A Tale of Two Regions: An Analysis of Two Decades of Belgian Public Opinion
Institutional change, economic conditions and confidence in government: Evidence from Belgium
Marc Hooghe and
Dieter Stiers
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2022, vol. 52, issue 4, 655-674
Abstract:
It has been assumed that a trend toward devolution within a federal country would be associated with a growing apart of public opinion, and the federal kingdom of Belgium is routinely cited as an obvious example in this regard. Since the publication of the seminal Billiet et al. article, more competences have been devolved toward the autonomous regions, and in this research note we update the expectation that this has led to a further growing apart of public opinion in the country. Based on both electoral studies (2009/2014/2019), and the European Social Survey (2002–2018) we investigate whether these institutional differences are associated with a growing apart of public opinion in the regions of Belgium. Our results suggest that while there are clear attitudinal differences between the two major groups in the country, these differences are stable throughout the three-decade observation period. Differences are becoming more outspoken, however, with regard to the preferred extent of federalism. Interestingly, however, the dynamics in public opinion in this regard do not follow the same pattern as electoral results would suggest.
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjab039 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:publus:v:52:y:2022:i:4:p:655-674.
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals
Access Statistics for this article
Publius: The Journal of Federalism is currently edited by Paul Nolette and Philip Rocco
More articles in Publius: The Journal of Federalism from CSF Associates Inc. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().