In October-November 2010, more than 5000 Belgian students from both side of the linguistic border have been asked to "draw Belgium" – no other guidelines were given. In addition to this rather unusual question, the students were surveyed on their political interest, political knowledge, identities, political perceptions and preferences as well as their attitudes towards Belgium and her future. The drawings show that half of the students drew Belgium with the language border and half did not. What explains this difference is not the language one speaks (so there was no difference between Dutch-speakers and French-speakers) but the level of political knowledge and the identity of the respondents (students who feel Belgian only draw Belgium without the language border and students who feel Flemish only are more likely to draw the language border). One further dimension needs to be explored (when applicable): the size of Flanders and of Wallonia. Does the size tell us anything about the political attitudes of the students towards Belgium? Does it relate anyhow to their identities? Or is rather a matter of political knowledge? Or is it even simply due to the shape of Belgium where Wallonia – the largest in size – region is more easily cut down when quickly drawn? Above all, with this research we can indirectly explore the processes – of socialization – behind the formation of political preferences and more specifically how socio-demographics, political knowledge, political interest, voting behaviour interact with the students' representations and attitudes vis-à-vis their country and its future.
From the beginning of the 1990's onwards, political analysts in all Western European countries discovered the contours of what they thought to be a widespread crisis of democracy. The alleged decline of political trust and public participation, and the rise of electoral volatility pointed out that the gap between politicians and citizens had never been wider. This political climate characterized by a deep-rooted crisis of democratic legitimacy offered an excellent breeding ground for critical reflection on the role, shape and function of democracy in modern societies. It gave rise to a fruitful quest for new and innovative ways of governing a democracy. It is in this turbulent period that the ideal of a deliberative democracy was coined (Dryzek 2000). A community of international scholars and philosophers, inspired by the work of Jürgen Habermas, became more and more convinced that a vibrant democracy is more than the aggregate of its individual citizens, and that democratic politics should be about more than merely voting. The quality of a democracy and the quality of democratic decisions, according to them, did not depend on the correct aggregation of individual preferences, but rather on the quality of the public debate that preceded the voting stage. Democratic decisions were thus no longer considered a function of mere compliance with aggregation rules. Instead, they are determined by extensive argumentation about political choices before voting on them. Because of its strong focus of public involvement in politics, this deliberative model of democracy started out in life as a theory of legitimacy (Benhabib 1996; Cohen 2002; Dryzek 2001; Parkinson 2006). By including everyone who is affected by a decision in the process leading to that decision, deliberation has important political merits: it is capable of generating political decisions that receive broad public support, even when there is strong disagreement on the aims and values a polity should promote (Geenens & Tinnevelt 2007, p. 47). After all, talking about political issues allows citizens to hear other perspectives to a problem and to see their own perspectives represented in the final decision. As such, deliberative democracy seeks to score high on input, throughput and output legitimacy. However, deliberation's beneficial effects do not come about easily. If deliberative democracy wants to contribute to increasing the legitimacy of the political system as a whole, it has to be legitimate in itself. In other words, deliberative events have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning before their outcomes can generate legitimate political decisions. 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 internal legitimacy of one specific deliberative event, namely the G1000 project in Belgium (Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2012a). Our research question is therefore: to what extent does the G1000 live up to the criteria of input, throughput and output legitimacy? The G1000 project takes a particular place in the world of deliberative practice because it was not only grass roots in its process and its results, but also in its organization. Most deliberative events are introduced and funded by either public administrations or scientific institutions. The G1000 was rather considered a citizens' initiative from its very inception. All of the organizers of the event were volunteers, and all of the funds were gathered using crowd funding. So instead of a scientific experiment, the G1000 was more of a democratic experiment by, through, and for citizens. This grass-root structure makes it a very interesting case for students of legitimacy, because as we will see later on it situated at the heart of the democratic trade-off between input and output legitimacy.
