Partitocracy and the future of Belgium. Revisiting Does Belgium (still) exist?

Niessen, Christoph [UCL] Baudewyns, Pierre [UCL] Camatarri, Stefano [UCL] Dodeigne, Jérémy [UNamur] Frognier, André-Paul [UCL] Sinardet, Dave [VUB] Reuchamps, Min [UCL] et al.[show all]

In 2006, Jaak Billiet, Bart Maddens and André-Paul Frognier raised the question: Does Belgium (still) exist? And they explored the differences in political culture between Flemings and Walloons (Billiet, Maddens, & Frognier, 2006). 15 years later, we continue their journey and seek to uncover whether these differences have increased or by contrast declined. Because the general endeavour of the volume is to disentangle partitocracy in Belgium, we focus on political differences or similar- ities between the two main language groups and add to the perspective of voters, the perspective of candidates. This allows us to grasp possible differences not only between Dutch-speakers and French-speakers but also between political elites and masses. Billiet and colleagues started their exploration from the gradual cultural and social divergence between Flanders and Wallonia that led to two separate political systems in Belgium. They came to the conclusion that “quite a few differences in public opinion still exist between Flemings and francophone Belgians” (Billiet et al., 2006, p. 929). In particular, the former have a stronger regional – i.e. Flemish – iden- tity whereas the latter a stronger national – i.e. Belgian – identity, which goes hand in hand with preferences for further regionalization in Flanders but less in Wallonia, even though emotional ties to Belgium do still exist in each region, albeit more wide- spread in Wallonia than in Flanders. In order to explain these differences, the researchers concluded that “contextual characteristics are more important than national character” (Billiet et al., 2006, p. 929). In 15 years, the political and social context in Belgium has quite dramatically changed and centrifugal but also centripetal dynamics can be observed (De Winter & Baudewyns, 2009; Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2015; 2020; 2022). Such dynamics can be seen both between language groups and between so-called ‘elite’ and ‘mass’ (De Winter & Van Wynsberghe, 2015). The objective of this chapter is therefore to look at the evolution of political attitudes and opinions over the last 15 years regarding the future of Belgium. Beside voter surveys, we can rely on candidate surveys that offer insightful data to grasp the evolution of this question in both language groups and between masses and elites. In this chapter, we first look at the left-right dimension, before focusing on ethno-territorial identities and finally turn to state reform prefer- ences. In so doing, we seek to revisit the underlying twofold question: does Belgium (still) exist and will it continue to do so?