The unhappy milestone was reached on Tuesday if you include election day, as most Dutch-language media do, although for some Francophone media the record will not officially be broken until Wednesday.
Either way, it is unlikely Brussels will have a government anytime soon. Rancorous divisions, sometimes descending into personal insults, continue among the 14 parties that won places in the 89-seat parliament.
That first para might explain that second.
It is a city that prides itself on the art of political compromise. But recently that quality has been sorely lacking in Brussels, which has gone a record-breaking 542 days without a government.
The Brussels Capital Region, which governs the Belgian capital of 1.25 million people, has not had a government since elections in June 2024.
Oh Dear. How Sad, Never Mind.
Of course, this is the system varied lefties would like here. To, you know, beat Farage with the thwack of firm governance.
I know the Dutch don’t have it and I guess the Belgies might not, by the sounds of things. But the 5% hurdle does come in very handy sometimes.
Yes… If you want to rig the system to only ever allow Settled Interests to have a voice.
Like in Germany.
The dutch and belgian setups are more geared towards getting an accurate reflection of popular sentiments into the House of Commons, and *then* duke it out amongst each other.
With the failsafes that actually *allow* this. And the incentive to Hurry Up, as the *old* government stays, with slightly limited powers, right where they are until a new coalition is formed and presented to the King.
Over here it’s actually a tragicomedy, with D’66 ( the Europhiles ) and CDA ( oldskool twisty-turny Centrists ) desperately trying to form an absolutely-not-EuroGreenLeft majority that isn’t there. Politically and in popularity.
When we could have had a government a month ago… But that would include *shock* *horror* *ReeEEee!* Wilders….
And all the other Parties remember what unmitigated disasters the Cabinets with D’66 in it were in the past…
Incidentally, we *do* have a form of limitation: the “Kiesdeler” , which is simply the total number of valid votes divided by the number of seats.
( in the past years *roughly* 69.5k votes )
A *Party* needs to have a total number of votes in excess of that to get a seat in our House of Commons.
The number of votes for any individual on a party list doesn’t matter. Seats get allotted per Party. It’s up to the party to allocate the seats.
Usually that’s top-down on position.
*Except* when a single member on any party list gains enough votes to surpass the Kiesdeler.
Then that person *must* be given a seat by that party, simply because that person has enough support to “own” that seat.
The number of votes for any individual on a party list doesn’t matter. Seats get allotted per Party. It’s up to the party to allocate the seats. Usually that’s top-down on position.
That’s the problem with many PR systems – the most important issue for most MPs is to retain or improve their ranking on the party list, the electorate don’t matter.
Yes… Over here, should you endeavour to climb the Greasy Pole that way…
Better to take your lumps, and become a Civil Servant, that career track is suited for Spuds.
There’s a very limited supply of Seats, and MP’s are actually expected to Do Something. And have…actual expertise… and….
In the large parties there is some inevitable
“filling of the ranks” , but overall.. Not a chance in hell for the bags of potatoes you see in the UK parliament.
You have …at best. 40-ish spots… Better make them count… Or Else….
Next run won’t be fun, because people *will* notice, and if they don’t your opponents will ensure people Know…
Yeah but isn’t that the problem Wilders had ? He had trouble finding suitable MPs and the ones he appointed were largely duffers.
Something similar happened with the Swedish Democrats, who struggled to fill their benches.
True… Then again… That’s a problem for any party that ..explodes..
You don’t have the people, at all levels of government down…
And it regularly happens over here… D’66 leads the formation and has to fill Seats…
*Most* people there were not ever expected to get there… They went from 9 seats to *26* seats….
Guess how much fluff is in there…
For CDA the same… 5 to 18…
That happens here regularly..
The actual solution is that *most* people on lower spots are *meant* to be Staff for the PM’s in ..various expertises.
Electable places + margin is for the Crowd Pleasers. Anything under that is Boring “Experts” ( for nowadays a given value of Expert” .)
Wilders had this in his first growth spurt, and actually dialled back and ensured he *also* got enough people in lower levels of government over..a decade…
Then ramped things up until current… *with* the clout on the lower levels.
And this is what Farage Misses Still… Not Enough Roots in Lower Government.
Not enough clout at Province ( brits got another word for it.. can’t be arsed) and Municipality level.
Oh… and *guess* how popular D’66 and CDA are on Province and Municipal level… 3:)
Indeed. When considering any electoral system, apply this test. Imagine that the people counting the votes got confused and randomly associated candidates with parties rather than the parties they actually stood for. See what effect that would have on the result. If there is any, it’s a bad system.
Even the feeble FPTP passes this test. If the vote counters believe that Nigel Farage is standing for the Greens, this will make not the slightest bit of difference to whether he gets elected because votes are for individuals and not parties. The party affiliation is a mere label on the ballot paper to help the voter identify the candidates.
“Assume” takes a reeeeaaaallll long breath there…
People counting votes don’t need to think. They simply need to file the red dot into the right basket. That’s their entire purpose.
If they’re so “confused” as to mess this up, they’re *not* suited to be counting votes to begin with.
Or be the first to test the piano wire- lamp post adornment theory.
But I admit to be a Hardliner in this…
No government for over 500 days, sounds like a great system.
BiS, I reckon it won’t have made much difference to the average Bruxellois / Brusselaar as the morons who infest local government everywhere will still be doing what they do best and screwing things up.
We got our first Xmas card last week. It was from old friends from our days in Edinburgh. They remarked on how lucky they had been to spend so much of their lives there during the good times, meaning before Devolved Government. A bittersweet note, that. Elegiac, even.
This used to be precisely my take, until I worked out that ‘no government’ doesn’t mean no government, it means an even less accountable bunch of unelected and unknown civil servants perform the functions of the government to an even greater degree than they previously did.
Exactly!
Not quite, in the Netherlands, as Grikath points out, and Germany, as we recently witnessed, the old government stays on as caretaker. It does mean not much gets done which has its good and bad points.
Timmy, being an “economist” you’ll have heard of Arrow’s general impossibility theorem.
That no system can possibly be perfect does not mean that some are not worse.
Now we are into the theory of second best.
Arrow (whom I regularly cite here) is not really considering perfect systems. One of the requirements for his proof is that no voter can be a ‘dictator’ – i.e. the result is solely dependent on how they cast their vote. But the ‘dictator’ isn’t appointed in advance, you have to work back after all the votes have been cast and try to identify an individual for whom this would be true. I’m not sure that’s really a flaw in practice.
For an accessible explanation, try Dan Gusfield’s Proven Impossible.