It is at once a reference work and a book of blazing topicality: in La Belgique en mutation, Jean Beaufays, Geoffroy Matagne and a dozen or so Liège and Antwerp researchers analyse the country through the political activity of the last forty years. A very useful taking stock at a time when everyone is asking themselves what tomorrow will be made of.

La Belgique en mutation. Systèmes politiques et politiques publiques (1968-2008) (Belgium in Transformation. Political systems and public policy (1968-2008) (1) is a work clearly structured into twelve chapters. The book is written in accessible language, free of the jargon which too often adorns the discourse of specialists in human sciences. La Belgique en mutation scrutinises the country from its numerous and varied angles. The people with the idea behind it, Jean Beaufays and Geoffroy Matagne (respectively Professor Emeritus and research professor in the University of Liège’s department for the study of political systems), have in effect gained the cooperation of a dozen or so other contributors to pass the country through the sieve of their respective specialisms. Belgium is thus analysed not only from the perspective of its political developments and the institutional reforms which flow from them, but also from that of its fiscal and budgetary policy, its economy, and its system of social security. But the country is evolving and has been little by little confronted by new challenges such immigration, ethical questions, transportation systems and mobility: each of these themes is treated in a specific manner. Finally, Belgium is not alone in the world, which implies a diplomatic policy, national defence, and a trade and customs policy.

It is thus nearly every area of state activity that the authors pass through the scanner of their expertise – with a few exceptions, including justice and local authorities. Moreover, their analysis is not fixed, but evolutionary. To reply to the question, ‘Where are we coming from?’, they have chosen as a departure point the 1960s decade. This seems pertinent from numerous viewpoints: it was during this period that the latent tension between the country’s two large communities led to the first crises which justified the institutional reform of 1970, and from which flow all the others. And it was during the same period when the relationship of economic strength between Flanders and Wallonia was reversed: for a long time a net contributor to the national wealth, the South suffered from the decline of its structures and ceded to the North the role of the country’s economic locomotive. At the end of the journey, the contemporary period: each of the authors endeavours to draw up an ‘inventory’ of the country from the perspective of their particular field of study.

An evolutionary and multidisciplinary work, La Belgique en mutation offers a good way into the subject for students who will use it as a reference manual. But its simplicity also makes it understandable to a general public that wants to ‘get the record straight’, at a moment when it is legitimately anxious to know to what particular ingredients the country will have to adapt to, two years after the general election of 10th of June 2007 showed the mountain of misunderstanding which has risen up between the Flemish and the francophones, without the negotiations which followed enabling a way out of the impasse. Two years later we are still there: faced with the still nervous francophones, and the Flemish still asking for a very major reform of the State, which would offer their Community the capabilities and the means to pursue more autonomous policies. The ‘dossier’ has been swept under the carpet to allow the time for the regional and European elections of 7th June 2009 to take place.

(1) Jean Beaufays and Geoffroy Matagne (ed.), La Belgique en mutation. Systèmes politiques et politiques publiques (1968-2008), Bruylant, 2009, 430 p.