The long formation after the elections of July 2010 is not a problem specific to Belgium, but the result of an intrinsic inability of democracies to implement administrative reforms. This deplorable "state of Belgium" (words of Prime Minister Rutte of the Netherlands) can occur anywhere in the world and will increasingly occur because of the ongoing globalization. Globalization reinforces regional and global identities. These identities often conflict with a uniform national administration, so difficulties occur and the need for administrative reforms increases. But our democracies block such reforms. Our democracies are aimed at bringing about substantive policy compromises within a given solid, unchanging unity of governance and national identity. When instead (national) politicians are elected on a regional identity an impossible impasse is created because (even big) minorities can’t change the unit structure of the state. New elections solve nothing, because people vote more or less the same as before. A referendum will not solve anything. It reaffirms the political balance of power in a country, but does not solve the impasse. When it comes to administrative reform each democracy is a prisoner of itself.
How can we address this fundamental problem? Our democracies should be enriched by a new instrument which implement administrative reforms not by politics but by the citizens directly. My proposal: when a new group identity emerges or an existing identity is strengthened in such a way that it becomes more important than their national identity individual(!) people should express this by transforming their national passports to a passport of lower or higher scale corresponding to the new identity. This requires a new type of passport, a scalable passport. At the moment every Waal or Fleming has a non-scalable Belgian passport. If your passport becomes scalable , every Belgian can choose, whether he persists on this Belgian passport or change it to a Flemish or Walloon passport; Some Belgians feel more at home in Europe than in Belgium, so their passports should scale up to an EU passport.
Like the normal passport, active and passive right to vote is linked to a scalable passport. Once one changes scale, the right to vote changes. Someone who chooses a Flemish passport votes directly on Flemish representatives, who constitutes a Flemish government. These people no longer vote the politicians of the federal parliament. May be a number of seats in the federal parliament must be reserved for district representatives from Flanders and other regions. That number depends on the number of people that express an identity change by a different scale of state/passport. If there are many different identities scale change will eventually replace the uniform nationally administration by a range of cooperative governance between scaled states. The administrative institutions become flexible institutions because they should express the (ever-changing) preference of citizen’s identities. If all citizens use their freedom to determine the scale of their passport a template for the appropriate structure of administration is provided.
Of course in the beginning, when only a few individuals scale up/down their passport to their chosen identity, this will not affect current administrative relationships. When there is not yet an administration on the target scale, the old (source) states have a duty to citizens of the new states' to provide rights and obligations in the same manner as their own citizens. If the group of people on de target scale is big enough they will put forward their own candidate representatives, they will build their own administration and government. The old state and the newly formed state will then have to negotiate tasks and task shifting. The big difference with the old democratic practice is that citizens of different state scales coexist together in the same territory. There are no civil wars or migrations needed (Balkans), they build a suitable government administrative as they see fit. Then reform proposals are negotiated between scales (and not within a scale). Each citizen can individually contribute to the foundation of a new state/identity by means of the scalable passport. Globalization predicts turbulent times. A scalable passport can create a word that is manageable and controllable.
March 2011
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