The municipalities in the Capital Region of Brussels have the same legal statuts as the other Belgian municipalities. Yet the political reality is quite different, and requires a different approach. Three specific aspects of the Brussels municipalities are discussed. They are bilingual, which leads to very specific strategical problems. Moreover the power relations between parties fluctuate a lot in Brussels. And finally the small size of the Region leads to an incremental 'emptying' of a number of local competencies by the (...) powerfull political executive of the Region. (shrink)

Democracy is intimately linked with the institution of parliament. If there are problems with the functioning of the parliament, democracy is considered as being in danger. Three kinds of problems are aften raised in this respect : technical problems, politica! problems and personnel problems. The technical problems refer to the technicity and complexity of the subjects to be dealt with in parliament. The political problems refer mainly to the loss of political power of the parliament, to the benefit of political (...) parties and pressure groups. The personnel problems refer to the job of MP itself, which has become a full-time job, but which is still a very unstable position.Two hundred and fifty Belgian MP's were asked for their opinion about all this. The results show that they are primarily concerned with the technical problems, and that they suggest technical remedies for a better functioning of the parliament. The Belgian MP's do recognize the importance of the political problems, especially the domination of the political scene by the political parties, but they are not very eager to propose measures with a direct impact on this. (shrink)

Multi-level governance is a fairly new concept, that has however travelled well in modern political science. The status of the concept remains a bit unclear, mainly because it tries to grasp quite a set of societal and institutional changes, as well as changes in policy style and policy outputs. We try to use multi-level governance as a heuristic tool, and we focus on the potential consequences of the changes that it describes. Four types of consequences are briefly discussed. First we (...) look at efficiency, at the way in which and the degree in which complex institutions can produce policy paralysis. Secondly we deal with representation and accountability, discussing the meaning of these concepts in multilayered settings. Then we look at the way in which territorial representation seems to gain importance as a result of the erosion of the borderlines between domestic and international polities. And finally we look at the way in which legitimacy of politicalauthorities and policies can be organized within the framework of multi-level governance. The other articles of this special issue all deal in more detail with one or more of these four types of consequences of multi-level governance. (shrink)

The generally accepted idea of the "decline ofparties" leads to an obvious assumption on the evolution of party activism : it must be declining. There is however only little empirical research on this topic. We conduct a survey among party members in Belgium, in order to test the decline hypothesis. Four dimensions of membership wilt be measured: the numbers, the intensity of participation, the kind of participation and the turnover.

Coalitions have a limited life-span. There has been quite some research on the duration of coalitions and on the factors explaining variations in duration. But there is so far no solid theory on the mechanics of the termination of coalitions.This article gives an overview of the mechanics of termination in Belgian politics. By using the contextual approach, that has originally been produced to analyse coalition formation, this overview might be a first step in the construction of a comparative explanatory model. (...) The historical context, the institutional setting, the international context and the economical situation are described as elements that affect the termination of coalitions. The Belgian ethno-linguistic cleavage proves to be a very effective coalition-killer. (shrink)

The Belgian party system is aften considered to be or to have been very stable. This article investigates the possibility of the Belgian parties and party systems to 'go Italian ', i.e. to be confronted with a radicial change resulting from a fundamental lack of legitimacy. This problem of legitimation can be expected from the fact that Belgium is a very consociational democracy, in which the parties play a very important role, but tend to become very entangled with the state. (...) The split of the national parties and the federal reform of the state have made the decision-making structures even more complex than before, and have therefore not at all reduced the 'partitocratic' nature of the system. For these reasons a future Italian-style collapse of the parties and the party systems is certainly not to be excluded. (shrink)

The European Union affects the internal organisation of national political parties. We found 'traces of Europe' in the party statutes of all Belgian parties that are represented in the European Parliament since 1999. Europe is, to a greater or lesser extent, present in party goals, rules on party membership and party organs. Parties have elaborated rules for the organisation of European elections, for the selection of European executives, for the formulation of party programmes, and for internal and external co-ordination of (...) policy formulation. At first sight these rules seem to confirm the hypothesis that Europe is in the first place a concern of party leadership, and that it reinforces centralisation of decision-making. Yet the full confirmation of this hypothesis requires further comparative research on the Europeanisation of political parties. (shrink)