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The paper will present results of a research on the substantive representation of women in the Belgian Lower House during the 20th century. The aim of this research consists in learning more about the practice of substantive representation of a social group. The underlying hypotheses is that a ‘higher’ level of descriptive political representation results in a ‘higher’ level of substantive representation. More particularly, the research deals with the impact of women’s suffrage and of female MPs on the substantive representation of women. Although the empirical part of this investigation is of an historical nature and focuses on women, it relates to broader contemporary debates on the political inclusion of social groups such as immigrants. The research deals with the assumption, often present in societal as well as in political debates, that franchise, on the one hand, and MPs sharing the ‘identity’ of those whom they represent, on the other hand, have a positive impact on the extent to which social groups are represented. This research is embedded in a tradition of both theoretical investigation and empirical research on the link between ‘standing for’ and ‘acting for’. The first aim of the paper is to provide for an introductory picture of the political representation of women’s interests during a politically important parliamentary debate: the budget debates. The substantive representation of women, i.e. the act of taking care of women’s needs and interests, is defined through three criteria: 1) a situation that is bad for or unjust to women is discussed; 2) a suggestion to improve the situation of women is formulated; or 3) a right for women is claimed. Notwithstanding the paper’s final focus, firstly the evolution of the defence of women’s interests will be described and, secondly, we will verify whether changes are due to the direct impact of female MPs or coincide with the appearance of female voters. The three time periods researched are: 1) 1900 - 1929: a homogeneous male parliament; 2) 1930 - 1948: a few women in parliament but no female electorate; 3) 1949 - 1980: a growing number of female parliamentarians (significant increase from 1974 on) and a female electorate. In each time period the points of interest are: 1) which women receive political attention; 2) which topics are dealt with; and 3) what is the aim of the intervention (to merely improve the situation of women or to establish equality between men and women). Subsequently the question will be: do the right to vote and descriptive representatives result in a ‘better’ or ‘higher level of’ substantive representation? An increased diversity of groups of women receiving political attention, of women’s interests addressed and of feminist projects tackled could be seen as an indicator for a more elaborated form of substantive representation of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with consistency of opinions of youth in Belgium, Canada and Romania. The arguments of the paper are that youth display consistency of their preferences on issues like diversity, role of state on the market and homosexual marriages and these are affected by political interest and time spent on television, internet or watching, listening or reading news. The study employs three levels of complexity of consistency: consistency of issues within the same issue dimension, ideological consistency, and ideological consistency that resists the test of time in order to discover instances in which youth is consistent with their preferences. The conclusions of this study is that youth display a higher than expected consistency of issues in all three countries. Ideological consistency tests reveal that Canadian and Romanian youth have consistent preferences with what left and right means in their respective polity. Longitudinal survey of preferences of youth in Romania does not reveal changes in consistency. The issues on which Romanian youth express preferences in a panel study are not linked with their left-right self placement. The study did find a minuscule effect of internet and television on consistency. However the effects dissipated for ideological consistency. Hypotheses were tested using a comparative survey of Romanian, Canadian and Belgian youth ages 15 to 16 from 2006, a panel survey of Romanian youth from 2006 and 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the latest developments within the headscarf debate in Belgium (2009), and explores how Muslim women are substantively represented within the debate. The issue of the headscarf has attracted the attention of both media and academics, and has been studied within a variety of countries. These analyses have mainly focused on the constitutive dimension of such debates - i.e. how (Muslim) women are constituted and how the headscarf is given meaning within discourse(s). The question of women's political representation has not been scrutinized, nor has the issue of policy responsiveness within these debates been taken up. This papers offers a preliminary analysis of the representative claims made within Flemish media and focuses on the interaction between elected representatives on the one hand, and minority women's organizations on the other. Assessing the forms of congruence established between the claims of these two types of actors, this paper wishes to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of representation and responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has showed that policy agendas' issue attention is invariably punctuated: long periods of incrementalism alternate with short bursts of frenetic activities. In their seminal Politics of Attention, Baumgartner and Jones state that especially friction accounts for this pattern. This paper explores a second mechanims leading to punctuations: imitation and cascading. Political actors sometimes devote a disproportionally large amount of attention to an issue because other actors are doing the same. The paper contributes theoretically by specifying the conditions conducive for political cascades. It contributes empirically by showing that cascades are indeed at least partially responsible for the punctuated pattern of policy agenda's issue attention. Drawing on an extensive and longitudinal data set of Belgian news media, it is substantiated that a considerable part of the punctuatedness of Belgian media attention is due to media imitating each other. It is argued that these cascading processes remain not confined to the mass media butare to be found all over the political system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we seek to explain IGR in Britain (with a focus on Scotland) and Belgium, and, respecting the general theme linking the papers of this panel, we also wish to consider the extent to which intergovernmental interactions in both countries have assumed a 'non-hierarchical' character. We define IGR as patterns of centralregional (vertical) or inter-regional (horizontal) interaction between different (levels of) government(s) within a state with a view of co-ordinating issues of mutual concern.i Furthermore, our paper analyses policy-coordination in three different settings: a devolved setting (Britain), a constitutionally federalized setting (Belgium) and a three-tiered EU setting (insofar as we also consider to what extent these regions interact with the European Union). We hypothesize that devolution or federalism as well as the interaction of either setting with the EU influences the nature of IGR and the capacity of the centre to engage in hierarchical policy co-ordination. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the level of unity in parliamentary parties has continued to increase. Whereas in Congress the party leadership’s capabilities to solve collective action problems and to reduce transaction costs have been in doubt, in parliamentary systems little seems to warrant such doubt. Therefore, the paper’s aim is to trace the party leadership’s particular capabilities to secure party unity in parliamentary systems by means of 1. contract design, 2. screening and selection, 3. monitoring and information requirements, and 4. institutional checks. To the extent that these capabilities affect members differently, it is possible to sketch their contours on the basis of who the rebels are. It is apparent that discipline is not readily explained in terms of rewards and punishments. Factions and tendencies provide perhaps the most valid prediction for dissent in France and the United Kingdom, whereas in Belgium the extra-parliamentary party leadership and a detailed policy agreement have a strong impact on members’ discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, one of the strongest extreme right parties of Europe thrives: the Vlaams Blok (the Flemish Blok). The basic question of this paper is straightforward: does the Flemish media contribute to the success of the Vlaams Blok by emphasizing the themes of the party? The theoretical argument is twofold: agenda setting by the media and issue ownership by parties. The issues the Vlaams Blok owns are determined using two sources: its electoral manifestoes and its electorate’s motivations to vote for the party. This leads to four issues: Flemish nationalism, immigrant topics, antipolitics issues and crime-related themes. Using a vast media dataset covering three newspapers and two TV-stations and stretching over ten years (1991-2000), we examine to what extend these issues were covered. The analysis shows that especially immigrant topics and crime receive extensive and growing media attention and time series analysis points out that this rise parallels the electoral growth of the Vlaams Blok. The media could be considered as coresponsible for the Vlaams Blok’s upsurge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to contribute to the debate surrounding the resilience of the welfare state by analysing pension reforms in Belgium and Sweden, in the 1990s. Reforming public pensions has been considered among the least popular undertakings a government can attempt since it affects a large portion of the electorate. By comparing the cases of Belgium and Sweden, this paper argues that the occupational divide in pension politics, clearly underlined by the work of Baldwin (1990), remains entrenched when seeking to introduce pension reforms regardless of the type of welfare regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference about intra-party ideological tensions over immigration in the Netherlands and Belgium is presented which was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The paper discusses topics including how political parties address the immigration issue, the Green parties and conservative Liberal Democratic parties.

