Belgian Parties Research Articles

Young blood: Needed or discarded? Untangling party strategies for the selection of young candidates

Young people are three times more present in the population than in elected assemblies. Their critical underrepresentation has so far received much less scholarly attention than other well-studied social groups, despite, for instance, women being underrepresented in parliaments to a smaller extent. This research investigates the reasons why parties, usually pointed as those who can sway group representation in politics, do (not) select young people for parliamentary elections. In-depth interviews have been conducted with 32 key informants from 6 Belgian parties (CD&V, Ecolo, Groen, MR, PS, and Vlaams Belang) responsible for candidate selection in the Belgian PR electoral system. Our interviewees’ insights allow us to assess young candidates’ assets and flaws in terms of their electoral popularity, political skills, and ticket-balancing value. This study also sheds light on parties’ strategic candidate selection decisions regarding long-term people’s management and openness to youth wings’ lobbying efforts.

The coming of age for paid digital campaigning: equalization or normalization in the 2019 Belgian federal elections?

PurposePaid digital campaigning tools play an increasingly pivotal role in individual election campaigns worldwide. Extant literature often juxtaposes the equalization theory, which argues that these tools create a level playing field, and the normalization theory, which contends that strong and resource-rich politicians benefit most from digital tools. This article aims to inform this debate by looking at it from a campaign expenditure perspective beyond the Anglo-American bias of most research on the subject.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use an original dataset on campaign expenditures and resources of 1,798 candidates running for 13 Belgian parties in the 2019 federal parliamentary election. Relying on multilevel statistical models, the authors link the candidates' digital campaign expenses to their incumbency status, which is expected to affect digital campaigning.FindingsWhile earlier work on majoritarian cases often showed contradicting results, this study on the Belgian flexible-list proportional representation (PR) case provides strong support for the equalization theory by demonstrating that incumbents are not only less inclined to spend on digital tools than challengers, but also spend a smaller part of their budget on these tools.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature by exploring the equalization versus normalization debate from a campaign expenditure perspective using a made to purpose dataset in a non-Anglo-American context.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2021-0679

A Comparative Analysis of Selection Criteria of Candidates in Belgium

The literature on candidate selection has focussed extensively on the degree of inclusiveness and decentralization of the selectorate, as part of the debate on intra-party democracy. However, much less attention has been paid to the degree of openness of candidacies, or selection criteria within parties. Yet parties have a lot of leeway in how they design selection criteria internally. Which guidelines do parties follow when making the crucial choice on which candidates to select for elections? This paper investigates selection criteria from two perspectives: the formal rules set by parties that restrict the candidate’s pool and the (informal) preferences of selectors that shape who gets selected. We aim first at contrasting the degree of party institutionalization and parties’ formal rules in candidate selection and so, we shed light on whether parties formalise their candidacy requirements and candidate selection processes to the same extent as other party activities. Second, the paper investigates the role of the selectorates, and how selectorate’s characteristics matter for the kind of (informal) selection criteria, be they intended at maximizing offices, votes or policies. Drawing on party statutes coded in the Political Party Database (PPDB) and 23 in-depth interviews with selectors, we study three francophone Belgian parties that differ both in terms of inclusiveness of the selectorate who has the final say on candidate selection and in terms of degree of centralisation, and in terms of party institutionalisation: the green party (Ecolo), the socialist party (PS), and the liberal party (MR). Our comparative analysis of parties, selection criteria provides new insights into the secret garden of politics and highlights in particular the major impact of parties, degree of centralization.

Bringing representatives back in: How political parties moderate patterns of inequality in opinion representation

Democratic theory argues that individuals should have their policy preferences equally represented in politics. Research on opinion congruence has often found, however, that political parties’ views are more likely to align with those of higher-income and higher educated citizens. We argue that this conclusion does not account for heterogeneity among parties. Based on an integrated dataset containing the positions of over 1,700 Belgian citizens and 11 Belgian parties on over 120 policy statements, we examine how opinion congruence inequality between privileged and underprivileged people varies between parties. We find that left-wing parties align more with underprivileged citizens than they do with privileged citizens on economic issues, while the opposite holds for right-wing parties. On cultural issues, however, both left- and right-wing parties better represent the preferences of privileged people. The exception is the radical right party Vlaams Belang, which on the cultural dimensions better represents the views of underprivileged voters.

Het financiële gedrag van politieke partijen

In recent decades processes of partisan dealignment and professionalisation have taken place. But how do political parties adapt their financial behaviour to these changes in the political-electoral system? We answer this question by analysing two indicators. First, we examine to what extent parties spend their available financial means (saving versus spending strategy). Secondly, we study how parties spend their available financial means (bureaucratic versus electoral strategy). Based on these two indicators we set up a two-dimensional model describing the financial behaviour of political parties, which we apply to data of Belgian parties in the period 1999-2015. The results illustrate that most parties generally adopt a bureaucratic saving strategy, but that there has not been a linear evolution between 1999 and 2015 towards a specific financial behaviour as a reaction to dealignment and professionalisation.

