Flemish Parties Research Articles

Home is where the heart is? A comparative analysis of Flemish and Danish parties' organizational linkages with the EU

AbstractIn the light of the crucial role political parties play in connecting citizens with political decisions, this article assesses national parties' organizational linkages with the European level. It focuses on explaining variation between parties and the motivations they have to organize the way they do. Building on qualitative comparative case studies of Danish and Flemish parties, this study finds that country‐level factors override party‐level factors. Particularly the domestic political relevance of European affairs, combined with historical ties with European integration and distance from Brussels, determine the nature of parties' multilevel linkages. Contributing to the literature on parties as multilevel organization in the EU, these findings call attention to the great difficulty parties face in reaching beyond the confines of the nation‐state, despite the important role they play in providing the EU with the necessary democratic legitimacy.

Living up to expectations? EU politicization and party Europeanization in Flanders and the Netherlands

At the turn of the century, both academics and practitioners anticipated the Europeanization of national politics and political parties. One major expectation was that parties would adapt their organisation and behaviour to the existence of the EU and the functioning of its institutions. However, the early 2000s poured cold water on those expectations: the slacking politicization of EU affairs, it was concluded, created few incentives for parties to adapt, and so there was no meaningful Europeanization to speak of. EU politicization became the necessary pre-condition for party Europeanization. Today, however, that pre-condition seems (partly) fulfilled, as scholars are observing increasing EU politicization. Hence, we ask whether parties live up to expectations and, facing a politicised context, are today showing signs of party organizational Europeanization (POE). Based on a comparative case study of Dutch and Flemish parties, who function in differently politicized environments, we find that Europeanization remains limited. We conclude that it is likely not EU politicization holding parties back, but instead point towards the broader institutional misfit between national and European politics. We call on future research to further elaborate on this misfit, which might be the Achilles heel for EU democracy.

Telegram and Digital Methods

Telegram and Digital Methods

Steered by ethnicity and/or SES cues? An examination of party selectors’ stereotypes about ethnic minority aspirants

ABSTRACT This study discusses whether party selectors’ stereotypes about ethnic minority aspirants help to explain the political under-representation of ethnic minorities. Specific attention goes to the question of how the social stereotype of ethnic minorities as low socioeconomic status citizens affects political stereotypes about ethnic minority aspirants. This innovative intersectionality research is built on an original survey experiment conducted among Flemish party selectors. Ethnic minority aspirants are perceived as more leftist than majority aspirants, but not as less competent or trustworthy. Furthermore, the effects of aspirants’ ethnicity are not moderated by their socioeconomic status. The implications are twofold. First, discrimination against ethnic minority aspirants based on their ethnic background is only likely to occur among rightist party selectors. Second, that ethnic minority aspirants with a high socioeconomic status are perceived as equally competent than their ethnic majority counterparts contradicts previous assumptions that ethnic minority aspirants need to be better qualified than ethnic majority aspirants. In sum, this study nuances previous concerns that party selector discrimination is an important barrier for the representation of ethnic minorities.

Does Family Politicization Affect Party Membership Activity? A Study of Four Flemish Parties

Does Family Politicization Affect Party Membership Activity? A Study of Four Flemish Parties

Migration policy reforms in the context of economic and political crises: the case of Belgium

ABSTRACTA body of literature has examined the role of ‘crises’ on policy-making. Yet, we observe that endogenous or exogenous events called ‘crisis-events’ are often randomly chosen as sweeping explanations for reforms in migration and integration policy. Thus, we attempt to find answers for the question of how the latest financial and economic crisis affected policy-making in the area of migration and integration. We apply a combination of interest-based and ideas-based theories to the case of Belgium in order to question the role of crises in policy reforms in the field of migration and integration. Multiple political and economic crises have affected the country since 2007. Examining these crises and immigration politics we argue that electoral competition both between and within the Francophone and Flemish party systems continues to be the main driver of migration and integration policy reform. Yet, we also discover a cumulative effect of economic and political crises: while the intention of restricting immigration has remained largely unchanged over the years, the policy instruments employed to reach this objective have changed with the political and economic crises.

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.

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.

Redrawing Europe’s Map

Redrawing Europe’s Map

Goldilocks and the entrepreneurs: Mainstream party strategies on immigration in Flanders and the Netherlands

This article addresses competition over immigration in the Dutch and Flemish party systems. By looking at when, whether and how mainstream parties engage with immigration in each place, this article seeks to understand how parties compete on an issue under non-ownership conditions. Drawing on an analysis of party manifestos, it supports the concept of combined competence and positional competition, and of parties emphasizing immigration when they have a distinct position, and shows how the presence of intra-party tensions is relevant for understanding how parties choose to emphasize (or avoid) immigration as part of their electoral strategy. On the other hand, there is less support for the premise that party size predicts emphasis on immigration. These results are discussed with respect to the wider implications for understanding party strategies in Western Europe, and for the (party) politics of immigration specifically.

