Do Characteristics of Consociational Democracies Still Apply to Belgian Parties?

Abstract

Belgium has long been described as a typical case of a consociational or consensus democracy. This article aims at identifying whether political parties in Belgium share the internal characteristics of parties in consensus democracies: passive mass memberships, the importance of purposive and material incentives for joining, and representation of a clear subculture in the social and attitudinal profiles of their members and via overlapping memberships with related organizations. We mobilize longitudinal party membership data and party member surveys conducted in three different time periods. We show that pillar parties still exercise their role of mobilization and representation of societal segments, but these segments tend to become smaller over time. New parties offer alternative options of mobilization and representation, although not always in line with the specific institutional arrangements of consociational democracy.

Are Political Staffers out of Touch with Grassroots Party Members? Assessing Congruence between Professionals and Volunteers

“…For the first time, this innovative article examined parties’ internal opinion structure by comparing their attitudes to those of party members. The empirical analysis relied on a pooled dataset of five Flemish parties combining pre-existing data on 10,022 party members (Van Haute and Wauters, 2019) with original data on 560 staffers (Moens, 2021a). Covering a broad range of salient issues, this in-depth study examined how staffers and members think about income redistribution, market intervention, criminal justice, reproductive rights, environmentalism, EU membership and migrant integration.…”

“…Second, I investigate whether incongruences are more prevalent among specific parties or policy domains (RQ2). The empirical analysis relies on a pooled dataset, combining original data collected among political staffers ( N = 560; Moens, 2021a) with secondary data on party members collected from the MAPP project ( N = 10,022; Van Haute et al, 2018; Van Haute and Wauters, 2019). The attitudes of both groups are compared on seven salient issues: income redistribution, market intervention, criminal justice, reproductive rights, environmentalism, European Union (EU) membership, and migrant integration.…”

The Labor Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA): A Modern Radical Left Party?

“…Whether we are talking about the organizational changes observed in a very large number of parties, the way the vast majority of radical left organizations are changing nowadays or the depillarisation process in Belgium (Hellemans, 2020, p. 145; van Haute and Wauters, 2019), the PTB-PVDA is a real exception. It is simultaneously carrying out a process which combines, on the one hand, upholding a way of running things based on democratic centrism and on the other on the dynamics of pillarisation, which is the foundation of the historical power of the socialist and Catholic families in Belgium.…”

Interest Representation in Belgium

“…Hence, it is doubtful whether traditional concepts of Belgian interest representation, such as consociationalism and neo-corporatism, still adequately characterise the overall pattern of state-society relations. After all, similar developments have also affected the Belgian party-political landscape and the overall political-administrative system (De Winter et al, 2006;Deschouwer, 2012;van der Meer et al, 2019;Van Haute & Wauters, 2019).…”