Despite the fact that various authors have expressed concern about a general decline of civic engagement in Western societies, other indicators portray a transition from traditional and formal participation formats to more informal participation forms. This replacement thesis, however, entails the question whether these new forms can still be regarded as a form of political participation. The Alternative Food Circles in Belgium can be considered as a typical grass-roots example of 'political consumerism', which is portrayed as a contemporary alternative for (...) institutionalised politics. In a member survey, 163 members of the Circles were questioned about their motives to participate. They clearly paid little attention to influencing the political system, but notions of solidarity and social change were clearl y present. This form of political consumerism therefore cannot be considered a full form of political participation, but it clearly is a form of 'life style politics'. (shrink)

In studies on political decision-making, attention is often limited to domestic factors. However, this study demonstrates that international considerations can play a key role in the decision-making process. Since 1980, competence for environmental policy in Belgium is shared by the national government and the three autonomous regions. The 134 most important environmental measures which have been issued in Flanders since 1980, were studied, and international influence proved to be considerable. In 78 cases, the measure was brought into being due to (...) the environmental policy of the European Community. In 39 cases, there were influences from other sources of international environmental policy. This left only 17 measures which had no clear connection with international environmental policy. It seems that policy scholars have not yet fully realized the extent of this shift of power from the national to the international level, and have rather neglected the international decision-making process. (shrink)

An analysis of recent environmental legislation in Belgium shows that only small part of it originated from direct pressure by the environmental movement. Although in recent years environmental groups were admitted to a number of advisory committees, this did not really made them a more powerful politica!l orce. Four reasons can be given for this relative weakness: 1) like all new social movements, the movement bas a weak organisational structure; 2) it's focus is on local disturbances to the environment; 3) (...) it's disruptive potential is limited, especially on the national level; 4) it has little format access to the decision making process. The main consequence of it's activities is an innovation of political culture. The movement is succesful in defining and constructing environmental problems, and forcing them on the public and political agenda, but it lacks the power to steer the decision making process on the issues it has created. (shrink)

In the spring of 1990, Belgian Parliament adopted a partial liberalization of abortion. Belgium is one of the last western countries to take such action. Public awareness on the issue fully developed in the early seventies, as abortion came to be regarded as a life-style issue. The rift between opponents and advocates of legal change coincides with the cleavage between catholics and non-believers in Belgian society, and this makes abortion a potentially disruptive issue for the political system. Therefore, Government avoided (...) taking any decisions, and refered the question to a special commission, and later to Parliament. This resulted in a process of non-decisionmaking, which seems typical for the way a consensus democracy, like Belgium, tries to defuse highly disputed issues. The fact that abortion ultimately was partially liberalized, seems to reflect the dramatic changes that secularization bas brought to Belgian society the past decades. (shrink)

An analysis of survey data on membership, pillarisation, voting behaviour and attitudes.Belgian society is traditionally portrayed as heavily pillarised, i.e. having a system of exclusive linkages between voluntary associations and political parties, resulting in the formation of a catholic, a socialist and a liberal 'pillar' within society. Recently, several authors have questioned the validity oft his model. Our survey of the Flemish population, however, shows that pillarisation is an enduring feature of Flemish society. Membership of voluntary associations, trade unions and (...) health insurance organisations remains ideologically motivated, and shows a high degree ofconsistency in this respect. Integration into a 'pillar' exerts a strong influence on voting behaviour, although this effect weakens in younger generations. Pillars also have significant, but weaker effects on attitudes like individualism, trust and solidarity. In the social capital research tradition, these differential effects of membership are often neglected. Although there are signs that pillarisation weakens in Fiemish society, the system certainly has not disappeared. (shrink)

The proliferation of the use of Internet has led to speculations that the interactive possibilities offered by this technology will lead to a democratisation of political communication. It is argued that citizens will enjoy more opportunities to discuss polities with other citizens and to express their opinions toward the political system. In this casestudy, we examine the political use of internet at the time of the Belgian local elections of 8 October 2000. Building on the coding scheme developed by Pippa (...) Norris, we distinguish interactive and institutional communication through the Internet, in which we expect that interactive communication has a democratie potential, while the institutional communication shows atendency to strengthen existing power relations. The data show that during this election campaign the Internet has been used mainlyfor institutional purposes, not for interactive applications. Therefore our conclusion is that, especially in small languageareas, the democratic potential of Internet remains limited. (shrink)