In recent years, various voluntary associations and political organizations have increasingly relied on internet-based mobilization campaigns, replacing traditional forms of face-to-face recruitment and mobilization. Within the literature, one can observe an intensive debate about the possible consequences of this transition. Most importantly, the question is whether mobilization through the Internet will lead to more effective political engagement mobilization? In this paper, we report on a mobilization experiment using both traditional (face-to-face) and modern (website, interactive website) incentives for mobilization. The experiment was conducted among university students in Belgium and Canada. Results suggest that the internet is quite successful in transferring knowledge and raising awareness among respondents. We do not find any indication that internet based mobilization would be less effective than more traditional, face-to-face forms of mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters have become more volatile and disloyal to their once beloved party. So, scholars agree that there is an unambiguous process of partisan dealignment going on. In this study, however, we focus on the opposite process: partisan realignment. Although, in general, partisan dealignment doubtlessly is the dominant trend, some parties seem to have been more successful than others to row against the mainstream and to bind their new-coming voters. The precise workings of the realignment processes, though, have remained underexposed. In this study drawing on Belgian evidence, we depart from the idea that the mere act of voting for a party can spark an identification process allowing parties to socialize their voters. This identification and subsequent socialization process fostering realignment does not always happen: it depends on the party and on the type of election. Moreover, we test in this paper whether the specific political context, with an extreme right party isolated by other parties, plays a role too. To tackle these matters we draw upon a longitudinal database containing a large amount of Belgian voters who participated in several subsequent parts of an ongoing electoral online panel. Our results seem to confirm the socialization hypotheses, but the extreme right voters were not more inclined than any other of the new electorates to adopt the stances of the party more easily. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in several democracies has found a decline in participation and common values among adolescents. Hence governments tend to look at secondary schools to educate youngsters to become 'good' citizens, whatever this may mean. Although governments agree on this necessity of preparing youngsters to participate in democracy, some people are scared of the 'indoctrinate' potential of citizenship education programs. Is there a stigma on certain views and does citizenship education 'produce' just one type of obedient citizens leaving no room for criticism and creative debates? In this paper we will look into the different citizenship concepts empirically trying to assess the theoretical citizenship concepts with real life data using the Belgian Youth Survey (2006). Moreover we will look into the effect of citizenship education on these concepts and see that although citizenship education has an effect on becoming a traditional, engaged or law abiding citizen, we cannot find proof for the hypothesis that citizenship classes 'contaminate' the minds of young citizens. Citizenship education is more something that adds to individual, peer and parental characteristics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the results of a comparative survey on political attitudes and behaviors among adolescents in Belgium, Canada and Romania. The results show that while political interest and trust is highest among Canadian adolescents, it is lowest among Romanian respondents. A preliminary analysis suggest that the impact of parents and of schools remains overwhelming. Despite the rise of a new and more autonomous youth culture, therefore, most of the findings from the older literature of the 1970s still is confirmed. The study also points to the possible effects of civic education in schools.Multivariate models prove to be most performative for Canada and for Belgium and least for Romania. This might be due to the fact that political trust and engagement levels are lowest in Romania. This hints at the fact that, even 17 years after the end of the authoritarian regime in Romania, political socialization of young adolescents is still being influenced by the impact of a previous political era.We close with a number of suggestions for further and more stringent analyses of the current data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although widely used in political science to tackle voting behavior and parties' campaign strategy, the issue ownership thesis remains untested when it comes to the origins of this identification of parties with specific issues. This paper explores where issue ownership comes from and/or how it is maintained. We test two possible avenues of issue ownership: the party itself and the mass media. On the one hand, parties' own external communication may systematically stress specific issues thereby explicitly claiming to be best placed to solve these issues. On the other hand, parties could systematically be identified by the mass media with certain issues leading to an implicit association between issue and party. We test both propositions drawing on the case of Belgium, a small consociational democracy in Western-Europe. Fragmented as its party system is, Belgium is a good case to examine issue ownership as its many parties are identified with many issues. Relying on extensive media data print as well as audiovisual and on party evidence manifestos and parliamentary activities we find that issue ownership is related to both party communications and media coverage. This applies in particular to the newer, challenging parties that are strongly identified with their core issues. In general, parties' older communications are drivers of issue ownership while, in contrast, it is recent media coverage that contributes to issue ownership. Yet, the direction of the causal arrow remains unsure ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belgium and France are among the leading European countries regarding the development of biotechnologies in the sector of genetically modified organisms (GMO) as well as in the sector of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) including stem cells research and therapeutic cloning. For what GMO concerns, French and Belgian researchers are recognized as pioneers of the vegetal transgenesis techniques. While the European Union regulation is generally based on the precautionary principle and has been influenced by a de facto moratorium from 1999, Belgian and French decision-makers have encouraged research funding, implantation of national and multinational firms, contained use activities and field releases. Regarding biomedicine, the in vitro fecundation is 20 years old . The today well-known technique of intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) was implemented for the first time by a Belgian team which reported the first birth thanks to this technique in 1991. In front of the scientific developments, the Belgian and French public authorities have reacted in different ways in the field of ART. The Belgian Government has only adopted procedural decrees to list formal conditions (types of cares, competences of the practitioners, etc.) that the ART centres must fulfil to get a license. ART doctors benefit from a large autonomy: they mainly rest upon the rules established by the ART centre team, the local ethics committee of their hospital, the Code of Medical Deontology. Such a self-regulation does not apply in France. The French Bioethics Laws of 1994 strictly define the ART practises: who is entitled to a treatment (heterosexual, married or stable couples), which techniques are allowed, etc. In that regard, the Belgian regulation is more permissive than the French which is labelled intermediate. In comparison, countries like Germany or Switzerland have a restrictive regulation: many techniques (such egg donation, pre-implantation diagnosis, etc.) are forbidden, the access of patients to ART treatments is strictly regulated. In the GMO field, the French and the Belgian regulations are similar. Both countries broadly allow activities that range from the laboratory (researches on contained use) and the deliberate release (i.e. field trials mainly carried out by multinational companies) to the market (commercialisation of GMO products). These activities are limited by the UE regulations. Meanwhile the Member States benefit from a room of manoeuvre in implementing the decisions of the UE. The fact is that they have intervened in the GMO issue -defining procedures and conditions at the national level for authorising the activities- since it?s a vector of public mobilisation in a context of sanitary crises. The Belgian and French regulations are thus labelled intermediate in our case studies. Public Policies Analysis helps to explain the differences between these types of regulations. The framework is focused on the policy design characterized by five attributes: policy goals, policy instruments, implementers, target groups and final beneficiaries. Hypotheses highlight three levels of explanations: the policy networks, the national polities and the multi-level governance. The characteristics of each State partly help to explain the differences of regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the role of mass media in setting the political agenda in Belgium from 1991 to 2000. Significance of media to governmental decision making; Comparison of symbolic and institutional political agendas; Background on political workings of television and newspapers.

