Its capital is Leuven. It has an area of 2,118 km2 (818 sq mi) which is divided into two administrative districts containing 65 municipalities. As of January 2019, Flemish Brabant has a population of 1,146,175.
Belgium is a federal state comprising three communities and three regions that are based on four language areas. For each of these subdivision types, the subdivisions together make up the entire country; in other words, the types overlap.
The Kingdom of Belgium is divided into three regions. Two of these regions, Flanders and Wallonia, are each subdivided into five provinces. The third region, Brussels, does not belong to any province and nor is it subdivided into provinces. Instead, it has amalgamated both regional and provincial functions into a single "Capital Region" administration.
In Belgium, there are 27 municipalities with language facilities, which must offer linguistic services to residents in Dutch, French, or German in addition to their single official languages. All other municipalities – with the exception of those in the bilingual Brussels region – are monolingual and only offer services in their official languages, either Dutch or French.
The Federal Parliament is the bicameral parliament of Belgium. It consists of the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate. It sits in the Palace of the Nation. The Chamber of Representatives is the primary legislative body; the Senate functions only as a meeting place of the federal communities and regions.
The Senate is one of the two chambers of the bicameral Federal Parliament of Belgium, the other being the Chamber of Representatives. It is considered to be the "upper house" of the Federal Parliament. Created in 1831 as a chamber fully equal to the Chamber of Representatives, it has undergone several reforms in the past, most notably in 1993 and 2014. The 2014 elections were the first without a direct election of senators. Instead, the new Senate is composed of members of community and regional parliaments and co-opted members. It is a chamber of the communities and regions and serves as a platform for discussion and reflection about matters between these federated entities. The Senate today plays a minor role in the federal legislative process. However, the Senate, together with the Chamber, has full competence for the Constitution and legislation on the organization and functioning of the Federal State and the federated entities. Since the reform of 2014, it holds about ten plenary sessions a year.
The area within Belgium known as Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde encompasses the bilingual—French and Dutch—Brussels-Capital Region, which coincides with the arrondissement of Brussels-Capital and the surrounding Dutch-speaking area of Halle-Vilvoorde, which in turn coincides with the arrondissement of Halle-Vilvoorde. Halle-Vilvoorde contains several municipalities with language facilities, i.e. municipalities where French-speaking people form a considerable part of the population and therefore have special language rights. This area forms the judicial arrondissement of Brussels, which is the location of a tribunal of first instance, enterprise tribunal and a labour tribunal. It was reformed in July 2012, as part of the sixth Belgian state reform.
Elections in Belgium are organised for legislative bodies only, and not for executive functions. Direct elections take place for the European Parliament, the Chamber of Representatives, the Parliaments of the Regions, the Parliaments of the Communities, the provincial councils, the municipal councils and the councils of Districts of Antwerp. Voting is mandatory and all elections use proportional representation which in general requires coalition governments.
The Halle-Vilvoorde Arrondissement is one of the two administrative arrondissements in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant. It almost completely surrounds the Brussels-Capital Region and lies to the west of the other arrondissement in the province, the Leuven Arrondissement. Unlike the Arrondissement of Leuven, it is not a judicial arrondissement; however since the sixth Belgian state reform in 2012–14, it has its own public prosecutor's service.
The Arrondissement of Brussels-Capital is the only administrative arrondissement in the Brussels Capital Region in Belgium. Because it is the only administrative arrondissement in the Brussels Region, its territory coincides with that of the latter.
The partition of Belgium is a hypothetical situation, which has been discussed by both Belgian and international media, envisioning a split of Belgium along linguistic divisions, with the Flemish Community (Flanders) and the French-speaking Community (Wallonia) becoming independent states. Alternatively, it is hypothesized that Flanders could join the Netherlands and Wallonia could join France or Luxembourg.
State reform, in the context of Belgium, is the ongoing process of seeking and finding constitutional and legal solutions to the problems and tensions in the different segments of the Belgian population, mostly between the Dutch-speakers of Flanders and the French-speakers of Wallonia. In general, Belgium has evolved from a unitary state to a federal state with communities, regions, and language areas.
The 2009 European Parliament election in Belgium was on Sunday 7 June 2009 and was the election of the delegation from Belgium to the European Parliament. The elections were on the same day as regional elections to the Flemish Parliament, Walloon Parliament, Brussels Parliament and the Parliament of the German-speaking Community.
The 2007–2011 Belgian political crisis was a period of tense communal relations and political instability in Belgium, which was rooted in the differing opinions on state reform, and in the continued existence of the controversial electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV). Parties from the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community are in general strongly in favour for a devolution of powers to the communities and regions, and the splitting of the unconstitutional BHV district, while French-speaking French Community of Belgium is generally in favour of retaining the status quo. After the 2010 elections, the topics of public debt, deficit cuts and socio-economic reform were added to the debate, with most Flemish parties in favour of finding money by strongly reducing spending, whilst the proposals supported by most French-speaking parties also included a significant raise in taxes. The crisis came to an end in December 2011 with the inauguration of a new federal government which agreed on partition of the BHV district and on policies aimed at tackling the economic downturn. The country's continuing linguistic divide played a large part in the crisis. Several times during the period Belgium was threatened to be split up amid rising Flemish separatism.
The Pirate Party of Belgium is a political party in Belgium. Based on the model of the Swedish Pirate Party, it supports reform of copyright law, the abolition of patents, and respect for privacy. It was a founding member of Pirate Parties International.
The sixth state reform in the federal kingdom of Belgium is the result after the 2010–2011 Belgian government formation, with 541 days of negotiations, the longest ever in Belgium and possibly the world. The agreement was made among the Christian-democratic CD&V and cdH, social-democratic sp.a and PS, liberal Open Vld and MR and ecologist Groen! and Ecolo, each respectively a Flemish and French-speaking party. The first six parties, therefore not including the green parties, then formed the Di Rupo I Government. The Flemish nationalist party New Flemish Alliance, which became the largest after the 2010 elections, is notably not part of the agreement nor of the government coalition.
Federal elections were held in Belgium on 25 May 2014. All 150 members of the Chamber of Representatives were elected, whereas the Senate was no longer directly elected following the 2011–2012 state reform. These were the first elections held under King Philippe's reign.
The Catholic University of Leuven was one of Belgium's major universities. It split along linguistic lines after a period of civil unrest in 1967–68 commonly known as the Leuven Affair in French and Flemish Leuven, based on a contemporary slogan, in Dutch. The crisis shook Belgian politics and led to the fall of the government of Paul Vanden Boeynants. It marked an escalation of the linguistic tension in Belgium after World War II and had lasting consequences for other bilingual institutions in Belgium within higher education and politics alike. In 1970 the first of several state reforms occurred, marking the start of Belgium's transition to a federal state.
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