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AbstractDespite their geographical proximity, common history, and joint experience with social segmentation, there is a surprising dearth of studies systematically comparing consociationalism in Belgium and the Netherlands. This paper aims to help fill that lacuna by discussing the similarities and differences between the two countries in this respect. The similarities range from the time period of consociationalism, the original cleavage structure, to the existence of cross‐pressures at the organizational level. The most important difference is that geography always played a bigger role in Belgium. This was true even before the politicization of the language divide, but it also explains why Belgium entered a new phase of consociationalism after depillarization and the Netherlands did not. Both countries currently face challenges by anti‐establishment parties against the elite cartel, which raises questions whether this is not inherent to consociationalism once the original social segmentation has eroded.

The untimely death of Peter Mair (1951-2011) European political science lost one of its leading researchers. Mair is mainly known as an expert in the field of political parties, but in recent years his interest widened more and more to representative democracy in general. On the development of political representation as a link between the policy views of citizens and policy efforts of their representatives he spoke in increasingly gloomy terms. In this essay, I outline the different stages in the thinking of Peter Mair on this topic before asking whether his pessimism about the future of representative democracy is legitimate. Adapted from the source document.