Who Do You Feel and What Future Do You Want for Belgium? A Comparison of Candidates and Voters’ Identities and Institutional Preferences

Devillers, Sophie; Baudewyns, Pierre; Winter, Lieven De; Reuchamps, Min

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96460-7_9

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…To get a more intuitive interpretation, we also calculate the predicted probabilities for the entire 2009–2019 period: being a French‐speaking MP comes with a chance of 8% to speak on behalf of the French ethnolinguistic group, whereas Dutch‐speaking representatives have 78% chance to make a claim in defense of co‐ethnic group interests. On the one hand, this somewhat echoes previous studies (Devillers et al, 2019) that point to a stronger sense of ethnolinguistic identity among Dutch speakers than French speakers. The larger number of co‐ethnic claims might therefore reflect underlying processes of co‐ethnic identification.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 87%

Do birds of a feather flock together? Patterns of ethnolinguistic group representation in the Brussels Capital Region

Blanckaert

Caluwaerts

2023

Swiss Political Sci Review

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Consociational democracy is commonly discussed through the assumed premise of co‐ethnic group representation whereby representatives are institutionally incentivized to represent co‐ethnic interests. However, little attention has been paid to the process of group representation in consociations, in particular the link between descriptive and substantive ethnic group representation. This article considers representative claim‐making on behalf of ethnolinguistic groups in the Brussels Capital Region (Belgium), which is politically divided into Dutch and French speakers. Brussels constitutes an interesting case, because while we would expect co‐ethnic claim‐making to be the norm, Brussels MPs also receive electoral incentives to make representative claims on behalf of the other ethnolinguistic group (i.e., cross‐ethnic claim‐making). Based on a quantitative analysis of representative claims in parliamentary documents (2009–2019) from the Brussels Parliament, we find that cross‐ethnic claim‐making remains limited compared to co‐ethnic claim‐making, and that Dutch speakers and ethnic outbidders are more likely to speak on behalf of co‐ethnics.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 87%