The link between social attitudes and voting propensities: Attitude-vote consistency among adolescents in Belgium

Research on the political development of adolescents is mainly focused on political engagement and attitudes. The more complex relationship between attitudes and voting behavior is less studied among citizens under the legal voting age. We investigate whether there is a link between social attitudes and voting propensities among Flemish adolescents, using data from the Parent–Child Socialization Study 2012. We observe attitude-vote consistency for three Flemish parties with a clear-cut ideological profile – the Green, radical rightist and Flemish Nationalist party. Findings show that adolescents' attitude-vote consistency is reinforced by their level of political sophistication. The correspondence between social attitudes and vote choice, however, is not impressive and significantly lower than among experienced adults, leaving room for other influential factors.

Tussen politieke partijen en

In Flanders, every political party has its own political foundation or study centre. Although their importance for the party organisation is widely recognised, a systematic and comparative analysis of these study centres is still lacking. This article is the first attempt to address this empirical void. Based on document analysis, interviews and survey material, we analyse the basic characteristics of the study centres of seven Flemish parties, covering all major political families. We compare their size, internal structure and autonomy vis-à-vis the party, explore the advisors’ profile and background and discuss the generation and products of advice. We conclude that despite their heterogeneity Flemish study centres share a common but limited functionality, being more of an extension of political parties than classical think tanks.

Communautairy Problems: An Argumentative Analysis of the Belgian Political Crisis

In 2011, Belgium broke the world record for longest time without a government. 249 days had passed since the 2010 elections, and still the victorious parties – the New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and the Socialist Party (PS) – had not succeeded in the formation of a new government. This paper presents an argumentative analysis of the above political crisis. It seeks to clarify this crisis by means of mapping the most important arguments presented, so that the argumentative bottlenecks may be identified and analyzed. The arguments and claims examined in this paper are those of the N-VA; a nationalist Flemish party. The reason for focusing on the N-VA is that the political deadlock that can be identified as the cause for the relevant crisis stemmed from one of their party goals; namely to transfer authority from the federal government to the regions of Flanders and Wallonia, so effectively separating the two politically. By focusing on this argument, it is investigated what the different premises are and whether these are legitimate. Eventually, this culminates in a final judgment as to whether the N-VA’s argument is sound.

Party Strategies, Voter Demands and Territorial Reform in Belgium

This article examines the determinants of the positioning of parties on the question of territorial reform in Belgium. It argues that one cannot explain the high salience assigned to the issue of decentralisation among political parties by looking only at voter demands. Instead, it is the dynamics of party competition that has encouraged parties to adopt an electoral and territorial logic of action. The article shows that the main driver of territorial reform in Belgium has been the continuous relevance of regionalist parties in the Flemish party system, which have compelled mainstream parties to accommodate their demands for territorial autonomy, and, more recently, independence. Regionalist parties have capitalised on a strong sense of Flemish national identity, itself shaped by long-run structural factors. The article also shows that the adoption of an electoral and territorial logic has been strengthened by the split of the Belgian party system and the reinforcement of social cleavages, and, more recently, by the increasing competitiveness of elections and the opening up of party competition at multiple levels.

Nederlandse en Vlaamse politieke partijen in de krant en in de peilingen: een wederkerige relatie

Dutch and Flemish parties in the media and in the polls: assessing a mutual causal relationship Dutch and Flemish parties in the media and in the polls: assessing a mutual causal relationship We address the question to what extent media visibility of political parties and standing in opinion polls influence each other. We look at various political parties in the Netherlands and Flanders during the past two decades. We hypothesize a positive influence from the one on the other, and pose the question to what extent this differs for parties with different characteristics. We conduct a computer-assisted content analysis of newspaper coverage and collect existing public opinion polls. We use a pooled time series analysis and tests of Granger causality. Results show that often a positive causal relationship between media coverage and opinion polls exists. Sometimes, however, the relationship is absent, or even contrary to expectations. Especially in the last years, Dutch parties at the extremes of the political spectrum profit from media visibility. In Flanders, the relationship only runs from polls to visibility, and not the other way around.

Tussen establishment en extremisme: populistische partijen in Nederland en Vlaanderen

Populist parties are often associated with extremism. However, the term ‘extremism’ is usually ill-defined and value-laden. Conceptual analysis will help to define populism as well as extremism in a more precise and value-neutral sense. Empirical analysis of the programmes of six Dutch and three Flemish parties suggests that populism does not entail extremism, even if it can be combined with it. The Centre Party and Centre Democrats as well as the Socialist Party and the Flemish Bloc may have displayed extremist as well as populist tendencies at some point. Yet the (more or less) populist parties Liveable Netherlands (Leefbaar Nederland), the List Pim Fortuyn, the Freedom Party, the movement Proud of the Netherlands (Trots op Nederland) and the List Dedecker should not be considered extremist.

