On a makeshift stage beside Ghent's 12th-century Church of St Jacob, the boys from Baghdad, unaccustomed to being world champions at very much, meekly surrendered the trophy.

The Iraqis topped the global league table for a mere three months, seizing the silverware from the Dutch, who had enjoyed an unbroken three-decade reign at the top.

At midnight, 250 days after last June's general election left Belgium rudderless, King Albert II's realm took over the No 1 spot from Iraq, breaking the modern world record for the longest period without a government.

Across the fractured kingdom of the Belgians, it was a day of national embarrassment, celebrated by wits and pranksters countrywide.

"Our politicians are heroes," joked Edmund Cocquyt, a Flemish connoisseur of bars who is making an inventory of every pub in Flanders. "We're proud of this. Finally we can send out a positive message about Belgium – my country is the world record-holder."

The Belgians have a talent for laughing at themselves. Which is just as well as the country's bickering political class is its biggest joke.

So Thursday night's "people's festival" in Ghent, a large street party in honour of eight government-free months, with its spoof world championship ceremony, was accompanied by stunts in Brussels and Antwerp, Leuven and Liege in what turned into a Red Nose day aimed at shaming a cynical political elite.

There were 249 – Thursday's tally of days without a government – students stripping off, other students handing out free bags of frites, the ubiquitous Belgian chip. Jokers gathered outside Brussels's palace of justice. A prominent actor has launched a hairy protest – a national shaving boycott until a new cabinet is formed. A Ghent senator suggested political wives and partners withhold sexual favours until the male political mafia got serious. A new quiz game, Belgotron, has been launched, testing participants' knowledge of their native country, with the main prize being the prime ministership. It is a prize that none of the leading politicians appear to covet.

"We're making a joke but it's no laughing matter," said Veronika, a Ghent social worker. "It's really very serious. We might be partying. But we've had enough. I want a government. It's urgent. There are too many problems to be solved."

The flashmobs, pranks, parties, and stunts were organised using the now established motor of spontaneous political activism – social networking sites Facebook and Twitter – but with a key difference. While protesters from Minsk to Cairo mobilise online to try to bring down hated governments, in Belgium the campaign is aimed at getting a government.

There is little evidence the elected politicians are listening. The caretaker government of the Flemish Christian Democrat, Yves Leterme, fell apart last April, the third collapse in two years. The June election reinforced the linguistic, political and cultural conflicts paralysing the country, with victory going to rightwing Flemish separatists in the Dutch-speaking north over leftwing, pro-Belgium socialists in the francophone southern region of Wallonia.

Ever since then the king has appointed a string of mediators to cobble together a workable coalition. All have failed. On Wednesday the latest broker, Didier Reynders, the caretaker finance minister, reported no progress and was told to keep trying for another fortnight.

On Thursday the word in Brussels was there would be fresh elections in April, a ballot likely to entrench the divide, deepen the crisis of political accountability and legitimacy, and result in yet further months of government-less squabbling.

There is no talk of royal abdication. There are few signs of Belgium breaking up. But nor is there any sense of direction, of how to escape from deepening division, of how to restructure a balkanised political system which encourages paralysis.

The country is prosperous and well-run bureaucratically. The caretaker Leterme government has just accomplished a smooth and much-praised presidency of the European Union.

So does it matter?

"Everything goes on in the same old way," said Cocquyt. "It's better not having a government. Besides the trouble with democracy is it is so slow. If we want to build a new road, it takes us 20 years to decide. The Chinese dictatorship does it the next day."

With endless coalition negotiations thoroughly bogged down since last June, the Swiss model was proposed at Ghent University – turning the country into a "Belgian Union", a confederation of four parastates – Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia, and the small German-speaking area in the east.

The other novel proposal aired was that Belgium should receive the Balkan treatment, its squabbles handed over to an international envoy to sort out, as its own leaders appear congenitally incapable of resolving the problem.Thursday was a day of satire, surrealism, and irony, with Belgium's politicians the butt of the joke, not yet of the anger.

Political vacuum

The absence of a central government has been mitigated by the fact that power is heavily decentralised in Belgium. Local and regional government now enjoy greater legitimacy than the federal government in Brussels and they continue to function.

But foreign policy, defence, national budget and debt issues are piling up, handled in an ad hoc manner by a provisional prime minister who took a hammering at last year's election and has no mandate. And the lack of a proper central government means there is less glue holding the estranged halves of the country together.