Support for Regionalization in Federal Belgium: The Role of Political Socialization

Abstract

Regionalization, in the form of a dispersion of political power away from national political centers to regional governments, has been a defining feature of European politics since the 1970s. The article focuses on how institutional regionalization changed citizens’ attitudes about the division of competences between the central and regional level. It argues that regional institutions and policies exert a socializing effect on citizens’ preference in favor of these institutions through a mechanism of adaptive preferences. First, attitudes are studied across cohorts in a single population to test whether cohorts that came of age in a context of more institutional regionalization are more favorable towards regional decision-making than cohorts that came of age in a centralized state. The analyses indeed show evidence for a socializing effect of institutional regionalization. Second, the article shows how regional elites’ discourses may moderate the relationship between institutional regionalization and citizens’ attitudes about regionalization. We study Belgium as a crucial case. We use five cross-sectional datasets of the Flemish and Walloon populations during the course of increased regionalization in Belgium (1991–2007).

Experiencing and supporting institutional regionalization in Belgium: a normative and interpretive policy feedback perspective

“…In line with other research (Svallfors 2010;Neundorf et al 2019;Dupuy et al 2021), the article argues that a substantial part of the explanation of the variation in citizens' support for regionalization lies elsewhere: in their experiences of regionalization. Research on policy feedback offers a stimulating theoretical framework to understand how citizens' experiences of regionalization could impact their support for it.…”

“…So far, it has been shown that support for regionalization is related to both regional identification and the perception that one's region is economically better off than other regions within the same state (Henderson et al 2014;Verhaegen et al 2018). Moreover, a few studies have suggested that regionalization can have a socializing effect on citizens' attitudes regarding regionalization, but that this effect is moderated by elite discourses politicizing regionalization and putting it in a positive or negative light (Dupuy and Van Ingelgom 2014;Dupuy et al 2021). These studies provide fruitful ground to account for citizens' support for regionalization.…”

“…When considering regionalization processes, scholarship on individual attitudinal changes associated with regionalization has started to emerge (Henderson et al 2014;Dupuy and Van Ingelgom 2014;Dupuy et al 2021;Cole et al 2018). A key question is how, once established, the new division of competences between government levels may impact public support for (or opposition to) this division-which in turn may or may not lead to calls for further regionalization.…”

“…In line with the literature on political socialization, it is expected that such socializing effects are particularly strong at an early age and that attitudes formed in this period will persist throughout life (Abdelzadeh and Lundberg 2017;Campbell 2006;Jennings and Stoker 2004;Rekker 2018). It is thus expected that citizens will see the division of competences between the regional and central level as they experienced it when they came of age as more 'natural' or evident, and therefore more desirable (Dupuy et al 2021).…”

“…In particular, the structuring of political parties, public television and radio along community and regional lines illuminates the split of the public debate in the Belgian society. However, the salience and the framing of the institutional regionalization have been radically different in both regions (Sinardet and Morsink 2011;Dupuy et al 2021). In Flanders, the salience has been high and the framing has relied both on identity and socio-economic discourses.…”