Politics of Flanders
Historically, the contemporary Flemish community (or nation, as some Flemings see it) grew out of the Catholic southern part of the medieval XVII provinces of the Low Countries.
Most of these states were united from 1384 to 1530 under the Burgundian Netherlands Today, the Flemish community has a significant amount of political autonomy.
Politics is influenced by lobby groups, such as trade unions; mutual health insurance organizations and business interests in the form of the VOKA, UNIZO and some other employer's federations.
European Union legislation and the Belgian constitution form the major elements of the wider institutional environment.
Flanders is divided into 5 provinces, plus the local Flemish institutions in Brussels (the 'Vlaamse Gemeenschaps-Commissie' (VGC), and around 300 municipalities.
Municipal governments, on the other hand, are important political entities with significant powers, and a history of independence dating from medieval times.
For all of their activities, campaigns included, political parties have to rely on government subsidies and dues paid by their members.
Because of the huge public bureaucracy, the high politicisation of nominations, and the widely accepted practice that political nominees spend many man-hours paid for by all tax-payers for partisan electioneering, this arrangement favours the ruling political parties.
In the late 19th century the Socialist Party arose to represent the emerging industrial working class.
After World War II, the Catholic (now Christian Democratic) Party severed its formal ties with the Church.
Following the 1999 general elections, the CVP was ousted from office, bringing an end to a 40-year term on the government benches.
The Socialist Party – Differently (SP.a, Socialistische Partij Anders) has shed nearly all of its early Marxist ideology.
As a reaction to the more centrist course of the SP.a, two former SP.a-representatives, Jef Sleeckx and Lode Van Outrive, formed, together with communist and Trotskyist activists, a new socialist movement in 2006, the Committee for Another Policy.
The Liberal Party chiefly appeals to business-people, property owners, shopkeepers, and the self-employed, in general.
In American terms the Liberals' economic positions would be considered to reflect a moderate conservative ideology.
These parties advocated classical liberal economics and a more rightwing approach to society, and accused the VLD of shifting fundamentally to the left.
In 1979 this movement evolved into the Partij van de Arbeid van België (PVDA), which is at the moment the biggest marxist party in Flanders (3,24% of the popular vote in the latest federal elections) and is represented in some municipal and provincial councils in Flanders, but not in the Flemish Parliament.
A specific phenomenon was the emergence of one-issue parties whose only reason for existence was the defense of the cultural, political, and economic interests of one of the linguistic groups or regions of Belgian society.
The most militant Flemish regional party in Parliament in the 1950s and 1960s, the Volksunie (People's Union), once drew nearly one-quarter of Belgium's Dutch-speaking electorate.
After a disappointing result in the regional elections of 2009, the Social Liberal Party decided to fuse with the Flemish ecologists of Groen!
(see Nationalists/Conservatives below) The Flemish ecologist party Agalev (Anders GAan LEVen - To Start Living Differently) made its parliamentary breakthrough in 1981.
As a traditional green party, the three core values of Agalev were ecology, peace and participatory democracy.
Originally a mainly Flemish regionalist and republican party, the Vlaams Blok soon concentrated on anti-immigration themes, and was often accused of xenophobia and racism.
Long dismissed as a "fringe" party by mainstream politicians, the Flemish Block shocked observers when in the 1991 elections it posted a relatively high percentage of votes in much of Flanders, especially in Antwerp.
In 2004, the Belgian Supreme Court upheld a decision of the Appeal Court of Ghent ruling that three organizations associated with the Vlaams Blok were in contempt of the 1981 Belgian law on racism and xenophobia, and that the party pursued permanent incitement to discrimination and racial segregation.
Vlaams Belang formed an alliance with VLOTT, a break away party from the VLD, which advocates capitalist and rightwing liberal economic policies.
