Frontrunner in Belgian election may be uniting nation over need to split up

GHENT, Belgium (AP) — The frontrunner in Belgium's elections this weekend is running on perhaps the ultimate in divisive proposals: the breakup of the nation.

Despite its status as the home of the European Union, Belgium itself has long struggled with divisions between its 6 million Dutch-speakers and 4.5 million Francophones but until recently talk of a breakup has been limited to extremists.

As the UK has gradually devolved from its former estate as a class society with various sorts of independent, or semi-independent power centers (or individuals), things have blurred.

No doubt a good, stiff bout of Maoism would help clear the cobwebs out and remind people there of why they really don't need cradle-to-earlygrave socialism.

They're well into that now aren't they.

My guess is that it doesn’t exist in Belgium at least not in a law-of-the-land sort of way.

You guess wrong. The Belgian Constitution recognizes Wallonia and Flanders as comprising distinct communities in a federal structure. Each has its own Parliament separate from the national Parliament.

The fact that Belgians can even consider legal dissolution is evidence that they effectively have more sovereignty than states in the United States.

In those days, religion was still important in Europe. The Catholic Belgians didn't want to be ruled by Protestant Holland. Europe's rulers didn't want them to be part of France because that would make France too powerful, so they created Belgium and even gave the country a king to rule it.

Later on, the problem was Brussels. As capital of Belgium it had a role to play. If it were an outpost on the border of Fleming and Walloon countries it would be something like a ghost town. The European Union made Brussels its unofficial capital to give the city a reason for existing, though filling a city with bureaucrats isn't a good recipe for prosperity.

What's behind a lot of this is the same thing going on in other advanced countries. Regions that industrialized early went into decline later. Burdened by high taxes, by powerful unions and bureacracies, and by decaying mines and mills and factories, those areas couldn't attract industry. Regions that developed later retained a more free market attitude and attracted new businesses.

In this case the French-speaking areas represent the old rustbelt and the Flemish areas the economic sunbelt. That the Walloons are less religious and less traditional in morality than the Flemings compounds the divide.

The root language difference makes separation more of a possibility than it is in other countries which, whatever their economic and political differences, still think of themselves as one people.

"The costs of running large states are just too high."

Any evidence? There is plenty of evidence to the contrary -- at a municipal scale, for instance. Toronto saved itself by coalescing its multiple municipalities, and Pittsburgh is in the pits (pun intended) because it refuses to do so.

You must have overlooked such thing as economies of scale.

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