Finding a balance between Technological Innovation and Deliberation: Lessons from Belgian Public Forums on Biotechnology. Technology and culture mutually affect one another, but the fact remains of the radical otherness of both spheres. That produces an open dynamics, which people start to question because of the uncertainties linked with it. In modern society where technology and daily life completely intertwine, the main challenge of a successful innovation policy lies in learning to cope with the unpredictable and uncontrollable character of a technological culture. When new scientific and technological knowledge is put forward, an adequate strategy to cope with this open dynamics, is bringing doubts about ‘the good life’ into the open. This should be a guarantee for critical self-reflection and qualified thought in a society. Recent experiences with Public Forums on Biotechnology in Belgium indicate that such interactive exercises hold out a complementary input of experts and citizens in this process of self-reflection. Yet there has to be done a lot of work that builds further on these experiences. The finality of Public Forums should be tailored to the needs of the different phases of the innovation policy cycle. And the relevance of quality criteria upon which the interactions and argumentations between experts and citizens will be checked, should be more clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU affairs generally struggle to capture the media's attention. Yet, the growing disconnect between European citizens and their representatives in Brussels has made the development of a mediated space for debate and communication more pressing than ever. This paper is interested in the conditions for the emergence of such a space. More specifically, it looks at the effects of referendums on the development of a European public sphere. Through a 'mixed method' comparative analysis of press coverage of the EU constitutional process, this study shows that referendums can affect the volume, analytical capacity and critical potential of coverage - three key features of a public sphere. The role of elite polarisation and conflict during referendum campaigns are examined as possible explanation for these patterns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of the Belgian Burka Law and Company Quota Law. It specifically discusses the recent evolutions in theories on substantive and symbolic representation of women. It is argued that both the burqa ban and the quota law can be labelled feminist in outcome, and the processes of substantive representation of women are in that respect successful.

