eight - Ideas as close as possible to power: Belgian political parties and their study centres

Summary

Belgium is often considered a textbook example of partitocracy (De Winter, 1998; Deschouwer, 2012). The dominance of political parties involves many functions and dysfunctions in a polity that is highly fragmented along linguistic and ideological lines. Political parties do not only aggregate citizens’ demands and preferences, participate in elections and select personnel for the legislature and the executive office. They also play a dominant role in the policymaking process, by framing problems, promoting ideologically inspired solutions, and negotiating compromises in the cumbersome formation and continuation of coalition governments. However, like other actors involved in the policymaking process, political party organisations are faced with the increasing complexity of problems, and with the demand to back up their proposals with expert-based argumentation.

In Belgium, each party organisation comprises a study centre. Although no scholar denies their importance in the life of a political party, and although they constitute one of the features that denote the professionalisation process of party organisations (Panebianco, 1988), they are generally overlooked in the study of the Belgian political system (Dewachter, 2001; Deschouwer, 2012) as well as in the history writing of particular parties (see, for example, Dewachter et al, 1995). Moreover, in policy-analytical literature, of international or Belgian origin, the party study service as supplier of policy advice is rarely documented. This chapter addresses this empirical void. It is the first attempt to map and to analyse party study centres in Belgium in the period 2010-15, including the effect of the 2014 elections. The central research question is twofold: in which way are these party study centres organised and how do they generate policy advice?

The chapter is structured as follows. The first section briefly situates party study centres situated against the background of the policy analytical literature on alternative sources of policy advice. Next, after a presentation of the authors’ fieldwork, the chapter outlines the basic profile of the Belgian study centres, and sequentially discusses their size, relationship and coordination with the party, as well as their advisors’ major characteristics. The fourth section describes the nature, process and products of policy advice generated by the party study centres. The conclusion summarises the distinguishing characteristics of the Belgian political parties’ study centres.