Belgium systematically came out from internal conflicts justify
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In some way, Belgium is a contradiction. On the one hand, the country has greatly contributed to the political construction of Europe. On the other hand, it remains mired in the ongoing conflict between the two main linguistic groups: Flemings,1 who inhabit the northern part of the country and speak Dutch, and French-speakers or Francophones, who mainly live in Wallonia (the south of Belgium) and Brussels (which is geographically located in Flanders but is predominantly French speaking). This seemingly intractable conflict has culminated in two major recent political crises (in 2007–2008 and 2010–2011), which have fueled fears in some people that Belgium would eventually split (De Winter & Baudewyns, 2009; Rimé, Bouchat, Klein, & Licata, 2015).
Confronted with the dual movement of supranational integration and subnational regionalism, Belgian political institutions have been profoundly transformed since World War II. In response to requests stemming from both sides of the conflict, the Kingdom of Belgium has moved from a unitary to a federal state (Covell, 1986; Swenden & Jans, 2006). With 11 million inhabitants, it is now composed of three regions, which are defined on a territorial basis and deal with economic policy: Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels representing, respectively, 58, 32, and 10% of the population. It also comprises three communities, which are defined on a linguistic basis and deal with cultural and educational policies: the Dutch-speaking community, the French-speaking community, and a small German-speaking community representing, respectively, approximately 56, 43.5, and .5% of the population. The Dutch- and French-speaking communities are both active in Brussels in a ratio of 1:9 (Hooghe, 2004).2 In other words, two layers of federal entities coexist within the same national territory. This reality is sometimes puzzling to the outside observer. Under the heading “Belgian is a small country with a complicated political structure”, The Washington Post (Titeca, 2017) even proposed to draw lessons from African politics in order to shed light on the apparent disorder prevailing in the land of surrealism.
Because of its intricate political and linguistic makeup, Belgium provides researchers interested in intergroup relations and intergroup conflict with a particularly rich field of investigation. However, Olivier Klein and Bernard Rimé, who convened a symposium titled “What has psychology to say about the Belgian linguistic conflict?” during the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences, noted that psychology in general, and social psychology in particular, still had to make a major contribution to the understanding of the Belgian linguistic conflict. This Special Issue aims to make a start in filling this void.
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