2007–08 Belgian government formation partition of Belgium. On November 6, the formation talks became the longest in Belgian history. When the Parliament confirmed the formation of an interim Government, it had been 196 days since the Belgian people had voted out the previous coalition. It was the second longest formation period in European history, after the Dutch record of 208 days in 1977. Talks were interrupted twice by the resignation of the "formateur", which left the political parties waiting for a new appointment by the King. Guy Verhofstadt was appointed as mediator on December 3, with the task not only of looking into the
Political parties in Ukraine with diverging ideological outlooks. Unlike in Western politics, civilizational and geostrategic orientations play a more important role than economic and socio-political agendas for parties. This has led to coalition governments that would be unusual from a Western point of view; for example: the Azarov Government which included the Party of Regions with the financial backing of some Ukrainian oligarchs and the Communist Party of Ukraine and the social-democratic Batkivshchyna and the economically liberal European Party of Ukraine in the Second Tymoshenko Government. Professor Paul D'Anieri has argued (in 2006) that Ukrainian parties are "elite-based rather than mass-based". While former Ambassador