BeNeLux Politics and Government
Authors: Reuchamps Min 
Published: March 2024

Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are known as the BeNeLux countries and in the field of political science, but also in history, as the Low Countries. This expression is the English translation of the French Les Pays-Bas that refers only to the Netherlands and of the Dutch de Nederlanden that refers to Dutch and Flemish lands. Historians and political scientists have enlarged the understanding of Low Countries to include her smaller neighbors of Belgium and Luxembourg for geographical and historical as well as political reasons. These three countries are indeed first and foremost low countries in a geographical sense: large portions of their territory are at sea level, sometimes even below, and their highest point never reaches 700 meters high—322 meters for the Netherlands, 560 meters for Luxembourg, and 694 meters for Belgium (even though these altitudes have been contested). The same goes for their territories. For centuries, the territories in these Low Countries were intermingled into smaller entities governed by often changing—and sometimes the same—rulers, and their current delimitation into three different states came only in the 19th century. In 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars and a French occupation, the Congress of Vienna redrew the map of Europe and merged the territories—referred as provinces—of the Low Countries into a single state made of the northern provinces (that were united and independent as Republic of Seven United Provinces between 1648 and the French period), the southern provinces (that would become Belgium) and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (that was to be part of the German Confederation but ruled by the Dutch Crown). Fifteen years later, the southern provinces broke away to form an independent Belgium (including the western part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg that became Belgium’s Province of Luxembourg) that was recognized by the Netherlands in 1839. With this treaty, the remaining—eastern—part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg received its independence with the title of Grand Duke of Luxembourg still being held by the Dutch monarch until 1890 when the Grand Duchy started to have its own monarchy. Such a combination of common geography and history fostered similar political dynamics such as consociationalism and politics around cross-cutting cleavages, neocorporatism, fragmented party competition, proportional representation and compulsory voting, democratic innovations, and Europeanization patterns in three small founders of the Europen integration. These peculiar political features led political scientists to study and sometimes compare the Low Countries. They did so in the vernacular language of these countries but also—progressively—in English, although at a difference pace (earlier on in the Netherlands, more recently for Belgium and Luxembourg). This bibliography cites only references in English that are often based on these non-English-language sources, which are definitely worth reading for a full understanding of BeNeLux politics and government. The author would like to thank Ezechiel Lerat for his highly efficient research assistance as well as several colleagues from the Low Countries for their suggestions of landmark publications on these countries in their respective fields: Benjamin Biard, Sven Biscop, Marleen Brans, Scott Brenton, Caroline Close, Léonie de Jonge, Lieven De Winter, Patrick Dumont, Anna-Lena Högenauer, Kristof Jacobs, Vincent Jacquet, Maurits Meijers, Ank Michels, Christoph Niessen, Eline Severs, Audrey Vandeleene, Yannick Vanderborght, Ramon van der Does, Julien van Ostaaijen, Ruud Wouters. Needless to say, all editorial choices and any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the author.