Paul Russell and Dr Wade Jacoby, Political Science

Overview

I was awarded an ORCA grant to study the causes of support for separatist political parties in Belgium. In January of 2011, I had the opportunity to travel to Belgium as an intern for a political party at the European Parliament in Brussels. The grant that I received helped to make this possible and gave me the chance to see the conflict between northern Belgium (Flanders) and southern Belgium (Wallonia) first hand. During my time in Belgium – and for months afterwards – the country had no viable central government. Political parties from the two main regions were unable to agree: several parties in Flanders were in favor of complete independence for their region and were unable to compromise with the parties in the south. My goal was to understand the motivations behind this disunity.

My central hypothesis at the beginning of my study was that an increase in the level of relative wealth in Flanders was leading to an increase in the level of support for Flemish separatist political parties. In other words, people in northern Belgium were becoming better off than those in the south, making them less willing to pay high taxes to a central government that distributed wealth evenly between the two regions. The Flemish, according to my hypothesis, were feeling shortchanged by the system, resulting in increased support for political parties advocating complete independence for Flanders.

An alternate explanation that I hoped to examine was immigration: Mudde1 argues that xenophobia is perhaps the most influential factor that allows extremist political parties to gain support. An increase in immigration from non-European countries could be affecting the support for Flemish separatist parties, especially if a larger number of immigration were entering Flanders as opposed to Wallonia. I hoped to examine these two hypotheses using an empirical analysis of changes in per capita wealth and immigration in the five regions of Flanders.

Experience

The most educational part of my project (by far) was the opportunity that I had to interact with Belgians every day. I lived with a francophone family in a nice part of Brussels: they considered themselves Belgian, not French, but they also expressed a measure of disdain for their Flemish neighbors to the North. In fact, the daughter of my host family explained to me that the only thing worse than marrying an American would be marrying someone from Flanders. Talking with people about the issue of separation made the conflict very real to me. I heard opinions that seemed to support my hypothesis that the Flemish wanted to be separate because they felt that Wallonia was dragging them down.

In order to empirically test my hypothesis, I needed to collect data on per capita income, population, immigration, and support for separatist parties. I was able to find much of this data, especially election results, on reliable Internet databases. However, per capita GDP data had not been published for the most recent year, a year in which separatist parties had made large gains in Flanders. To obtain this data, I was able to meet with a member of the staff at StatBel, the national Belgian statistics office. Although I did not collect all of the data that my original design required, I was able to obtain a significant number of indicative statistics, including some that were not originally included in my research design.

Problems/Changes

Perhaps the largest “problem” that I encountered during my research was a realization that I had not understood all of the background of the separatist movement in Belgium before writing my research proposal. Specifically, I came to the realization that changes in economic disparity between the regions could not be characterized as the only factor leading to support for separatist parties. As I researched, I began to understand more about the constitutional changes that led to the current state of the Belgian political system. These changes played an important role:

Belgian political parties are currently divided by region. In other words, there are no “national” political parties: individuals that live in Flanders cannot join the same political party as individuals with similar political beliefs that live in Wallonia. In this way, politics have become increasingly regionalized, with parties changing names, shifting policies, and evolving with time. These changes make an empirical analysis difficult because the meaning of individual variables changes over time.

As I began to understand more about the changes in the political structure of Belgium, I came to believe that these changes were the real cause of the increased support for separatist parties: separatist parties were gaining support because the system had changed in a way that allowed them to garner support more easily. Furthermore, the data that I had collected on economic disparity and immigration did not seem to reflect the drastic changes that occurred in the support for Flemish parties that favored independence. It seemed that my hypothesis was too simplistic (and the changes to the political system too frequent) to provide a consistent causal story to support my original claim.

Conclusion/Thanks

The experience provided by my ORCA grant was wonderful: I learned so much. Although my original hypothesis did not seem to have enough support, it may still be possible to gain insights into why separatist political parties receive support by analyzing data similar to what I collected. I believe that – with more effort to control for the constitutional changes that occurred in Belgium – an even greater understanding of the Flanders/Wallonia divide can be obtained.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the ORCA office and its donors for making this opportunity possible. Thanks also to Wade Jacoby and staff of the EUDemocrats, Open Europe, and StatBel for their assistance.

References

 

• Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.