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Populism and ethno-territorial parties in Belgium

par Van Haute, Emilie
Editeur scientifique Heinisch, Reinhard;Massetti, Emanuele;Mazzoleni, Oscar
Référence The People and the Nation. Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe, Routledge, London, Ed. 1
Publication Publié, 2019-10-11

Partie d'ouvrage collectif

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Résumé :

This chapter analyses if and how populism is intrinsically rooted in ethno-territorial parties and combined with their substate demands, by comparing three Belgian parties: the Vlaams Belang (VB), the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), and Democrat Federalist Independant (DéFI), based on their election programmes and internal documents (2010-2015). The chapter argues that these parties stress the antagonism between a territorial community (‘us’) and a dominant center (‘them’), a binary conception that can overlap with populism that highlights the opposition between the homogeneous people and the ‘corrupt’ elite. However, we argue that this overlap is highly dependent on their position in or out of government at the national and regional levels. We show that sub-state nationalism and populism do not always overlap and can be used by parties in parallel. We also show that the parties’ relation to power matters, and that the overlap is higher when parties are sitting in power at the regional level and in the opposition at the national level. These findings stress the flexibility of the two ideologies and their adaptability to the parties’ changing context.