Despite the fact that numerous political parties in Western democracies include separate youth chapters, these have not been studied systematically in political research. There are two reasons to study youth chapters : we know youth participation has strong and enduring political socialisation effects, while several authors have expressed concern about a decline of political engagement among adolescents. Our assumption is that youth chapters fulfil two functions within a party : recruitment of members and ideological innovation. Given the structural evolution toward (...) cartel parties, both functions have become partly obsolete. Youth chapters of Flemish political parties have indeed lost 70 percent of their members since the 1970s. A survey among city councillors confirms the recruitment,function of,youth chapters : 41 percent of them started their political career in youth chapters. The demise of youth chapters therefore can be seen as a clear indication of a structural transformation of political parties. (shrink)

In recent years, several authors have stated that emotions have come to play a more important role in political life, especially in political mass mobilisation. Ouring the 1990s, Belgium and other Western countries have indeed witnessed some spectacular examples of emotion-driven mobilisation. In this article, we argue that emotions are not an innovation in political mass-mobilisation. Various examples from the Belgian political history of the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrate that emotions have always been a key factor for explaining the (...) occurrence, the form and the outcome of political protest. The mobilising role of emotions cannot be considered as aquantitative innovation, and therefore the expression 'new emotional movements' does not seem warranted. We make the claim that these recent mobilisations are not typical because of their reliance on emotions, but rather because of their tendency toward de-institutionalisation. (shrink)

Mass media have been accused of cultivating anti-immigrant sentiments in Western societies. Most studies on this topic, however, have not made a distinction between the types of television program (information vs. entertainment) or television station (public vs. commercial). Adopting a comparative approach, we use data from the six waves of the European Social Survey (ESS, 2002–2012, n = 162,987) to assess the relationship between individual and aggregate level patterns of television consumption and anti-immigrant sentiments in European societies. Individual television viewing (...) time is positively associated with anti-immigrant sentiments, while frequent exposure to news and information programs is associated with lower levels of anti-immigrant sentiments. At the aggregate level we observe a positive effect of the total viewing time in society on anti-immigrant sentiments. In the conclusion we offer some suggestions on how this effect could be explained. (shrink)

The Belgian political system is generally portrayed as being closed for outsiders. In this article we ascertain how the system responded to the challenge of the new social movements. The Belgian political elite developed a response strategy, based on thematical openness and actorial closure. The issues of the new social movements were admitted on the political agenda, but the movements themselves were excluded from access to the decision making process. Only those actors were allowed which were willing to accomodate themselves (...) to the traditional elite consensus, based on neo-corporatism, pillarisation and a politically passive population. Confronted with this elite strategy, the new social movements were able to fulfil their agenda function, but they had little opportunity for introducing new cultural codes into the political decision making process. This lack of innovation enhances the legitimation crisis of the Belgian political system. (shrink)

One of Prof. Walzer's most fascinating contributions to the field of political theory is his introduction of the concept of `complex equality'.In Spheres of Justice, he defines this concept as follows: “In formal terms, complex equality means that no citizen's standing in one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other sphere, with regard to some other good. Thus, citizen X may be chosen over citizen Y for political office, and then (...) the two of them will be unequal in the sphere of politics. But they will not be unequal generally so long as X's office gives him no advantage over Y in any other sphere – superior medical care, access to better schools for his children, entrepreneurial opportunities, and so on” .To achieve a situation of complex equality, Prof. Walzer proposes a system of blocked exchanges: it should be avoided that goods obtained in one sphere are exchanged to obtain goods in another sphere. For instance, the money person X has acquired in the economic sphere should not be used to `buy' power and influence in the political sphere.Prof. Walzer states that this system of complex equality will lead to a more egalitarian distribution of social goods. Maybe in each sphere distinct inequalities will persist, but given the plurality of spheres, eventually every person will acquire goods in one sphere or another. This line of reasoning reminds us to some extent of the traditional pluralist argument as it was formulated by Robert Dahl .Dahl asserts that in contemporary American society, no single group actually dominates political decision-making, since the power of even very influential groups is limited to a few policy arenas. Even underprivileged groups have enough access to proper channels to let their voice get heard in political decision-making. (shrink)

In recent years, the concept of social capital has become quite fashionable in social science research. Especially Robert Putnam’s ‘Making Democracy Work’ has provoked an enormous amount of research on this societal resource. It has become customary to make a distinction between network and attitudinal approaches of social capital, focusing on individual network positions and the role of civic attitudes respectively.We argue that these two approaches do not exclude one another: it is just as legitimate to study the larger societal (...) benefits of social capital as it is to study the individual benefits of networks positions . The question on how social capital can be generated seems more promising for future research, and here we can distinguish society-based approaches and institutional approaches . The available research demonstrates that day-to-day interaction can have significant effects on democratic attitudes, e.g., by a process of value convergence. There is, however, also considerable evidence to show the effect of institutions, boosting social capital levels by ensuring impartiality and transparency and by promoting income inequality.Both from a political science, as from a social perspective, we urge the scientific community to pay more attention to the question how social capital might be generated by the political system. (shrink)