Why won’t they join? An exploratory investigation of the Belgian government crisis of 2010

Belgium has recently undergone a 541-day period with no elected government following the 2010 general election. This has been called a government and cabinet crisis. This thesis aims to determine what is different about Belgium in 2010/11 compared to past years and what has contributed to Belgium’s difficulty forming coalitions recently. By using coalition formation theory and investigating institutional and sociological aspects of Belgian politics, this research project has found an initial explanation for why the Belgian government crisis of 2010 occurred. Several institutional and sociological aspects are now working against each other and hindering cooperative behaviour among the Belgian political parties. Belgium has become the victim of its own well-adapted and unique political system