Author:

Keywords:

Belgian politics, fiscal crisis, budget decision-making processes, public management reforms, governance

Abstract:

In this article, we analyse the impact of the fiscal crisis on budget decisionmaking and governance in Belgium’s federal government by relying on interviews with key stakeholders. After our introduction, the second section situates the beginning of the fiscal crisis in Belgium by end 2008. The third section analyses the budget decision-making process in Belgium, which is found relatively unaffected by the fiscal crisis. The fourth section reports differentiated impacts of the fiscal crisis on governance in the regular administration and social security sector. The paper concludes that Belgium’s federal government up to now has not seized the opportunity provided by the fiscal crisis to engage in public management reform. We emphasize a number of contextual factors able to trigger such a move.