Politics in the Low Countries through a Gramscian lens
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54195/plc.21814Keywords:
Consociationalism, Gramsci, Hegemony, Caesarism, Passive revolutionAbstract
This article develops a Gramscian lens to grasp political changes in the Low Countries. To date, politics in the Low Countries is mainly understood via the concept of consociationalism, but this term is better suited to understanding political stability than change. Yet exactly the political changes of the past decades led many to question whether the Netherlands or Belgium still pass as consociational democracies. Since the debate on ‘wither consociational’ is severely constrained by the lack of alternative concepts, this paper introduces a series of Gramscian concepts such as ‘Caesarism’ and ‘passive revolution’ that demonstrate a striking resemblance with, respectively, ‘consociationalism’ and ‘the politics of accommodation’. Yet those concepts also widen the analytical scope and situate political institutions within a broader struggle for hegemony. Their relevance is affirmed by the implicit or explicit adoption and application of a Gramscian politics by the New Left and, later, the far right.
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