| 1. |
- Erzeel, Silvia, et al.
(författare)
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La professionnalisation des partis politiques en Belgique : vers l’intégration de la dimension de genre
- 2017
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Ingår i: La professionnalisation des luttes pour l’égalité : Genre et féminisme. ; , s. 191-212
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Political parties throughout Europe are witnessing a significant professionalization of their daily functioning. Professionalization refers to an institutional process “by which professionals become more central to an organization, in this case a party” (Webb & Kolodny 2006: 338). The centrality of professionals is most obvious in parties’ reliance on an expanding body of professional staff members and experts with specialized skills (a.o. marketing professionals, consultants, spin-doctors and public relations experts) performing traditional party functions and supporting the leadership in the management of the party. These professionals replace – or at least complement – member-volunteers and party bureaucrats in the party apparatus (Norris 2000). Although party professionalization is a phenomenon that has received considerable academic attention, research on the professionalization of Belgian political parties remains scarce. In this paper, we will study –in an explorative way– to what extent and how professionalization has taken/is taking place in the Belgian parties, focusing on gender equality. On the one hand, we will ‘map’ the presence of “gender professionals” in Belgian parties: who are they, what are their main tasks, to what extent is their presence institutionalized in the party and how has this changed over time? On the other hand, we will reflect on the consequences of the presence of “gender professionals” for the internal dynamics and power relations within parties. We conduct an in-depth case study of one particular policy domain, but we will reflect on the broader implications for processes of party professionalization in other domains as well. We explore the professionalization of gender equality in 11 Belgian parties based on new and original data (including document analysis and interviews) gathered by the authors in 2006 and 2014. The results show that party professionalization is overall limited. Although parties have included gender experts in their organization (for instance in study centres or through intra-party women’s groups), this gender expertise is often not structurally embedded: in many parties in Belgium its existence is not recognized by any formal rules and its functioning is not supported by any paid administrative staff.
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| 2. |
- Legein, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Framing the Basic Income : An Experimental Study of How Arguments and Metaphors Influence Individuals' Opinion Formation
- 2018
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Ingår i: Basic Income Studies. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2194-6094 .- 1932-0183.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using an experimental design, this paper tackles the question of the framing impact of metaphors by focusing on the opportunity to implement a basic income (BI) system in a given polity. We take advantage of the preliminary stage of the BI debate in Belgium to study the influence of discursive strategies on the opinion formation process of individuals, since carefully choosing the arguments employed to address this question can help increase its psychological feasibility. Our experiment aims at determining to what extent the confrontation of individuals to metaphors illustrating the BI system impacts the way they apprehend its implementation. We show that very light variations in an informative text can induce major differences in the opinion formation process of the participants. BI proponents should thus pay attention to which metaphors are put forward in the public debate, as this could modify its outcome.
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| 3. |
- Rihoux, Benoit, et al.
(författare)
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Belgium
- 2017
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Research. - : Wiley. - 0304-4130 .- 2047-8844. ; 56, s. 31-35
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
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| 4. |
- Vandeleene, Audrey, et al.
(författare)
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Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy
- 2018
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Bok (refereegranskat)abstract
- A black box in the study of representation in European democracies is our knowledge about elected but also unelected candidates. What is their background? How are they recruited? What are their campaign aims, strategies, resources and tools? How do they relate to their (constituency and central) party and their voters? How do they consider democratic governance at national and European levels? This book focuses on the triadic relationship between candidates and the other poles of the delegation and accountability triangle: political parties and voters. The chapters rely mostly on the Belgian Candidate Survey (CCS project) gathering about 2000 candidates belonging to 15 parties running for the 2014 federal and regional elections. Most conclusions do not hold only for the Belgian partitocracy but answer broad political science questions on elite recruitment, electoral strategies, personalisation, party cohesion, and descriptive and substantive representation. Its multilevel semi-open electoral system, atypical federal structure, and extreme party system fragmentation make Belgium a rich but complex case offering findings highly relevant to research on candidates in other democracies.
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| 5. |
- Vandeleene, Audrey, et al.
(författare)
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Conclusion : Studying candidates, parties and voters. Lessons learned and new questions
- 2018
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Ingår i: Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy. - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 9783319964591 - 9783319964607 ; , s. 365-380
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the concluding chapter, we outline the major findings from the eleven book chapters by connecting them to one another. We come back to the triadic delegation and accountability relationship between candidates, voters and parties that were developed based on principal–agent theory, and emphasise the most relevant findings of this book that inform this triad. The chapter also takes a critical stance to the book by reviewing the questions used in the CCS surveys and identifying the most important shortcomings of some questions. This chapter ends with some suggestions for new avenues of research for candidate surveys, as case studies but especially from a comparative perspective.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Vandeleene, Audrey, et al.
(författare)
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Introduction : Candidates between parties and voters-A triadic relationship in the belgian partitocracy
- 2018
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Ingår i: Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy. - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 9783319964607 - 9783319964591 ; , s. 1-44
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The introductory chapter emphasises the general relevance of the study of electoral candidates in representative democracies. It presents the book’s theoretical framework: the triadic delegation and accountability relationship between candidates, voters and parties—based on principal–agent theory. We theoretically map patterns of candidates’ behaviour and attitudes in all main dimensions of their activities with the electoral, multilevel and partitocratic context of the Belgian polity. We present a common framework for all book’s chapters and simultaneously establish the state of the art of empirical studies on candidates. The chapter then details the particularities of Belgium’s institutional, electoral and party systems, highlighting what should be known to understand Belgian candidates’ behaviour and attitudes in 2014. It also includes relevant information about the data used in the book.
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| 8. |
- Vandeleene, Audrey, et al.
(författare)
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La relation entre le mode de sélection des candidats et la congruence idéologique entre masses et élites : analyse du cas belge
- 2017
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Ingår i: Politique et Sociétés. - : Consortium Erudit. - 1203-9438. ; 36:2, s. 91-118
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Candidate selection is a major function exercised by political parties. Yet they differ a lot regarding who selects their candidates, varying on both dimensions of inclusiveness and centralisation. One can wonder whether these variations in the modes of candidate selection do really matter. The paper classifies ten Belgian political parties, for two federal elections – a regular (2007) and an early election (2010) – on a five-?‐points inclusiveness scale summarizing selection modes. Based on this scale, the paper empirically tests the impact of candidate selection modes on the degree of mass – elite ideological congruence, using positions of candidates and voters on the left-?‐right scale and on the authoritarian-?‐libertarian scale. Our results confirm that selection matters. More exclusive selectorates tend to select candidates being ideologically closer to their voters.
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| 9. |
- Vandeleene, Audrey, et al.
(författare)
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The curious stability of candidate selection methods in Belgium in times of crisis
- 2018
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Ingår i: The Selection of Politicians in Times of Crisis. - : Routledge. - 9781351716765 - 9781138895218 ; , s. 49-65
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter analyses a ‘negative case’ of change in candidate section. Although one expects the political crisis to trigger the emergence of new parties – and together with them of innovative (inclusive) forms of candidate selection, no major reform of internal party democracy has been observed in Belgium. The last decades have witnessed the rise of new parties, but these rather tend to select their candidates in more exclusive and centralised ways over the years. Besides, no major reshuffling in candidate selection has occurred among the traditional parties, despite the crisis context. The chapter relies on several waves of candidate surveys, but also on interviews with party officials and party statutes. It seeks to offer an explanation of this curious case where the crisis did not cause significant changes in the way political parties select their candidates.
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| 10. |
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