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Deliberative minipublics are being considered as a potential solution to address the multiple challenges facing representative democracies. Their unique design of these participatory processes, combining civic lottery with structured deliberation, is believed to have positive effects on crisis of democracy. Nevertheless, these positive expectations are mostly theoretical and need further investigation to determine their actual effectiveness. This PhD thesis investigates the main function associated to minipublics, which is to form a considered collective will to influence public decision-making. The research makes conceptual, methodological, empirical and theoretical contributions. Firstly, it develops a conceptualization of the influences of minipublics by taking into account the initial preferences of decision makers and whether they cherry-pick recommendations. Second, it proposes a new analytical framework, the Sequential Impact Matrix, to measure the influences of minipublics and shows the importance of interviewing decision makers in order to trace causality. Empirically, it conducts a case study of the citizens’ panel “Brussels— Make your Mobility” and finds that the panel did have an important impact on the mobility plan “Good Move”. However, most recommendations were in line with the government’s agenda. The case study also highlights the need consider the broader political influence of minipublics beyond the adoption of policy recommendations. Theoretically, the PhD thesis reviews the literature on public policy and argues that minipublics cannot generate significant policy changes on their own, but can only help trigger changes in specific, rare configurations. It also argues that expectations for minipublics’ influence on public decisions should not come from the minipublics themselves, but from the decision makers and how they engage with the results. For a lack of policy influence may still have important political influence and improve democracy, while a large policy influence may undermine the legitimacy of public decisions. In conclusion, the thesis reflects on the capacity of minipublics to deliver. It warns against creating a “minipublic bubble” if we do not carefully evaluate minipublics’ genuine contributions to solve the crisis of democracy. To unleash the great democratic potential of minipublics, it calls for the development of a problem-based approach to their conception and for the implementation of fewer but grander minipublics. (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2023

This chapter turns our attention to the special case of Brussels. Benjamin Blanckaert, Didier Caluwaerts, and Silvia Erzeel focus on voting patterns in the Brussels Capital Region (BCR). Unlike unilingual Flanders and Wallonia, the BCR is officially bilingual and both Flemish and francophone parties can field candidates. Therefore, Brussels voters can vote for a party of the other ethnolinguistic group (i.e. cross-ethnic voting) if they so desire. However, very little is hitherto known about the extent to which cross-ethnic voting takes place in the Brussels region, and which parties benefit most from cross-ethnic voting? The authors argue that cross-ethnic voting does indeed take place, contrary to all expectations because the political institutions incentivize co-ethnic voting. Moreover, they find that voters who engage in cross-ethnic voting, are primarily ‘unserved’ voters, more precisely: francophone voters who vote for Flemish right-wing regionalist and radical right arguably due to a lack of ‘offer’ ofsuch parties on the francophone side.

This book takes stock of Belgium’s exceptional and – for some foreign observers –schizophrenic position in the political world and explains its idiosyncrasy to a non-Belgian audience. Offering a broad and comprehensive analysis of Belgian politics, the guiding questions throughout each of the chapters of this book are: Is Belgium a political enigma, and why? Along which axes is Belgium "exceptional" compared to other countries? And what insights does a comparative study of Belgian politics have to offer? The book therefore provides a critical assessment of how Belgian politics "stands out" internationally, both in good and bad ways – including consociationalism, federalism, democratic innovations, Euroscepticism, government formation, gender equality, among others – and which factors can explain Belgium’s exceptional position. Based on cutting-edge research findings, the book will be of wide interest to scholars and students of Belgian politics, European Politics and Comparative politics.

Europeanization is understood as domestic adaptation to European integration. This chapter outlines the literature on party Europeanization, and highlights historical differences in challenger and mainstream parties’ interactions with Europe. It presents data and methods, followed by the analysis that addresses organizational Europeanization before moving on to the party programs. Through qualitative analysis of Belgian party statutes and manifestos, the chapter shows how challenger and mainstream parties show different patterns to Europeanize in different ways, the former showing more programmatic and the latter more organizational Europeanization. It finds patterns of Europeanization specific to party family and ideology and to the particular context of Belgium. When it comes to programmatic Europeanization, one can follow the literature in the expectation that challenger parties will be more likely to politicize the European Union. To identify programmatic Europeanization, election manifestos are the most adequate source of information.

The Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement of April 1998 is, in essence, a consociational arrangement which sees power shared between elites from two political blocs in Northern Ireland: unionism and nationalism.1 When parties signed the Agreement, in effect they agreed to accept the prospect of two divergent aspirations: Northern Ireland could remain in the United Kingdom, which was what unionist parties wanted, or it could be integrated into a single Republic of Ireland, as sought by nationalist parties. As a consequence, although benefitting from the devolved, stable and carefully balanced governance made possible by consocia-tionalism, Northern Ireland’s peace process is imbued with a sense of underlying lack of resolution. And as a result of this uncertainty, short-term political capital is gained within competing blocs at the expense of long-term social change in the common interest.