BELGIUM, A LABORATORY FOR EUROPE: THE FEDERAL MODEL AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

摘要

This paper presents the main political information superhighway (ISH) initiatives undertaken in Belgium, a small but centrally located European member state. Belgium is a federal state with regions and communities whose competences concerning multimedia and ISHs are not clearly defined. This paper shows that this fuzzy situation slows down ISHs' development in Belgium and reveals the weakness of a federal pattern for the definition and management of a coherent ISH strategy. Belgium has two main cultures which express themselves in the initiatives taken at the northern and southern parts of the country. These examples reveal that the use of ISHs to express national cultures and identities, and the cohesive effect of ISHs on European member states, underlined by the Bangemann report, may be contradictory.