Abstract
Throughout its 40-year history, the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest) has established itself as an important player within the Belgian party system, albeit with significant electoral fluctuations. In 2019, it became the second largest party in Flanders. The party developed and maintained a mass-party organisation by investing significantly in local party branches and in a rigid vertically articulated structure. It relies heavily on social media, particularly Facebook, to communicate to supporters beyond the more limited group of party members. Using both modern and traditional tools, VB representatives aim to create communities of supporters bonded to the party, facilitating dissemination of the party’s messages. Despite this investment in a grassroots organisation, the VB’s decision-making remains highly centralised. Social media and local branches allow informal consideration of members’ views, but the party has not created significant mechanisms for internal democracy. While it is often claimed that political parties have moved away from the “mass-party” model, this article demonstrates that the VB still maintains characteristics of the mass party, albeit with a modern twist. New social media tools facilitate attempts to foster communities and disseminate party messages among a wider group of supporters, both formal members and more informal sympathisers.
Highlights
The time is ripe to re‐examine the organisational struc‐ tures of the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest)
Local branches play a key role in organ‐ ising social and political activities which maintain regular connection with active supporters and recruit new sup‐ porters
The VB’s local anchoring strategy and delegated ver‐ tical strategy is consistent with the mass‐party model, which entails organising a broad group of grassroots supporters and developing a “locally rooted, com‐ plex and durable organisation” (Heinisch & Mazzoleni, 2016, p. 241)
Summary
The time is ripe to re‐examine the organisational struc‐ tures of the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest). The VB’s organisational structures follow this model and display these characteristics. The VB speaks to a broad community of party supporters, formal members. While the party’s formal membership numbers remain modest, the VB’s investment in its wider grassroots base remains crucial to its political strategy. In the third section of this article, I describe how the VB fits the mass‐party model based on its organisational structures and outreach to members and supporters. This article is based on an analysis of 32 interviews with party representatives at supranational, national, and local level. Of the 32 rep‐ resentatives interviewed, 14 were national or suprana‐ tional parliamentarians Interviewees played both insti‐ tutional roles in political institutions, as local councillors or parliamentarians, and party roles, as members of the VB’s governing boards at branch, regional, or national level. Within the first two areas, representatives from urban areas (Bruges and Ghent respectively) and smaller towns were interviewed
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