Is the division of Belgium inevitable?

"Dutch-speakers and French-speakers don't talk together enough for Belgium to be called a healthy democracy", explains Professor Philippe Van Parijs in an interview published in the Flemish daily. "This was predictable, and not only over these past three months [of unresolved negotiations]. In despotic countries, different linguistic groups can stay together indefinitely, seeing as the nation is given no say. But as soon as it is a question of democratic institutions, public opinion develops in different languages. This is why political boundaries and linguistic boundaries will coincide for a long time all over the world, as the British philosopher John Stuart Mill explained as early as in 1861. What we are witnessing today is not a specifically Belgian problem. Look at the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia."

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