The Red Devils, chocolate or beer and the King, such is the typical answers given to the oft-asked question of what is still holding Belgium together. To these three symbols, two extra elements are often added: the debt and Brussels, the capital of the country and of the Flemish Region/Community, the French Community (politically but not constitutionally the Wallonia-Brussels Federation), the European Union (to be more specific, one of the three capitals, along with Strasbourg and Luxemburg), while being as well the seat of the Brussels Capital Region. Generally, the list of factors of unity in Belgium ends with this short list. Is it already too long, or on the contrary, is it really too short? This is the main question of this chapter. Paradoxically, although this question often arises, there are very few scientific writings analyzing it. To do so, this chapter will discuss six sets of factors: historical, identity, socio-economic, political, international and symbolic. Nonetheless, it is important to take into account that such enterprise seeks to be informative and not prescriptive. This chapter does not assume that Belgium should be united. There are several points of view about what Belgium should be, and this contribution merely wishes to nurture the political debate by conveying an original approach on six types of factors.
Different models of democracy have been thought to make collective decisions: representative, participatory, deliberative or elitist, to give a few but the main ones. These models are justified, criticized, transformed by political theorists. But what do citizens expect from democracy? Since the beginning of the 2000s, an increasing number of studies are interested by citizens' attitudes towards democratic models. What do they think about the mechanism of election and delegation, the idea of a more participatory democracy, the role of political parties and the ideal place of experts in the democracy of tomorrow? However empirical studies provide contradictory results. Some considers that citizens don't want to participate more (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2002), while others argue that they are looking for new opportunities of involvement (Neblo, Esterling, Kennedy, Lazer, & Sokhey, 2010). Researchers begin to analyze this element in the European context and the objective of this paper is to present the case of Belgium. Relying on the PARTIREP voter survey of 2014 we analyze three dimensions of this issue. First, we map the attitudes towards different kinds of democratic models in Belgium. Second, we seek to explain why people develop these different preferences. Third, we compare the result in the North and in South to look if the different political dynamics in Walloon and Flanders are related to different public attitudes towards democracy.
Abstention is a key issue for any representative democracy. Turnout has a direct impact on the input legitimacy of the democratic system, but also eventually on the output legitimacy, that is on the policies that are designed and implemented. This issue has long sparked debate about the determinants of abstention in elections and its consequences both for politics and for policies. Yet, a multi-level approach is often missing. While the second-order elections theory has shown that different levels of elections mean different levels of turnout, it has been criticized theoretically for its so-called nationalist – i.e. in favor of national elections – bias and methodologically because it typically assesses elections not held on the same day. The last elections held in Belgium offer a fertile ground of investigation for multi-level abstention as the regional, federal and European elections were organized the very same day, under the rule of compulsory voting. This paper aims at presenting and discussing the real abstention rates at the three levels of elections, as well as for the local elections. The 2014 PartiRep voter survey offers an original way to explore the potential abstention – that is electoral participation in the absence of compulsory voting – as the respondents were not asked the typical single question about their potential electoral participation if compulsory voting was to be abolished, but a fourfold question asking them whether they would always, often, sometimes or never vote at the local, regional, federal and European elections. The results will show that there is a significant amount of the voters who would vote differently: 437 of them (22%) would always vote at one – level of – election, but not always at the other ones. The paper seeks to assess this potential multi-level abstention in light of socio-demographic and political (namely party) variables. This contribution will thus shed new light on the issue of abstention – both real and potential – in its multi-level dimension.
After years of political crises and negotiations, the deep-rooted conflict between Dutch- and French-speaking parties recently led to the 2011 agreement concerning a further reform of the Belgian state. This reform mainly furthers decentralises the – already federal – state structure, including the allocation of additional competences and fiscal powers to sub-national entities (Regions and Communities). But this new state reform also brings about a radical reform of the upper house: the Belgian Senate. Since 1995, the Senate was composed of three different types of members: Senators directly elected by two linguistically separated electorate (the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking electorates), Senators indirectly elected by the Community parliaments and Senators coopted by the two other types. The French- and German-speaking linguistic minorities had a fixed amount of seats in this assembly. The reform of the state radically changed the legislative competences of the Senate and its composition as its members will now be designated by Regional and Community parliaments (plus 10 coopted senators). Broadly speaking, the appointment of the majority of the Senators moved from a system of direct and language-based election to a system of indirect and mixed regional and language-based designation. This change is not without consequence for the representation of linguistic minorities. In May 2014, regional, community and federal elections will be organised in Belgium, testing for the first time this new system of designation of Senators by regional and community parliaments. This paper intends to present the 2013 reform of the Senate in Belgium and its consequence for the representation of linguistic minorities. The situations before and after the reform of the Senate will be compared, not only in terms of the way Senators are appointed but in terms of its consequence on the linguistic aspects of the regional and community elections campaign and of the profile of the appointed Senators.