From the beginning of the 1990's onwards, political analysts in all Western European countries discovered the contours of what they thought to be a widespread crisis of democracy. The alleged decline of political trust and public participation, and the rise of electoral volatility pointed out that the gap between politicians and citizens had never been wider. This political climate characterized by a deep-rooted crisis of democratic legitimacy offered an excellent breeding ground for critical reflection on the role, shape and function of democracy in modern societies. It gave rise to a fruitful quest for new and innovative ways of governing a democracy. It is in this turbulent period that the ideal of a deliberative democracy was coined (Dryzek 2000). A community of international scholars and philosophers, inspired by the work of Jürgen Habermas, became more and more convinced that a vibrant democracy is more than the aggregate of its individual citizens, and that democratic politics should be about more than merely voting. The quality of a democracy and the quality of democratic decisions, according to them, did not depend on the correct aggregation of individual preferences, but rather on the quality of the public debate that preceded the voting stage. Democratic decisions were thus no longer considered a function of mere compliance with aggregation rules. Instead, they were determined by extensive argumentation about political choices before voting on them. Because of its strong focus of public involvement in politics, this deliberative model of democracy started out in life as a theory of legitimacy (Benhabib 1996; Cohen 1997; Dryzek 2001; Parkinson 2006). By including everyone who is affected by a decision in the process leading to that decision, deliberation has important political merits: it is capable of generating political decisions that receive broad public support, even when there is strong disagreement on the aims and values a polity should promote (Geenens & Tinnevelt 2007, p. 47). After all, talking about political issues allows citizens to hear other perspectives to a problem and to see their own perspectives represented in the final decision. However, deliberation's beneficial effects do not come about easily. If deliberative democracy wants to contribute to increasing the legitimacy of the political system as a whole, it has to be legitimate in itself. In other words, deliberative events have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning before their outcomes can generate legitimate political decisions. 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. Our research question is therefore: to what extent can deliberative mini-publics live up to the criteria of democratic and political legitimacy? In this paper, we set out to assess the internal legitimacy of one specific deliberative event, namely the G1000 project in Belgium (Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2012). The G1000 project takes a particular place in the world of deliberative practice because it was not only grassroots in its process and its results, but also in its organization. Most deliberative events are introduced and funded by either public administrations or scientific institutions. The G1000 was rather considered a genuine citizens' initiative from its very inception. All of the organizers of the event were volunteers, and all of the funds were gathered using crowd funding. So instead of a scientific experiment, the G1000 was more of a democratic experiment by, through, and for citizens. This grass-root structure makes it a very interesting case for students of legitimacy, because as we will see later on it situated at the heart of the democratic trade-off between input and output legitimacy.
Recent scholarship claims that citizen deliberation can contribute to the quality of democracy and to the legitimacy of political decision making. By including everyone who is affected by a decision in the process leading to that decision, deliberation is capable of generating political decisions that receive broad public support, even when there is strong disagreement on the values a polity should promote. However, if deliberative democracy wants to contribute to the legitimacy of the political system, it has to be legitimate in itself. In other words, deliberative processes 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 article, we set out to refine the theory on deliberative legitimacy and to determine the legitimacy of one particularly interesting deliberative event, namely the Belgian G1000. We will argue that it is very difficult for deliberative processes to be high on all dimensions of legitimacy and that there is a trade-off between input and output legitimacy. Moreover, we find that design characteristics to a large extent determine the legitimacy of deliberative processes.
The name of a party is an important dimension of its political position. Often, the label used by a political party in its name tells much about its ideology. But, since in most cases, only a few parties compete for each election it is difficult to undertake large qualitative and quantitative analyses of party names. Local elections can provide an interesting option, however. Indeed, in several cases, we find lots of different names, and not only the usual national party labels. In the last local elections in Wallonia, one of the three Belgian Regions, 1012 lists were in competition. Such data provide a fertile ground for analysis. To study the name of the lists, we proceed in two steps. First, we build a typology of the names. We classify the lists in different categories: lists with national party name, lists with a clear reference to a national party, lists with an ideological label, lists with a clear reference to the commune's name, lists with a reference to the communal level but also lists with a reference to democracy, to a union or alliance, to change and an alternative way of doing politics, to the future, with puns, and with a reference to a person. In the second step, using multinomial regressions, we show where the different types of lists can be found and above all we look at their electoral performances and thus test the hypothesis whether the party name matters or not.
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.
In May 2014 and for the second time in her political history, regional, federal and European elections were organized simultaneously in Belgium. In the direct follow-up of the sixth state reform that increased the powers and the autonomy of the Belgian Regions and Communities, these elections were crucial for the future of the country and for the multi-level coalition formation at the regional and federal levels. The political campaign was dominated by socio-economic issues and demands for further autonomy, particularly in the Flemish region. Regional electoral results confirmed the success of the regionalist parties in Flanders, but also in Brussels and in the German-speaking community. These successes allowed regionalist parties to enter all regional and federal governments – often as the dominant party – with the exception of the Walloon and the French-speaking Community cabinets.