Inequality in Party-voter Opinion Congruence: A Matter of Choices Made or Choices Given?

Studies on the agreement, or congruence, between voters and parties have often found more congruence between higher educated voters and the parties for which they vote than between lower educated voters and their party selections. The literature offers two explanations for this finding. The first argues that lower educated voters vote ‘incorrectly’, selecting less congruent parties at the ballot box, despite the presence of a better alternative. The second posits that they lack policy offers for which to vote. This paper seeks to detangle these two explanations. Based on a dataset containing the positions of Belgian voters and parties on 23 policy statements, we find that inequality in opinion congruence is primarily the result of incorrect voting by lower educated voters. However, given Belgium’s political system—which increase the likelihood of policy offers attuned to lower educated voters, the education bias in parties’ policy offers is surprisingly high.

The within-district distribution of party candidates: A geographical analysis of party lists for Belgian lower house elections

Both political science and electoral geography scholars have demonstrated that locally rooted candidates matter in parliamentary elections. This article examines whether parties change the within-district distribution of party candidates to respond to local electoral volatility. If parties significantly lose votes in an area, they might consider compensating for this loss by increasing the number of local candidates in that area. Using data on the composition of candidate lists and election results for the Belgian Lower House (1987–2010) of eight political parties, we analyze the relationship between local vote shares and local candidate shares. In addition, we examine whether parties’ nomination strategies are determined by the nature of their candidate selection processes. The OLS regression model shows that Belgian parties generally increase local candidate shares in response to local electoral setbacks. We found weak support for the argument that strategies on the within-district distribution of party candidates are related to intraparty candidate selection processes.

The Political Geography of the Federal Public Debt in Belgium

We calculate that over the 1970-2002 period the combination of persistent primary surpluses of the Flemish region and persistent primary deficits of the Walloon region – and to a lesser extent of the Brussels region – increased the net fiscal transfer due to the federal debt provided by Flanders to Francophone Belgium to almost 100% of the total interest bill on the Belgian federal debt. This amount is considerably larger than the transfer amount resulting from previous “traditional” interregional transfer calculations that assume a balanced federal budget. The geographically very unevenly spread benefits from Belgian federal budget deficits – and hence the geographically strongly diverging incentives for federal budget deficits – may well explain to a considerable extent the large overall size of deficits and debt in Belgium since the 1970s. In other words, interregional fiscal transfers resulting from the federal debt may be important not just because of their distributional consequences, but even more because they may provide an explanation for the large overall size of deficits and debt that have particularly characterised Belgium since the 1970s. We also test empirically if Francophone Belgian politicians have more of an incentive to run a federal deficit than Flemish politicians. To this effect, we regress the popularity of federal government parties on net fiscal transfers received by Flanders, resp. by Francophone Belgium. We find that transfers to Flanders affect the popularity of Flemish parties governing at the federal level less positively than that transfers to Francophone Belgium affect the popularity of Francophone Belgian parties governing at the federal level. The difference in effect is however insignificant in our major regression specifications.

Les Élections Communales de 2012 en WallonieDandoy, Régis; Dodeigne, Jérémy; Matagne, Geoffroy; Reuchamps, Min (eds) Bruges, Editions Vanden Broele (2013), 195 p., ISBN 978‐90‐4960‐941‐2

Les Élections Communales de 2012 en WallonieDandoy, Régis; Dodeigne, Jérémy; Matagne, Geoffroy; Reuchamps, Min (eds) Bruges, Editions Vanden Broele (2013), 195 p., ISBN 978‐90‐4960‐941‐2

