This “doctrine” is a strategy to achieve the big state reform that Flanders has been requesting for ages. The problem is that the French speakers have decided that there is nothing they want from it, which makes it hard bargaining. Maddens’ solution? Flanders should stop begging for something it cannot get. Instead, it should let things rot until the francophones realise that something must change. The way to do this, he argues, is for Flanders to stop supporting the federal level and just get on with its own business – for instance, by starting its own social security.

The Maddens Doctrine, theoretical though it may be, has some influence on real-life politics. Whereas the previous Flemish government started out demanding state reform within a strict timetable – stating its demands in quite a muscular manner – the present government agreement has a completely different tone. Sure, Flanders still wants its reform, but there is no need for strong language or a strict timetable. Since all else has failed, this Flemish government prefers to sit and wait. The agreement also says that Flanders will “exploit its competences to the maximum” – a phrase also reminiscent of the Maddens Doctrine.

Still, few parties believe in the new style of confrontation. Somehow, reality is just too complicated for the Maddens doctrine to find much support. The Christian Democrat (CD&V) party president Marianne Thyssen, for example, has explicitly rejected it. How could her party let the federal level “rot” when this includes a CD&V prime minister? Open VLD, too, has no reason to adhere to the doctrine, as it also sits in the federal government. SP.A, although an opposition party in the federal government, has also warned about damaging the federal level since it pays out pensions.

So maybe the francophones have little to fear from the Maddens Doctrine. Then again, budget minister Guy Vanhengel (Open VLD) has recently stated that the federal level is at this point “bankrupt”. Is this what Maddens was hoping for? It is worrying anyway – and not just for the French speakers of this country.