Democratising party leadership selection in Belgium: motivations and decision-makers

Political parties are increasingly adopting more inclusive procedures to select their party leader, most notably by introducing party primaries. This article tries to detect motives and decision makers for this introduction in Belgian parties. The literature on Westminster-style parties contends that party elites only reluctantly transfer more power from the parliamentary party group (PPG) to party members. They do so only when finding themselves in a weak position: after electoral defeat, when in opposition, when other parties are doing so or when the party is new. The situation in Belgium is different, as is demonstrated with quantitative and qualitative data. Mostly, the party elite was keen on introducing party primaries and took the initiative itself to carry them through. The mechanism at work, however, is the same as in Westminster parties: avoiding too much power for middle-level elites. Because of the different starting position (party delegates selecting the leader), the decision-making process looks completely different. We also argue that the results from Belgian parties might apply to consensus democracies in general

Substantive representation of the working class in a changing environment. Historical evidence from Belgian Parliament

The link between descriptive representation (being member of a disadvantaged social group) and substantive representation (defending the interests of that group) continues to be one of the most hotly disputed issues in social sciences. The political representation of social classes in this perspective has long time been neglected in research, as the main focus has been on women and ethnic minorities. It will be argued in this paper that class is still relevant in contemporary society and that due to the ‘catch-all’ approach of (social-democratic) parties and to the lower levels of recognition of blue-collar workers in the viewpoints of labour parties, the presence in Parliament of individuals of a particular social class (re)gains relevance The effect of these changes on the substantive representation of labour interests will be investigated during three periods in the history of the Belgian House of Representatives: a period when the main aspiration of social-democratic parties was still the defence of labourers’ interests (1950s), a period when the ‘catch all’ process had already widened the scope of these parties but when there were still blue collar MPs present in these parties (1980s) and a period when there were no longer blue collar MPs on the social-democratic benches in Parliament but when they started to appear in extreme right parliamentary parties (end of the 1990s)