Some states are widely recognized by policy makers and scholars as middle powers. The characteristics that were highlighted for these countries have become the basic guidelines for understanding middle powermanship and developing the corresponding theory. While those analyses offer rich in-depth insights into the foreign policy of specific countries, they have so far lacked a further step of generalization. When establishing such power-based rankings, we assume the possibility to determine states' capacities so as to identify their position in said ranking. As appealing as this theoretical model may be, the reality of international politics increasingly challenge it. Thus, we argue that this theoretical inadequacy is due to the fact that middle power theory as it has been developed so far should be understood as an inductive, not a deductive, approach . Consequently, the contemporary reality calls for yet another stage of development in this theory. The choice of Pakistan as our case study arises from the observation that while Pakistan can hardly fit into the current classification(s) of middle powermanship due to its poor economic and development performances, it is a nuclear state and is –at least– in the top twenty armies of the world. Moreover, we find several cases in which Pakistan has used the diplomatic tools characterizing middle powers, such as mediation or niche diplomacy. Our paper aims at answering two questions: (1) can middle power theory bring some light on Pakistan's positioning in world politics? (2) Alternatively, what does the case of Pakistan tell us about the (ir)relevance of middle power theory? We build upon role theory to develop the case of middle powermanship as a status-role bundle, by analyzing three specific cases of Pakistan's foreign policy: Pakistani nuclear posturing, its Afghan policy and its posturing vis-à-vis the Saudi-Iranian regional competition.
Today few people deny the existence of regional substate diplomacy (Criekemans 2010). But there is still no common agreement on a region's right to do so and, above all, on their scope of action. This question goes against what used to be the dominant approach in international relations, the state-centric approach that leads to the logic of speaking with one voice. Increasingly, a multilevel-governance approach has contested this state-centric view and proposes an alternative logic of multiple actors speaking with their voice, nuancing strongly the seminal distinction between "sovereignty-bound" and "sovereignty-free" actors (Rosenau 1990). From the 1970s, the world has seen the growing presence of sovereignty-free actors in international relations. Among these actors, non-central or, better, substate, governments of federal states have developed intensive foreign relations. These governments are using a range of techniques: from shaping the federal government's foreign policy to establishing themselves directly in the international arena (Blatter et al. 2008). For minority nation governments this is particularly a challenge, as they have to act internally – where they have developed full-fledged legislative powers within a multinational federation – and externally – where international and national laws are often still reluctant to recognise their right of action (Lejeune 2003). Yet some minority nations have thrived in developing their own international relations. Bavaria, Catalonia, Flanders, Quebec, Scotland and Wallonia are often seen as successful international players even if they are not fully sovereignty bound (Michelmann 2009; Criekemans 2010). The international actions of these minority nations have been characterised under the umbrella of "identity paradiplomacy" (Paquin 2003); that is, a willingness to use international relations to foster a nation-building process within a multinational state. This observation was particularly prevalent for minority nations strongly in competition with a federal government about their nationbuilding process, albeit for different reasons, namely Flanders, Quebec and Scotland (Paquin 2004). The case of Wallonia seems to fits less well into the identity paradiplomacy framework, which therefore raises the question of alternative roads to international relations. This is the core question of this chapter: is identity paradiplomacy the only way to go for minority nations? Quebec and Wallonia are both well known for their active foreign relations.
At the very moment that humanity is facing a broadening ecological crisis, and that both policy makers and civil society are calling for a transition towards more sustainable societies, modern science seems incapable of providing operational solutions for managing this transition. In this context, both Noble prize laureates and high-level science officials have stressed the need of an in depth transformation of the modes of organization of scientific research for governing the transition to sustainable societies. However, existing analyses of on-going initiatives show that most of the barriers to a major, consolidated effort in sustainability science will not be removed without far-reaching institutional change. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an incremental institutional change approach, based on a gradual institutionalization process of existing initiatives. The analysis in this paper shows that strategic research for sustainability and reform of research funding mechanisms will only be effective if they are supported at the same time by reforms of career and training paths at higher education institutions. To promote this vision, the paper proposes a set of capacity building measures that can be undertaken at the level of research funding, higher education institutions and networking.
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.
The EUROSUR system is supposed to further the surveillance of external borders of European Union Member States. From this point of view, it can be considered an important step in the construction of a controlled space. Drawing inspiration from the Foucauldian attention to programs and technologies, and mobilizing the Actor- Network-Theory concepts of setting and actant, the paper investigates EUROSUR main methodological operations. It highlights how the making of a controlled space is, first and foremost, a mise-en-discours going well beyond surveillance and pro- hibition: a continuous effort to make sense of a disparate multiplicity, encompassing both human and nonhuman elements, both controlled and controlling ones. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter contributes to on-going endeavors to reinvigor- ate the post-structuralist studies of International Relations with approaches inspired by Actor-Network-Theory.