In the literature, the political impact of metaphors has often been taken for granted from metaphor analysis in political discourse, be it elite discourse or media discourse. However, a more global understanding of what this political impact could consist of, is still lacking from the current research agenda. As Koller (2009:121) puts it: "metaphor helps construct particular aspects of reality and reproduce (or subvert) dominant schemas." To be able to account for how metaphors, through discourses, actively shape the political reality, it is important to look at the relationships between metaphorical discourses and their environment. Based on the idea that metaphors do not only reflect the perceived reality, but also function as cues through which citizens come to understand complex political processes and through which they shape political behaviors, the aim of this study is precisely to look at how specific metaphors might impact on the citizens' framing of Belgian federalism. To measure the impact of metaphors on the citizens' political representations and attitudes, we developed an experimental set-up based on an article published in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir (13-14 July 2013) in which Belgian federalism was deliberately compared to a Tetris game. The original article included a picture and a text (208 words), which were used as authentic experimental material. For this experiment, we distinguished three experimental conditions and one control condition. In the first experimental condition (full condition), the participants were exposed to the original article (including the text and the picture). In the second and third experimental conditions, the participants were respectively exposed either to the text (text condition) or the picture (picture condition). In the control condition, the participants weren't exposed to any metaphorical material at all. In the second stage of the experiment, the participants were asked to achieve three interrelated tasks: (i) a free description task, based on a free description of their own perception of Belgian federalism, (ii) an association task, in which they had to select a picture which they found the most appropriate to describe Belgian federalism, and finally (iii) a questionnaire measuring the participants' political knowledge of Belgian federalism and attitudes towards its future development. In a post-test held four weeks after the first experiment, the three tasks of the second stage have been replicated. This experiment has been conducted in autumn 2013 among 400 students. Comparing the various experimental conditions will make it possible (i) to measure the impact of the Tetris metaphor on the citizens' perceptions and representations of Belgian federalism, (ii) to assess to what extent the different metaphorical media differently contribute to this impact and (iii) to measure the long-term impact of this metaphor on the citizens' political representations and attitudes. In answering these questions, this study will contribute to a better understanding of the role and functions metaphors play in political discourse, and more globally in our everyday political interactions.
Because of its very conception, the G1000 in Belgium cannot be categorized as a form of constitutional deliberative democracy per se. Its grassroots origin never indeed entailed to change the constitution. Yet this chapter contends that there are some constitutional deliberative democracy features in the G1000, which paradoxically were not thought of by its citizen organizers who sought in the first phases of the G1000 to avoid any political and institutional ties. In fact, their focus was much more on a high input and throughput legitimacy, rather than a high output legitimacy. Their goal was to demonstrate that ordinary citizens, randomly selected, had a say about major social and political issues and that they were wiling and able to deliberate about them, should a design conducive to deliberation be put in place. While the G1000 scored highly on the input dimensions – the quality of representation was good and the agenda could not have been more open – and fairly highly on throughput legitimacy – with a clear script and trained moderators, but with processes of aggregation insufficiently transparent –, the outputs were in the short term very limited, which was a major source of criticism as media had fostered a climate of great expectations about the outputs. The absence of formal links to the main political actors meant that the organizers could not guarantee any formal implementation of the results. So the design characteristics that increase input legitimacy also undermine output legitimacy. But on the longer term the political uptake and the social uptake of the G1000 are increasing as, on the one hand, most of the political parties are now advocating some forms of participatory and deliberative democracy and, on the other hand, several experiences inspired by the G1000 have sparked around in Belgium and in neighboring countries. This twofold output consequence of the G1000 seems to indicate that this experience has fostered some sort of constitutional deliberative democracy broadly defined.
Ever since the 1990's, deliberative theory has been heralded as the most promising new theory on political legitimacy. Democratic deliberation, conceived as the rational exchange of arguments, is claimed to improve the quality of democratic decision making because it instigates a more considered judgment; it allows citizens to hear other perspectives to a problem and to question their own opinions. However, deliberation's beneficial effects do not come about easily. If deliberative mini-publics want to contribute to the legitimacy of political decision making, they have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning. It is therefore crucial to assess the internal legitimacy of deliberative mini-publics before making claims about their contribution to the legitimacy of the political system as a whole. In this paper, we set out to assess the input, throughput and output legitimacy of four deliberative events, namely the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly, the Irish "We, The Citizens"-project, the Belgian G1000, and the Dutch Burgerforum. Based on a most-similar comparison of these cases, we argue that their internal legitimacy differs a great deal, and that this is due to factors relating to their process design, such as funding and recruitment.
