Emilie Van Haute

Party Members and Activists

Membership of political parties is diverse. Not everyone participates and those who do, do not participate in the same way. This book engages with the debate over the significance and future of political parties as membership organisations and presents the first broad comparative analysis of party membership and activism. It is based on membership surveys which have been administered, gathered and collated by a group of prominent party scholars from across Europe, Canada and Israel. Utilizing this rich data source together with the insights of party scholars, the book investigates what party membership means in advanced industrial democracies. In doing so, it provides a clearer picture of who joins political parties, why they do it, the character of their political activism, how they engage with their parties, and what opinions they hold. This text will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, particularly to those interested in representation, participation, political parties and elections.

Greens in a rainbow. The impact of the governmental participation of the Green parties in Belgium

1. Comparing Newly Governing Parties 2. The Organizational Costs of Public Office 3. Newly Governing Parties in Italy: Comparing the PDSI/DS, Lega Nord and Forza Italia 4. The Short Road to Power - and the Long Way Back: Newly Governing Parties in the Netherlands 5. Close but no Cigar? Newly Governing and Nearly Governing Parties in Sweden and New Zealand 6. Greens in a Rainbow: The Impact of Participation in Government of the Green Parties in Belgium 7. Moving from Movement to Government: The Transformation of the Finnish Greens 8. Independents in Government: A Sui Generis Model? 9. The Electoral Fate of New Parties in Government 10. Populists in Power: Attitudes toward Immigrants after the Austrian Freedom Party Entered Government

Federal reform and the quality of representation in Belgium

Abstract One of the ways in which ‘good’ representation can be measured and assessed is by the degree of congruence between the preferences of the population and the preferences and policies of the political elite. One of the arguments for defending decentralisation is that governmental institutions on a smaller territorial scale can be closer to the population, and that they can provide policies that are more responsive to the population of the sub-states. This argument is often made in Belgium, where voters in Flanders traditionally vote centre-right, while the voters of Wallonia vote centre-left, and where federal coalitions need to reflect the preferences of both regions whereas regional governments can be responsive to their voters only. Using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, this paper tests this assumption and compares the left–right orientation of the population and of governments at the different institutional levels and regions. The findings suggest that sub-state governments are partially more congruent to their sub-state voters than federal governments. However, congruence gaps are less related to constraints in government formation than to changes in behaviour of key political actors.

What Citizens Want in Terms of Intra-Party Democracy: Popular Attitudes towards Alternative Candidate Selection Procedures:

Reforms of intra-party decision-making processes often rest on the idea that citizens want more direct say in these processes, but empirical data to support this claim are scarce. Using original data from the 2014 PartiRep voter survey in Belgium, this article explores the extent to which citizens support alternative intra-party processes. It shows that voters have heterogeneous preferences in terms of candidate selection procedures and that these are not random. ‘Disaffected’ citizens tend to support open procedures, whereas critical citizens tend to prefer closed selectorates, that is, intra-party actors. It also finds that voters’ preferences for intra-party models of democracy match their preferences for models of democracy at the system level. Our findings confirm that citizens do have clear preferences for how parties should organise and that these match their general views on how democracy should work.

Born again, or born anew: Assessing the newness of the Belgian political party New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA)

New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) burst on the scene barely a decade ago and is now Belgium’s largest political party. One explanation for this success is that N-VA is not brand new but rose from the ashes of a dissolved party. How exactly should we differentiate between new and old parties? We use Barnea and Rahat’s (2011) analytical framework to assess dimensions of N-VA’s newness and capture the party at two stages – start-up and more developed. This shows that N-VA is a successor party, building on its predecessor’s ideology and programme, its electorate, activists and organization. However, we also find indicators that the party actively renewed in terms of ideology and party organization. The empirical evidence illustrates that newness of political parties should be conceived of as multi-dimensional, which allows for a more subtle approach to questions about the origin and varying success of new political parties.

2 The Vlaams Belang: Party Organization and Party Dynamics

The Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest – VB) is often singled out from the rest of the Belgian parties. It is portrayed as a threat to democracy in the media, ostracized from the rest of the party system via a cordon sanitaire, and often studied as a unique or pathologically deviant case in the scientific literature (Mudde 2010). This separation of the VB from the rest of the political landscape rests often on an analysis of the ideological foundations of the party. However, not much has been written about the party’s organization, especially in comparative terms.

Born again, or born anew

New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) burst on the scene barely a decade ago and is now Belgium’s largest political party. One explanation for this success is that N-VA is not brand new but rose from the ashes of a dissolved party. How exactly should we differentiate between new and old parties? We use Barnea and Rahat’s (2011) analytical framework to assess dimensions of N-VA’s newness and capture the party at two stages – start-up and more developed. This shows that N-VA is a successor party, building on its predecessor’s ideology and programme, its electorate, activists and organization. However, we also find indicators that the party actively renewed in terms of ideology and party organization. The empirical evidence illustrates that newness of political parties should be conceived of as multi-dimensional, which allows for a more subtle approach to questions about the origin and varying success of new political parties.

The consequences of membership incentives: Do greater political benefits attract different kinds of members?

In recent decades, parties in many parliamentary democracies have radically reshaped what it means to be a party member, making it easier and cheaper to join, and giving members greater direct say over party decisions. This article explores some implications of such changes, asking whether membership costs and benefits influence which supporters take the step of joining their party. In particular, it considers the impact of net membership benefits on membership demographics and on members’ ideology. The investigation examines patterns of party membership in 10 parliamentary democracies, using opinion data from the European Social Survey and data on party rules from the Political Party Database project. Our analysis shows that party supporters are more sensitive to political benefits than to financial costs, especially in terms of the ideological incongruence of who joins. As a result, parties offering higher benefits to their members have lower ideological and demographic disparities between members and other party supporters. This is a positive finding for party-based representation, in that it suggests that trends toward more inclusive decision-making processes have the potential to produce parties with memberships that are more substantively and more descriptively representative of their supporters.

Still religious parties in Belgium? The decline of the denominational cleavage in the Belgian consociational democracy

The Belgian consociational model as it was instituted in the early 20th century was built along the denominational cleavage. It opposed three pillars: a catholic one, a socialist one and a (smaller) liberal one. The religious difference was not only observable in the political goals of each pillar, but also in the background and attitudes of their members. Catholics were hardly present in either the socialist and liberal organizations. Non-catholics were very rare within catholic organizations. Voting behaviours confirmed the religious base of Belgian politics and society. From the 1960s onwards, the picture changed a lot. The ongoing process of secularization has reduced the religious division among citizens and has affected pillar organizations from parties to trade unions. Yet, not very much has been said on the consequences of this evolution. Scholars hypothesised a “secularisation of the minds”, while noting that pillar organisations remained very strong. Nevertheless, few empirical studies demonstrate whether or not the religious division is in practice no longer decisive in shaping the belongings and attitudes of Belgian citizens. In this paper we aim at studying more accurately the salience of the religious cleavage in nowadays Belgium in two directions. First, electoral behaviours are studied to determine whether religion remains a decisive variable (with a new perspective of voting behaviours of Muslims). Second, party membership is analysed in order to verify whether contemporary Belgian parties remain or not religious- and pillar-based parties. This empirical evidence will help in determining whether Belgium faces a “believing without belonging” or a “belonging without believing” phenomena.