The Geography of Incentives to Run a Federal Budget Deficit in Belgium

Political parties in Belgium are split along Flemish-Francophone lines, and Flanders enjoys relatively less federal expenditures and pays relatively more federal taxes than Francophone Belgium. As the federal debt is serviced out of federal tax revenues, Flanders bears most of the cost of debt servicing, while on average having benefited the least from the deficit-funded expenditures. Those uneven net benefits from Belgian federal budget deficits – and the diverging incentives for federal budget deficits this disparity seems to create – may be an explanation of the large overall size of deficits and debt in Belgium since the 1970s. Hence, interregional fiscal transfers resulting from the federal debt may be important not just because of their distributional consequences, but even more because they may provide an explanation for the large Belgian federal deficits and debt burdens. We test for these differing deficit incentives by investigating the difference between the effect of an increase in net formula-based transfers on Flemish resp. Francophone Belgian federal government parties’ vote share. We find at first sight that an increase in net transfers causes Flemish governing parties to lose votes during the next federal election, while the effect is insignificant in Francophone Belgium as well as in Belgium taken as a whole. The negative Flemish effect may be suggestive of Flemish voters being aware that increases in formula-based net transfers to Flanders may go hand in hand with similar increases to Francophone Belgium, that these increases may increase the public debt, and that the latter is serviced mainly with federal taxes raised in Flanders. However, when taking into account legislature-specific shocks that differ between Flanders and Francophone Belgium, the Flemish negative effect of transfers on votes mostly turns insignificant. Neither is there a consistently significantly positive effect of transfers on votes in Francophone Belgium, and also when investigated for Belgium as a whole the effect is insignificant. In conclusion, Francophone Belgian (Flemish) voters do not seem to particularly reward (punish) extra net transfers with more (less) votes. Francophone Belgian voters seem to overestimate the future cost of extra transfers they will bear, while the opposite seems to hold for Flemish voters. Alternatively, Francophone Belgian parties may overestimate the rewards – in terms of voters’ gratitude – of steering extra transfers to Francophone Belgium, while Flemish parties may correctly estimate the – lack of- punishment – in terms of voters’ anger of steering extra transfers to Flanders.

Candidate centred campaigning in a party centred context: The case of Belgium

Candidates to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives vary considerably with regard to the extent to which they run personalized campaigns. However, very few candidates get elected on the basis of preference votes. In light of this weak link between preference voting and the actual allocation of mandates, this paper asks about why Belgian candidates run personalized campaigns at all. Our findings point to the impact of the following factors in this regard: district magnitude, party magnitude, electoral safety, and seniority with regard to party organizational offices. Furthermore, our findings also demonstrate considerable differences between Belgian parties with regard to the extent to which their candidates run personalized campaigns.

Democratising Party Leadership Selection in Belgium: Motivations and Decision Makers

Political parties are increasingly adopting more inclusive procedures to select their party leader, most notably by introducing party primaries. This article tries to detect motives and decision makers for this introduction in Belgian parties. The literature on Westminster-style parties contends that party elites only reluctantly transfer more power from the parliamentary party group (PPG) to party members. They do so only when finding themselves in a weak position: after electoral defeat, when in opposition, when other parties are doing so or when the party is new. The situation in Belgium is different, as is demonstrated with quantitative and qualitative data. Mostly, the party elite was keen on introducing party primaries and took the initiative itself to carry them through. The mechanism at work, however, is the same as in Westminster parties: avoiding too much power for middle-level elites. Because of the different starting position (party delegates selecting the leader), the decision-making process looks completely different. We also argue that the results from Belgian parties might apply to consensus democracies in general.

Measuring Populism: A Quantitative Text Analysis of Party Literature in Belgium

Despite the increased use of the term populism in vernacular and scholarly language, the measurement of the concept has long been neglected. The label is often attached to a certain party without any justification. Minimal definitions are alternatives but lack rigor. Classical content analyses provide more systematic measurements of populism but are extremely resource hungry. This article proposes an alternative, quantitative text analysis to measure the degree of populism among Belgian parties, drawing on both internally and externally oriented party literature. The results confirm that usual suspects such as the Vlaams Belang or Lijst Dedecker are the most populist of all parties under study. Populism turns out not to be an “either–or” concept, however, since we also identify a moderately populist party. It is furthermore demonstrated how populism can be attached to other ideologies, such as the radical right and (neo)liberalism. A cross‐validation of the proposed method with independent voter survey data confirms its validity. This article concludes that a quantitative text analysis might be a promising method to measure populism over time and space without the huge costs of hand coding.

Explaining Participation in Intra-Party Elections

This article focuses on the participation of party members in intra-party elections and on explanations for this behaviour. The number of intra-party elections is increasing, but their study remains an under-researched phenomenon in contemporary party politics. I test whether participation theories applicable to participation in society also obtain in intra-party elections. The theories tested are: instrumental motivation theory, mobilization theory, resource theory and participation as habit. My analysis on the individual level focuses on two particular internal elections in Belgian parties (VLD and VU) that differ in type and in the membership and ideology of the parties organizing these elections. The results largely confirm the instrumental motivation theory and participation as habit. Neither the mobilization theory nor the resource theory are supported.

Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Drawing on a large-scale online experiment embedded in an electoral survey in Belgium, this study tests whether issue ownership is, rather than a stable condition, a dynamic process that can be manipulated by an experimental stimulus. Five thousand subjects were confronted with an embedded fake TV-news item in which the five leaders of the main Belgian parties offered their parties' stance on six issues. We find that issue ownership is a dynamic process and that news exposure leads to significant shifts in issue ownership. Especially on issues that are not owned by any party, a communicative performance by the party leader can make a difference. Regarding preowned issues, the effect is conditional; it depends on the balance of the news item.

Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Diseases in Belgium: A Cost-of-illness Analysis

This study aims to quantify costs of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases in Belgium in 2004. Costs were estimated using data on prevalence, healthcare resource utilization and unit costs. Healthcare costs included expenditure on ambulatory care, hospital inpatient care, emergency care, and medications. Costs of prevention campaigns and costs of productivity loss were also included. Costs amounted to 3.5 billion euros in Belgium in 2004. Total costs consisted of 80 million euros related to prevention and screening, 1.3 billion euros related to pre-clinical disease, and 2.2 billion euros related to established disease. These costs were incurred by the Belgian third-party payer (58% of costs), patients (10%) and third parties (i.e. employers and supplementary health insurance) (32%). Atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases impose a significant economic burden on Belgian society.

Strategies Under the Surface: The Determinants of Redistricting in Belgium

Most of the time, electoral reforms are seen as decisions taken by political players aiming at increasing their seat share. According to Benoit's model, parties rank reform plans according to whether they maximize their share of seats (Benoit, 2004). In that respect, the decision of the Belgian government to change district boundaries for the 2003 federal elections is rather strange, as the reform adopted has no mechanical impact on the allocation of seats among parties. This does not, however, mean that this redistricting is one of the few reforms not driven by strategic considerations. Belgian parties are driven by other forms of strategy lying under the surface. As a matter of fact, four power-related elements have played a part in the decision to change district boundaries. Firstly, the change to province constituencies was made to reduce the uncertainty of parliamentary careers caused by the two-tier system in use up to 2003. Secondly, promoters of redistricting tried to introduce a new campaign structure, which they hoped would be more appropriate for their party. Thirdly, large parties required to introduce a 5% threshold jointly to the redistricting. The threshold was meant to block smaller parties and consequently to favour larger ones. And finally redistricting was also pushed by centralized parties expecting this reform to increase their control over decentralized party structures. All these strategies show that in the study of electoral reform, political science will have to go beyond merely considering its impact on each party's share of seats.

Populism as political communication style: An empirical study of political parties' discourse in Belgium

Abstract. The scientific debate about populism has been revitalised by the recent rise of extreme‐right parties in Western Europe. Within the broad discussion about populism and its relationship with extreme‐right, this article is confined to three topics: a conceptual, an epistemological and an empirical issue. First, taking a clear position in the ongoing definition struggle, populism is defined primarily as a specific political communication style. Populism is conceived of as a political style essentially displaying proximity of the people, while at the same time taking an anti‐establishment stance and stressing the (ideal) homogeneity of the people by excluding specific population segments. Second, it is pointed out that defining populism as a style enables one to turn it into a useful concept that has too often remained vague and blurred. Third, drawing on an operational definition of populism, a comparative discourse analysis of the political party broadcasts of the Belgian parties is carried out. The quantitative analysis leads to a clear conclusion. In terms of the degree and the kinds of populism embraced by the six political parties under scrutiny, the extreme‐right party Vlaams Blok behaves very differently from the other Belgian parties. Its messages are a copybook example of populism.

Do Belgian parties undermine the democratic chain of delegation?

The Belgian party-archy violates the ideal-type chain of parliamentary delegation in many ways, insofar as political parties play a predominant role at each stage. They channel the delegation of power from voters to MPs, from Parliament to the cabinet, from the collective cabinet to individual ministers, and from ministers to their civil servants. Hence, they can be considered the effective principals in the polity, and many actors of the parliamentary chain of delegation, such as MPs, ministers, and civil servants have been reduced to mere party agents. The extreme fragmentation of the Belgian party system in combination with its increasing need for multilevel coordination have further enhanced the position of political parties in the Belgian polity. Yet, at the same time (since the early 1990s), Belgium has also witnessed a gradual decline in the informal system of partitocratic delegation and clientelistic excesses, thereby giving back part of their autonomy to some formal agents, such as the cabinet, top civil servants and some MPs. Still, one can wonder whether these corrections are sufficient to counter the strong outburst of public dissatisfaction with the way parties have run the country in past decades.

Europeanisering en centralisering : Een verkennend onderzoek naar de plaats van de Europese Unie in de organisatie van de Belgische politieke partijen

The European Union affects the internal organisation of national political parties. We found 'traces of Europe' in the party statutes of all Belgian parties that are represented in the European Parliament since 1999. Europe is, to a greater or lesser extent, present in party goals, rules on party membership and party organs. Parties have elaborated rules for the organisation of European elections, for the selection of European executives, for the formulation of party programmes, and for internal and external co-ordination of policy formulation. At first sight these rules seem to confirm the hypothesis that Europe is in the first place a concern of party leadership, and that it reinforces centralisation of decision-making. Yet the full confirmation of this hypothesis requires further comparative research on the Europeanisation of political parties.