Het uiteenvallen van de Volksunie en het ontstaan van de N-VA en Spirit : Een chronologisch en morfologisch overzicht (juni 1999 - juli 2002)

At the Belgian parliamentary elections in June 1999, the Flemish nationalist party 'Volksunie' (VU) which formed an alliance with the social-liberal ID21 progressed slightly. On July 10, 1999, the party decided to participate in the purple-green-yellow Flemish government, but at the same time they decided to stay out of the federal Belgian government. Two years later, the VU-Party Bureau decided that due to deep divisions within the party it had become impossible for the party to continue. The 15.000 party members were asked to judge about the future of the party. Because no party project managed to obtain a 50 %-majority in the party member referendum, the VU dissappeared. Two new parties - the 'Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie' (N-VA) and 'Spirit' - emerged from the ruins of the VU. The collapse of the VU can be seen as the most far-reaching change in the Flemish party political context of the last decade. This article focusses on the last two and a half years of the VU and on the first year of the N-VA and Spirit (from June 1999 until July 2002). In a first part, achronological overview is build up. This part provides an overview «from day to day» of the events that played a role in the collapse of the VU and the creation of the N-VA and Spirit. The second part of the article draws amore morphological picture of the VU, the N-VA and Spirit: data are presented about the internal organisation of these parties (info about party meetings, the composition and competences of the leading party structures, internal elections, party mandates, the party employees and numbers of party members). By offering an extensive overview of facts and figures, it is the intention of the authors to provide a solid guidelinefor further investigation.

De beperking van de wapenhandel : Een voorbeeld van beïnvloeding van de politieke agenda vanuit ontzuilde drukkingsgroepen

In 1991, the Belgian government demissioned because of a dispute about armstrade to the Middle East between the french-speaking and the flemish parties of the majority. This was the result oft he agitation of pressure groups since the beginning of the seventies. They belong to the 'New Social Movements', motivated by post-material values. They developped a succesfull strategy to involve the 'old', pilarised pressure groups and the press. It proved that it was possible for non-pilarised pressure groups to influence the parliament and the government. Nevertheless, these pressure groups were only powerfull in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. This made it possible for the linguistic cleavage to intervene in a decisive way in this political process. It broke up the consensus necessary for the maintaining of the government. The differences in the configuration of the New Social Movements between north and south wilt also be a reason for further steps in the process of federalising the Belgian state.

De formele aanstelling van de partijvoorzitters in België, 1944-1990

Most party by-laws are too inexhaustive and vague to be adequate guidelines for describing party chairmanship or predicting the actual proceedings of chairman elections. Although nearly all party by-laws prescribe competitive elections, one candidate elections occur in 68 % of the cases and in nearly 25% of all cases the unique candidate is elected by acclamation only. Also, when more candidates are presented, the preferences of the party oligarchy are mostly made very clear.The small number of elections that involve real choice even diminishes when reelections or the appointment of interim chairman are taken into account: the percentage of "more than one candidate"-presentation drops from 32 % to respectively 19% and 16% . In Flemish parties there is less opportunity for choice then in Francophone parties: 22 % versus 38% "more than one candidate"-presentation (elections and re-elections). Moreover, the chairman elections of the Francophone parties involve larger electoral bodies : e.g. in some parties and already in 41 % of the cases (elections and re-elections) all partymembers have a right to cast their vote. A possibility that exists in none of the Flemish parties. As far as the evolution over time is concerned: there is a general and salient tendency towards more opportunities for real choice and larger electoral bodies.But taken together opportunities for real choice remain scarce : in general party chairmen are not actually chosen by the formally empowered party organs; before formal elections are held choices are mostly made already !

Verschillen in stemgedrag bij gemeenteraadsverkiezingen en socio-economische kenmerken van gemeenten

Results of Belgian municipal elections of 1988 and socio-economic characteristics of municipalities are used to estimate quantitatively (by multivariate regression analysis) the relationship between municipal election outcomes and these socio-economic characteristics. A higher average income bas a negative effect on election results for the Christian-democratic party and for the socialist party and a positive effect for the liberal party. A higher proportion of citizens who depend on public assistance has a negative effect for the Christian-democrats and a positive effect for the socialist party. A higher proportion of citizens with a university degree has a negative effect on election results for the socialist party and a positive effect for the green party. A higher proportion of younger citizens has a positive effect for the Christian-democrats and the green party and a negative effect for the socialist, the liberal and the extreme right wing Flemishparty. A higher degree of urbanisation has a negative effect for the Christiandemocratsand a positive effect for the socialist, the green and the extreme rightwing Flemish party. A higher proportion of Northern-African immigrants in the population has a positive effect for the socialist and the extreme Flemish party and a negative effect for the green party.The explanatory values of the estimated equations are moderate and results have to be interpreted with caution. Closer examination of the data show that the participation at the elections by the extreme right wing Flemish party leads to a proportional decline in votes for the socialist party.