Ingrid Robeyns has a summary of progress (or lack thereof) on the formation of a Belgian governing coalition, as well as some background on the issues of dispute. Long story short, conflict between the Flemish and French-speaking portions of the Belgian body-politic have come to a head, with the result that forming a federal government has been difficult, and resolving the political and economic disputes that have become part of the linguistic conflict nearly impossible.
There are two points that I find particularly interesting. The first is the role played by the King. The Belgian monarchy is one of the only institutions in the country committed to Belgian unity; most of the rest of the political actors are beholden to constituencies in one or another regions of the country. As such, it appears that the King has taken a more-active-than-usual role in trying to put and keep a governing coalition together. I find this interesting because I'm a bit of a monarchy junkie, but also because I'm curious about what effect institutions like the monarchy have on national identity.
The second point is that the existence of the European Union substantially reduces the impact that this crisis will have on European politics. If worst comes to worst and Belgium disintegrates into two different linguistically based states, then life for former Belgians and their neighbors will ... not change very much. National governments retain considerable importance in Europe (as noted, economic and political disputes accompany the linguistic disputes in Belgium), but whatever new constellation of governments succeeds, Belgium will still operate under the rubric of the European Union, which sets key limits on the ability of member governments to undertake radical domestic policy. We're not to the point where nationalist irredentism doesn't matter in Europe, but certainly the EU softens nationalist conflict by making borders less relevant.
--Robert Farley
