Regionalisation in Belgium

Abstract. Despite recent decentralisation moves, Belgium continues to face a constitutional crisis involving problems of identity and legitimation amongst the Flemish and Walloon communities. These problems not only involved habitual difficulties of language, but also the effects of industrial decay in traditional primary economic sectors and a concern with the legitimacy of central government power. These difficulties are reflected in the complex constitutional and administrative arrangements designed to increase the autonomy of sub-national levels, in which dominant regional parties have seen power shift to regional levels at the expense of municipalities. This development of the regional level has produced pressures which encourage the emergence of a federal state, whilst pressures from the municipalities support the continuance of a unitary state. In the absence of any clear solution, the small Belgian state remains in crisis.     

Cross-Cultural Reflections of Organized Crime

The authors discuss the phenomenon of organized crime and why it appears to be a uniquely American problem. Comparing and contrasting ten cultural and/or socio-political variables, the authors demonstrate that American organized crime is uniquely related to its historical heritage, and that the inability of British society (inclusive of the media, researchers, and police officials) to officially recognize organized crime may be a result of “perceptual impairment” as opposed to its non-existence. The authors conclude that the study of the organizaion of crime deserves increased emphasis among criminologists, particularly with respect to the phenomenon of organized crime.     

The Fountain of Honour: Directing the Spray

Pearce argues that honours do not deserve the earnest linguistic toil of the virtuous PAC. Starting with the peers, he observes that when William the Conqueror/Bastard distributed land stolen with violence to his armed band, it was the simple loot from which ancient chivalry, honour and nobility flows. Such lords developed under the more civilised early Whigs, like Walpole, into rent for sending steady support from owned boroughs into the Commons. Witness Bubb Dodington and his three and a half seats in Weymouth, made a Viscount in the name of one of its suburbs. Harold Macmillan would sack a minister with the wheedling consolation ‘A Little something to wear under your tie’. By inventing the Life Peerage, he helped the slow subversion of elected government by creating unelected, often powerful ministers with no relationship to country or people, candid nominees of the National Leader. The one virtue of the post‐Macmillan upper house lies in the disloyal, which is say minimally or not all party‐attached people of talent reliably voting against ministerial requirements. As for the insignia of all honours, their bars, discs and ribbons are kept on cards in Palace drawers like so much paste jewellery.