Caught between mainstreaming and radicalisation: tensions inside the populist Vlaams Belang in Belgium

The Flemish party Vlaams Belang is often regarded as one of the most successful radical-right parties in Europe, but it has experienced a drop in support in recent years. Teun Pauwels and Emilie van Haute write on tensions between the party’s current leadership and a faction led by Filip Dewinter, which supports taking a more radical line on issues like immigration

Klachtenbehandeling in Vlaamse gemeenten: een status questionis.

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De verschillende electorale aanhang van het Vlaams Blok in de Antwerpse gemeenten: het inktvlekmodel en de vraag- en aanbodtheorieën over extreemrechts

In this article we tried to explain the differential electoral appeal of the extreme right in the municipalities of Antwerp. The electoral geography of the Vlaams Blok demonstrated that the further one lives from the city of Antwerp, the less likely one is to vote for the extreme right. This phenomenon was explained trough a specific urbanization pattern and the so called contamination hypothesis. We also found that the presence of migrants and the unemployment rate had a significant correlation with the score of the VB. This helped to understand why some municipalities were characterized by a long distance from the city and yet a high score for the VB. The supply side of the VB was also analyzed. This revealed that the proportion of preferential votes for the VB correlated highly with the electoral score of the VB in the municipalities of Antwerp.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Does a neoliberal populist party exist? A comparative perspective.

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Le Vlaams Belang

http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be/fiche/view/2529Le fichier attaché à cette référence, version publiée de l’œuvre, est librement accessible, sans embargo, en accord avec les Editions de l'Université de Bruxellesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The populist voter: explaining electoral support for populist parties in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany

Since the 1980s a growing number of populist parties have made a breakthrough in European party systems. Examples of these are the Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB), the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the Netherlands or the German Die Linke (DL). All of these parties can considered to be populist because they share a thin centred ideology “that considers society ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2004: 543). This thin centred ideology can be combined with other full ideologies such as the radical right but also democratic socialism. The main objective of this study is to explain why people vote for populist parties. Such a question is difficult to answer, however, because populism is mostly attached to other ideologies. To address this problem, this study draws on a comparative research design. By studying the electorates of a wide range of different populist parties, it is disentangled what is exactly the populist element, rather than elements related to the host ideology, that drives voters towards these parties.The study begins with a careful investigation of all parties in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany by means of both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore which of them could be labelled populist. Support was found for at least the following cases: LPF, the Belgian Lijst Dedecker (LDD), the Dutch Partij Voor de Vrijheid (PVV), VB, the Dutch Socialistische Partij (SP) and DL. In a next step, the voters of these parties were analyzed by means of election survey data (Dutch Parliamentary Election Study, Partirep Survey and German Longitudinal Election Study). The main finding of is that dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy and a desire for more decision making through referendums are important and unique drivers for populist voting in general. On the demand side it is argued that a process of cartelization, i.e. increased reliance of parties on state subventions, more cooperation between government and opposition, and ideological moderation, combined with the growth of critical citizens has led to the questioning of political authority. On the supply side, an increasing group of well-organized populist parties have begun challenging mainstream parties by depicting them as a group of self-serving elites depriving the ordinary people of their sovereignty. Moreover, populist parties claim to restore the voice of the people through the introduction of direct democracy. Accordingly, a growing group of voters who share these concerns are attracted to the populist appeal.Another important finding of this study is that populist parties generally attract social groups that feel themselves deprived. In Eastern Germany of the 1990s these were the ‘losers of unification’, i.e. highly educated civil servants who had lost the social prestige that they enjoyed during the heydays of the DDR. Yet in contemporary ‘diploma democracies’ it appears that populist parties, regardless of their host ideology, are increasingly attracting the ‘losers of globalization’, which are the lower educated and lower social classes. While populism has mostly been considered a threat for democracy, the ability of populist parties to integrate excluded social groups into the political system certainly deserves notice.Doctorat en Sciences politiques et socialesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Pays-Bas

Partie de :Brack, N. Rittelmeyer, Y. S. & Stanculescu, C. (2009). Les élections européennes de 2009 :entre national et européen: Une analyse des campagnes électorales dans 22 Etats membres. (CEVIPOL Working Papers / Cahiers du CEVIPOL No 3).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Measuring populism: A quantitative text analysis of party literature in Belgium

Despite the increased use of the term populism in vernacular and scholarly language, the measurement of the concept has long been neglected. The label is often attached to a certain party without any justification. Minimal definitions are alternatives but lack rigor. Classical content analyses provide more systematic measurements of populism but are extremely resource hungry. This article proposes an alternative, quantitative text analysis to measure the degree of populism among Belgian parties, drawing on both internally and externally oriented party literature. The results confirm that usual suspects such as the Vlaams Belang or Lijst Dedecker are the most populist of all parties under study. Populism turns out not to be an "either-or" concept, however, since we also identify a moderately populist party. It is furthermore demonstrated how populism can be attached to other ideologies, such as the radical right and (neo)liberalism. A cross-validation of the proposed method with independent voter survey data confirms its validity. This article concludes that a quantitative text analysis might be a promising method to measure populism over time and space without the huge costs of hand coding. © 2011 Elections, Public Opinion & Parties.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe