Evidence from Belgium shows that gender quotas do not necessarily eliminate voter bias against women candidates

To what extent do electoral gender quotas change voters’ preference for male or female political candidates? Silvia Erzeel and Didier Caluwaerts examine the electoral evidence from Belgium, a country that has progressively adopted gender quota laws since the mid-1990s. They show that although the largest group of Belgian voters now vote for both male and female candidates there is still a voter bias in favour of male candidates. In particular they find that men and voters low in political sophistication still have a higher propensity to vote for men only

Institutional design and polarization : do consensus democracies fare better in fighting polarization than majoritarian democracies?

It is often claimed that we are living in an age of increasing polarization. Political views, opinions, and worldviews become increasingly irreconcilable (idea-based polarization), while at the same time society appears to be getting fractured in antagonistic, opposing camps (identity-based polarization). However, a closer look at international datasets reveals that these forms of polarization do not affect all democracies to the same extent. Levels of identity-based and idea-based polarization strongly vary across countries. The question then becomes what can explain these diverging levels of polarization. In this paper, we hypothesize that the institutional design of a country impacts polarization, and that consensus democracies would display lower levels of polarization. Based on a quantitative analysis of the Comparative Political Dataset and Varieties of Democracy data in 36 countries over time (2000–2019), our results show that institutions did matter to a great extent, and in the hypothesized direction. Countries with consensus institutions, and more in particular PR electoral systems, multiparty coalitions, and federalism did exhibit lower levels of both issue-based and identity-based polarization, thereby confirming our expectations. Moreover, we found that consensus democracies tend to be better at coping with identity-based polarization, while the effect on idea-based polarization is smaller

The Promises and Pitfalls of the European Citizens' Initiative

Throughout the world, the idea of "democracy", the idea that the people should be governed by the people, remains a popular idea, enthusiastically embraced in many places by the opponents of autocratic regimes and safely protected in other places by the norms of political correctness. Nonetheless, the actual functioning of democratic regimes, based as it is in our country and elsewhere on the electoral process, seems to experience, if not a crisis, at least a deep malaise. And this malaise prompts a questioning of its foundations and a search for alternatives.Two such alternatives are provided by deliberative assemblies of randomly chosen citizens on the pattern of the G1000 experiment that took place in Brussels in 2011 and by the European Citizens' Initiatives launched in 2012. The 7th Re-Bel event organized on 24 May 2012 took these two interesting new experiments as the starting point of a reflection on the malaise of democracy and what to do about it.The present e-book includes a much enriched version of the two main presentations made on that occasion, respectively by Didier Caluwaerts (VUB) and Min Reuchamps (UCL) and by Kristof Jacobs (University of Nijmegen). These two pieces are preceded by a set of aphorisms on democracy by the historian and writer David Van Reybrouck, the mastermind of the G1000 and author of Tegen verkiezingen (De Bezige Bij, 2013, translated as Contre les élections, Actes Sud, 2014). They are followed by a commentary by Philippe Van Parijs, which benefited greatly from the discussion at the Re-Bel event and in particular from the contributions by Henri Monceau (Notre Europe), Charlotte Rive (European Commission), Jean-Pierre Rondas (ex VRT) and Daniel Van Lerberghe (Euractiv). And this commentary is in turn followed by an epilogue in the form of a letter in which David Van Reybrouck responds to Philippe Van Parijs's commentary

Deliberation and polarization : a multi-disciplinary review

In recent years, deliberative democracy has drawn attention as a potential way of fighting polarization. Allowing citizens to exchange arguments and viewpoints on political issues in group, can have strong conflict-mitigating effects: it can foster opinion changes (thereby overcoming idea-based polarization), and improve relations between diametrically opposed groups (thereby tackling affective forms of polarization, such as affective polarization). However, these results conflict with social psychological and communication studies which find that communicative encounters between groups can lead to further polarization and even group think. The question therefore arises under which conditions deliberative interactions between citizens can decrease polarization. Based on a multidisciplinary systematic review of the literature, which includes a wide diversity of communicative encounters ranging from short classroom discussions to multi-weekend citizen assemblies, this paper reports several findings. First, we argue that the effects of communicative encounters on polarization are conditional on how those types of communication were conceptualized across disciplines. More precisely, we find depolarizing effects when group discussions adhere to a deliberative democracy framework, and polarizing effects when they do not. Second we find that the depolarizing effects depend on several design factors that are often implemented in deliberative democracy studies. Finally, our analysis shows that that much more work needs to be done to unravel and test the exact causal mechanism(s) underlying the polarization-reducing effects of deliberation. Many potential causal mechanisms were identified, but few studies were able to adjudicate how deliberation affects polarization

The G1000. Facts, figures and some lessons from an experience of deliberative democracy in Belgium

The initiative we are going to discuss in this lead piece is the G1000 in Belgium. Contrary to most other initiatives by researchers or government agencies (Reuchamps, Forthcoming 2013), the G1000 project is a more hybrid type of deliberative event. There are certain characteristics that set it apart from other initiatives, such as the way in which the agenda of the event was set, the scale of the event, and the fact that is was a grass-root initiative by and for citizens. Because of its hybrid form, the G1000 deserves special attention. In this chapter, we first sketch the general background against which deliberative democracy in general – and the G1000 in particular – came about, after which we show that there is an ever-growing experience with deliberative events, and we highlight some of the main characteristics of these events. Next, we go into detail on the ideas and the methodological choices behind the G1000 project. And finally, we offer an overall evaluation of the project

Le fédéralisme belge creuse-t-il sa propre tombe ?

Le fédéralisme belge creuse-t-il sa propre tombe ? Pour nécrologique qu’elle puisse paraître, la question qu’entend soulever cet article n’appelle néanmoins pas à une dissertation sur la fin de la Belgique. Il ambitionne davantage d’explorer le paradoxe du fédéralisme belge : et si le fédéralisme mis en place progressivement en Belgique, transformant son État unitaire en un État fédéral, portait en germe non seulement les ingrédients de la pacification du conflit communautaire mais aussi le terreau de sa fertilisation. Généralement considérée comme un système politique divisé, mais stable, la Belgique se caractérise par des clivages structurant traversant l’ensemble de la société. Cependant, divisée dès son origine en 1830, la Belgique l’est encore devenue davantage au fil du temps avec la prépondérance de plus en plus grande du clivage linguistique, subordonnant et cristallisant les tensions économiques, culturelles, sociales et politiques du pays

Le tournant participatif et délibératif

Pourquoi parler de participation en action ? Et pourquoi lui consacrer un livre entier ? Parce que, et c’est l’objet de cette introduction, depuis trois décennies, la démocratie a pris un tournant participatif et même délibératif. Plus précisément, ce tournant est non seulement le résultat de réflexions théoriques autour de la participation et de la délibération – nous ferons la distinction ci-dessous – mais aussi le fruit d’une mise en action, de nombreuses formes. En effet, si de tout temps la vie politique et sociale a connu la participation et la délibération, sous diverses réalités et à différents degrés, les sociétés occidentales contemporaines se sont largement engagées, consciemment et inconsciemment, sur le chemin d’une démocratie participative et délibérative

Still Consociational? Belgian Democracy, 50 Years After ‘The Politics of Accommodation’

Despite the enduring importance of Lijphart’s work for understanding democracy in Belgium, the consociational model has come under increasing threat. Owing to deep political crises, decreasing levels of trust in elites, increasing levels of ethnic outbidding and rising demands for democratic reform, it seems as if Lijphart’s model is under siege. Even though the consociational solution proved to be very capable of transforming conflict into cooperation in Belgian politics in the past, the question we raise in this article is whether and to what extent the ‘politics of accommodation’ is still applicable to Belgian democracy. Based on an in-depth anal‐ ysis of the four institutional (grand coalition, proportionality, mutual veto rights and segmental autonomy) and one cultural (public passivity) criteria, we argue that consociational democracy’s very nature and institutional set-up has largely hollowed out its potential for future conflict management

Does intergroup deliberation foster intergroup appreciation? Evidence from two deliberative experiments in deeply divided Belgium

In this paper, we set out to determine whether the link between deliberation and transformation (or between process and outcome) is as straightforward as deliberative democracy assumes. More specifically, our research question is threefold: (1) whether a high quality of deliberation does indeed lead to changes in attitudes, (2) whether a high quality of deliberation can lead to a higher appreciation of the members of the outgroup, and above all (3) whether group composition matters. We thus want to push the research on the transformative effects a little further, into political psychology grounds, and see whether these effects can also take place in deliberation between diametrically opposed groups. Our aim is thus not only to test the link between deliberation and transformation, but also to see whether deliberation can have its transformative effects in high conflict settings, i.e. in more real-life settings. Based on findings from two deliberative experiments organized in deeply divided Belgium, we argue that the quality of deliberation (and the perceived quality of deliberation) are only weakly linked to changes in outgroup attitudes, and that the main variable explaining shifts towards more positive outgroup feelings is actually the group composition. Participants who are confronted with the other side are less likely to hold more negative views of the outgroup after the deliberation