This article explores different measurements of (sub-)national identities in survey research and examines to what extent they lead to different results. Using survey data from Belgium, where there is a long-standing tradition of (sub-)national identity surveys, three types of questions are scrutinized: the “hierarchical” question (asking respondents to which of a list of given identities they feel most closely related in first and second place), the “Linz-Moreno” question (asking respondents to situate their regional and national identities vis-à-vis each other), and the more recent “metric” question (asking respondents to situate themselves on distinct eleven-point scales for multiple identities). This article analyzes the extent to which respondents answer these questions consistently, how varying degrees of consistency can be explained, and what this tells us about the way social scientists measure (sub-)national identities. The results show that, depending on the question, only 39.4 percent to 69.2 percent of the respondents answered the three (sub-)national identity questions consistently. Differences in consistency are found to be not only related to respondents’ political knowledge and interest, but also to the question forms and wording, leading us to reflect on the validity of identity measurements.

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The 2019 elections in Belgium yielded contrasted results between the two main regions of the country, Flanders and Wallonia. It is often posited that at the core of this regional difference is the intermingled question of identity and state reform preferences. In this context, this article asks the following question: does the presence or absence of inter-regional contacts can explain voting behaviour? To answer this question, we use structural equation modelling in order to compare 2019 voting behaviour in Flanders and in Wallonia. We rely on the 2019 RepResent cross-sectional post-electoral survey that offers a representative sample of the population in both regions, including indicators of their inter-regional contacts and vote choice.

Belgium is considered as a very divided multinational and federal state, with conflicts between representatives of its two main language communities regularly threatening its sheer existence. Moreover, at the outbreak of the COVID 19-crisis, Belgium was in the middle of a political crisis: ten months of failed attempts to form a new federal government left a minority caretaker government to deal with the crisis. When the second wave arrived, a new federal government was formed but its composition was strongly different than the Flemish government, which was lead by the Flemish-nationalist N-VA, a situation of incongruence between governments that generally reinforces political conflicts within Belgium. All this means that a very fragmented, divisive and conflictual COVID-response could be expected. Therefore, it is surprising that the response was largely uniform and national response. There was a political consensus that measures should be the same over the entire territory. This article details the institutions, policies and communication that created this national response and also explains the reasons for it. It also focuses on the problems that the distribution of competences posed to execute the response and what it means for the nationalist movement as well as for possible future constitutional reform.

The decentralization of political power towards subnational entities is one of the major contemporary processes of territorial transformation in European democracies. Traditionally, research has focused on arguments related to nationalism and identities. Later, the strategic agency of political parties has been integrated as they typically play a major role in negotiating constitutional reforms. We investigate two institutionalist factors to explain why political Parliamentarians (MPs) favour decentralization while others oppose it: their parliamentary institutional affiliation and their career pattern (as well as the interaction between both). The importance of these factors is studied based on a large-scale survey among Belgian MPs from all federal and regional parliaments. Our results indicate that MPs' preferences for decentralization significantly differ depending on their institutional affiliation (regional MPs being more decentralist than national MPs). This difference is moderated by MPs' career pattern, but only for national MPs (who are more decentralist when they have a regional career pattern).

In 1981, Arend Lijphart wrote: “What is remarkable about Belgium is not that it is a culturally divided society—most of the countries in the contemporary world are divided into separate and distinct cultural, religious or ethnic communities—but that its cultural communities coexist peacefully and democratically. The prospects for the Belgian consociational experiment must be regarded as highly favourable. Belgium can therefore serve as an extremely valuable and instructive example for other divided societies” (Lijphart, 1981, 1). This observation may have seemed valid in 1981; however, in 2011, international media announced the imminent breakup of Belgium as the country reached the world’s record for the longest time needed to form a government after elections. The Belgian federal elections of 2010 were followed by a political deadlock and institutional crisis, culminating in 541 days of difficult negotiations, mostly on a sixth reform of the state, before a new federal government was installed.

This contribution assesses whether populism is inherently embedded in and combined with the ideology of sub-state nationalist parties, using Belgium as a case study. We argue that sub-state nationalist parties tend to emphasize the opposition between a territorial community (‘us’) versus a dominant center (‘them’), a dichotomous view that could overlap with the populist ideology focusing on the opposition between the homogeneous people and the ‘corrupt’ elite. We compare the policy positions of the three major sub-state nationalist parties that operate in Belgium: the Vlaams Belang, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and Democrat Federalist Independent, using their manifestos and membership magazines between 2010 and 2015. We show that the manner in which sub-state nationalist parties combine their stances on territoriality to a populist rationale depends on their relationship to power (government vs. opposition). In doing so, this contribution uniquely relates populism to the territorial dimension of Belgian politics.

Consociational theory posits that political elites in divided societies will show a stronger spirit of accommodation' than the groups they represent, and that this prudent leadership on behalf of the elites explains why divided societies hold together. Belgium has long been considered to be one of the best examples of such a consociational democracy. Yet in this country the spirit of accommodation of prudent leaders was questioned and discussed publicly during the 2010-11 political gridlock. The question is therefore whether Belgian political elites are indeed less radical and hold less extreme views than voters, as suggested by consociational theory. To explore this question, this article relies on survey data gathered during the historically long government negotiations of 2010-11 between members of all six Belgian assemblies. This original data set on MPs is compared with data on voters gathered in 2009 and 2014 in order to contrast their views on the reform of Belgium's federalism. The results show that voters are less radical than MPs on this question, but the data also reveal that MPs are strongly divided within communities and also within party. Neither communities nor parties are monolithic blocks.