Didier Caluwaerts is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

Min Reuchamps is Professor of Political Science at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium.

Introduction: Belgium - why bother? Part 1: Belgium on the Barricades 1. Compulsory voting: Anachronism or avant-garde? 2. The long-term effects of gender quotas in Belgium: Leading by example? 3. An analysis of electronic voting in Belgium: Do voters behave differently when facing a machine? 4. Thriving in an unfriendly territory: The peculiar rise of minipublics in consociational Belgium Part 2: Belgium, a democracy in trouble 5. Challenging the cordon sanitaire in Belgium: A diachronic analysis 6. Breaking free from partitocracy: Do Belgian candidates stand out? 7. Coalition formation in Belgium: From exceptional complexity to regime breakdown? 8. Caretaker governments in Belgium: The new normal? 9. The changing dynamics of Belgian federalism: Is there a reversal of the paradox of federalism? 10. Voting for 'the other side'? The curious case of the Brussels Capital Region Part 3: Belgium and the world 11. Federalization of the Belgian national past: Do collaboration and colonization still matter? 12. The Europeanisation of Belgian parties: Both near and far? 13. Belgium in the UN Security Council: Still an active player?

This book takes stock of Belgium's exceptional and - for some foreign observers -schizophrenic position in the political world and explains its idiosyncrasy to a non-Belgian audience.
Offering a broad and comprehensive analysis of Belgian politics, the guiding questions throughout each of the chapters of this book are: Is Belgium a political enigma, and why? Along which axes is Belgium "exceptional" compared to other countries? And what insights does a comparative study of Belgian politics have to offer? The book therefore provides a critical assessment of how Belgian politics "stands out" internationally, both in good and bad ways - including consociationalism, federalism, democratic innovations, Euroscepticism, government formation, gender equality, among others - and which factors can explain Belgium's exceptional position.
Based on cutting-edge research findings, the book will be of wide interest to scholars and students of Belgian politics, European Politics and Comparative politics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.