The politics of the Brexit debate abroad: an analysis of parliamentary questions on Brexit in Belgian parliaments

ABSTRACT

The Brexit referendum in June 2016 marked a critical point for European integration and has quickly attracted attention from scholars. However, the literature so far has focused on the UK and the EU level, neglecting the symmetric risk exposures and the diverging views around Brexit within the Member states. This article aims at contributing to filling this gap by analyzing to what extent the attention paid to Brexit differs across parliaments in a multilevel setting and whether parties emphasize the same issue across different levels? It relies on a unique database of parliamentary questions in the Belgian (regional and federal) parliaments between 2013 and 2017 and combines social network analysis and a loglinear modeling to analyze how Brexit has been framed and discussed in Belgium.

KEYWORDS:

• Belgium
• Brexit
• European Union
• parliamentary questions
• social network analysis

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Julien Navarro as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of earlier versions of this article and for their very useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For an exception, see the project “Negotiating Brexit: national governments, EU institutions and the UK”, http://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexitresearch/negotiating-brexit-national-governments-eu-institutions-and-the-uk/.

2. And this strategy seems to work as shown by Bouteca and his colleagues: Bouteca et al. (2019), ‘A Fair Day’s wage for a Fair Day’s work? Exploring the connection between the parliamentary work of MPs and their electoral support”, Journal of legislative Studies, 25(1), 44–65.

3. Based on data from PartiRep, we have computed a degree of polarization of 0.24 according to van der Eijck’s polarization measure for ordered rating scale. On the project, see https://cevipol.centresphisoc.ulb.be/sites/default/files/centre_cevipol/uploads/project_partirep.pdf.

4. Source: PartiRep (2012) Partirep Comparative MP Survey 2012. Data file. Brussels/Leuven/Antwerp: PartiRep. This database comprises an individual attitudinal survey carried out among national and regional legislators in 15 European democracies. Data reported here correspond to a weighted average of Belgian federal and regional MP’s positions by party.

5. Magnette cited in Stroobants, J-P., « Après le Brexit, le Wallon Paul Magnette prône la sortie de l’Union pour certains pays de l’Est », in Le Monde, 05/02/2017.

6. This idea was proposed during a speech in Göttingen by G. Bourgeois, Minister President of Flanders at the time and has been discussed in the media in Belgium and abroad. See a. o. Evans-Pritchard, A., «Belgium offers olive branch on Brexit, calls for North Sea Union», in The Telegraph, 23/08/2016; RTBF, “Brexit: le ministre-président flamand Geert Bourgeois en appelle à une Union de la Mer du Nord”, 22/08/16; De Morgen, “Minister-president Geert Bourgeois pleit voor Unie van de Noordzee”, 22/8/16; De Standaard, “N-VA goes international (en Bourgeois ook)”, 24/08/16.

7. All parliamentary questions dealing with Brexit were considered.

8. Our research project covers a 5 year period, from the speech of Cameron in January 2013 to the Florence speech of May at the end of September 2017 and the fourth round of negotiations.

9. At federal level, the analysis focused on the Chamber of Representatives as they were only two parliamentary questions on Brexit in the Senate during the period under study.

10. Additionally, in the annexes, graphical representation of questions such as “Who asks how?” And “When do they ask?” have been included in the annexes. For the “How-question”: a difference was made between oral questions and written questions as these instruments reveal a different degree of visibility and politicization.

For the “when-question”: the period under study was divided in three main periods: Period 1. Background: From David Cameron’s Bloomberg speech (23 January 2013) to the UK referendum on the UK’s EU membership (23 June 2016); Period 2: Preparations: From the UK’s EU referendum (23 June 2016) until the UK’s triggering of Article 50 (29 March 2017); Period 3: Negotiations: From the UK’s triggering of Article 50 (29 March 2017) until October 2017.

11. At federal level, 25 categories were identified (GeneralBrexit, FutureEU, ExternalTrade, EconomicConsequences, Employment, Negotiations, Fishery, FreeMovement, FiscalConsequences, Agriculture, HighLevelGroup, Airport, Banks&Insurances, Ukinternal, PublicSafety, EuropeanPatent, Business, ForeignPolicy, DefencePolicy, DataProtection, SME, SpaceResearch, Transport, Naturalization, CouncilPresidency), at Flemish level, 27 categories were identified (Citizens Protection, Defence, EconomicConsequences, Businesses, Employment, SeatShare, Trade, Finance, Port, EuropeanAgency, Fishery, Tourism, FreeMovement, InternalNegotiation, Helpdesk, CooperationProject, Agriculture, FoodIndustry, Flemish Negotiation, Parliamentary Cooperation, Diplomacy, UKRegionalIssue, Future of Europe, Orchestra, Investment, GeneralBrexit, Migration) and at Walloon level, 18 categories were identified (Impact_Wallonia, Economic_Impact_Wallonia, Impact_R&D, Agriculture, Brexit_Opportunities, EuropeanFunds, Negotiations, Businesses, BritishParliament, TradeRelations, Airport, TAFTA, Food, Federated_Entities_FederalState, Employment, CrisisGroup, FinancialMarket, EuropeanCouncilAgreement).

12. In this section, we have considered both oral and written questions.

13. For comparative purposes, the Fruchtermann Reingold Algorithm was applied to each network.

14. In previous analyses, we had also used the gender variable as a control variable of the homophily measure.

15. In Flanders, 35% of the questions asked to N-VA ministers came from N-VA MPs and 16% of the questions asked to CD&V ministers were asked by CD&V MPs. At the federal level, these proportions were a little bit lower, 23% of the questions asked to MR Ministers were coming from MR MPs and 16% of the questions asked to CD&V ministers were asked by CD&V MPs. In Wallonia, PS MPs have been active asking questions to PS Ministers (around 40% of the questions asked to PS Ministers) but CDH MPs have not asked any question to CDH Ministers. Actually, CDH MPs (as MPs from the opposition) targeted all their questions towards PS Ministers.