Research in several liberal democracies has documented a decline in institutionalized political participation among young adults. More intense and innovating forms of citizenship education are often considered as a policy answer to this trend, but in the current state of research, we do have insufficient knowledge about the effectiveness of these forms, but on the short as on the long run. In this article we will look into the short and long term impact of different types of citizenship education efforts on the development of political trust. Using the Belgian Political Panel Survey (n=3,025), a three wave longitudinal panel survey of 16-, 18- and 21 year old Belgians, we will determine which type of citizenship education (i.e., class and extracurricular activities, classroom climate and classes about politics) can be considered as most effective, both on the short run as on the long run. We will be doing this using longitudinal structural equation modelling, including the different types of citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the success and rise of the New-Flemish Alliance (NVA), which is the first alliance to participate in the federal elections in 2013 in Belgium. The Flemish-Cartel, the two-party alliance that was established after NVA accepted the offer of the Flemish Christian- Democratic to go to the polls with common lists for both parties is cited. The issue of why some new political parties are able to break through and gain representation in parliament is stated.

The article looks at the role and the management of criticisms produced by service users in an aim to examine the shift in public policy towards the citizen. It examines new reflexive devices inside welfare public administration such as mediators and ombudsmen. It explores the Belgian context in relation with the health care reform act of 2002 in order to understand what is at stake when patients are entitled to criticize professionals and welfare bureaucracies through the introduction of a complaint.

Types and shifts of media power. A conceptual analysis illustrated by 50 years of political communication in the lowlands ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the logfiles of Belgian Party Profile Websites (PPW) in 2003 and 2004. PPW are seen as one of the innovations related to political campaigning. They are usually launched six to eight weeks before the election day in an effort to attract media attention. In Belgium, it was discovered that PPW users are mostly educated young males. However, the author speculated that political preferences are not easy to be influenced by electoral campaigns.

The article analyzes the reasons for the difference in extreme right electoral outcome in Flanders and Wallonia. It presents the Belgian extreme right parties then reviews the theories on the success of extreme right parties as well as the role of the social democrats within this regard. The theories are then set against the comparison between Flanders and Wallonia, after the Belgian social democratic parties have been introduced.

The article presents information on survey results related global citizenship and the concepts of belonging citizenship among adolescents in Belgium.