As screwed up as American politics can often be, our elections almost always provide relatively decisive outcomes. As Ingrid Robeyns reminds us, that’s not true everywhere, not even in Europe.
Today is 150 days after the Belgian elections, and there is still no government. The crisis is as deep as it was when I last wrote about it. There have been partial agreements between the negotiating parties over the last weeks, but for none of the crucial issues there is an agreement yet — the situation of the Francophone population in the Flemish border communes around Brussels, a solution to the crisis in the election district Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, some aspects of the welfare state reform, and the government budget.
There are similar messes in Ukraine and Poland, albeit not this long in duration. There’s a price to be paid for electoral systems with large numbers of ideological, regional, and ethnic parties.
Elsewhere, Adrian Basora has an interesting essay on the problems in New Europe entitled, “Retreat of Democracy in Europe and Eurasia?” I commend it to you.
