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For most of its history, what is now Belgium was either a part of a larger territory, such as the Carolingian Empire, or divided into a number of smaller states, prominent among them being the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the County of Namur, the County of Hainaut and the County of Luxembourg.
The politics of Belgium take place in the framework of a federal, representative democratic, constitutional monarchy. The King of the Belgians is the head of state , and the prime minister of Belgium is the head of government , in a multi-party system .
Despite its political and linguistic divisions, the region corresponding to today's Belgium has seen the flourishing of major artistic movements that have had tremendous influence on European art and culture. Nowadays, to a certain extent, cultural life is concentrated within each language Community, and a variety of barriers have made a shared ...
This is a timeline of Belgian history, including important legal and territorial changes and political events in Belgium and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Belgium .
The culture of Belgium involves both the aspects shared by all Belgians regardless of the language they speak and the differences between the main cultural communities: the Dutch-speaking Belgians (mostly Flemish) and the French-speaking Belgians (mostly Walloons and Brusselians).
At the federal level, executive power is wielded by the federal government, whilst the prime minister is the head of the government.Each minister heads a ministry, and secretaries of state, who are deputy to a minister, help run these ministries.
The monarchy of Belgium is the constitutional and hereditary institution of the monarchical head of state of Belgium.As a popular monarchy, the Belgian monarch uses the title king/queen of the Belgians [a] and serves as the country's head of state and commander-in-chief of the Belgian Armed Forces.
The Belgian Constitution of 1831 was created in the aftermath of the secession of Belgium from the United Netherlands in the Belgian Revolution. After the revolution's initial success, an elected National Congress was convened in November 1830 to create a devise a political order for the new state.