Introduction: historical similarities and diff erences

Belgium and the Netherlands, with respectively 10 and 16 million inhabitants, have several similarities in the cultural, political and economic spheres. Belgian and Dutch societies have often been described as ‘consociational democracies’ because of the existence of competing ‘pillars’ (groups) organised along ideological, notably religious, lines but with overarching institutions for facilitating negotiation and compromise by elites. Since the 1960s the consociational formula has been eroded by the continuing process of ‘depillarisation’, which in itself was caused by changing social values such as rising secularism. Nevertheless, the present opportunity structure for influence is still based on a proportional electoral system and party coalitions and hence, changes in socio-economic policy take place incrementally rather than in sharp swings.

Both countries are also small in an economic sense: given their narrow domestic market, they are economically dependent upon access to world markets but unable to infl uence world market prices. Due to this, economic vulnerability is a widespread assumption among the political-economic elite and much attention is paid to the competitiveness of companies. While regional economic integration is promoted to pro-actively avoid the need for economic adjustment, corporatist arrangements are adopted reactively for facilitating rapid adjustment with a minimum of social confl ict (Jones 2008). Both countries have been promoting social partnership by setting up corporatist institutions at diff erent levels of the economy. Representatives of both sides of industry – i.e. employers’ associations and trade unions – have also been involved in the administration and management of the welfare system, the design and development of which is strongly shaped by Christian democratic and social democratic views on social policy.

Given a political system historically based on consensus, a regulated market regime and a Bismarckian continental welfare system, it comes as no surprise that both Belgium and the Netherlands have been identified as corporatist sub-varieties of coordinated market economies (Bruff 2008) or as straight cases approximating the corporatist capitalism type (see Becker in this volume). Apart from the similarities, there has been also a burgeoning body of literature in recent years pointing to profound historical differences in the economic structure, state tradition and labour- capital relations of both countries and stressing the path-dependent trajectories of the Belgian and Dutch corporatist institutional complex (Arnoldus 2007; Vercauteren 2007).