Changing your political mind: The impact of a metaphor on citizens’ representations and preferences for federalism

ABSTRACT

Federalism is often presented through metaphors, but little is known about the impact of such metaphors. Two experiments were conducted in Belgium presenting federalism as Tetris – with control and treatment groups – in order to grasp the influence of this metaphor. The first experiment reveals that being exposed to text with the Tetris metaphor influences respondents’ representations of federalism towards a more institutional representation and towards more regional autonomy. The second experiment confirms the importance of the text, and more specifically of the metaphor, if political knowledge is taken into account. Respondents with a lower level of political knowledge are those who are influenced by the metaphor, whereas respondents with a higher level are not. Therefore, framing the future of Belgian federalism using the metaphor of Tetris does matter: it affects both individuals’ representations of the federalization process and, consequently, their preferences vis-à-vis the institutional future of the country.

KEYWORDS:

• Federalism
• Belgium
• citizens
• preferences
• conceptual metaphors
• framing

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor of Regional & Federal Studies, for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. Previous versions of this article have been presented at several occasions, notably the annual conference BELGIUM: THE STATE OF THE FEDERATION, and benefitted from the many comments of the participants. The usual disclaimers apply. Because their answers made this article possible, we are greatly indebted to the several hundred respondents to our surveys. We would also like to express our gratitude to Jehan Bottin, Maximilien Cogels, Maxime Lazard, Benoît Lecloux and Aleksi Otto Eerola for their research assistance as well as Pauline Heyvaert for her insightful comments on earlier drafts and François Randour for his help in getting the copyright for the image of the Tetris. The research reported in this article was supported by the Fonds spéciaux pour la recherche of the Université catholique de Louvain and of the Université de Liège, Belgium, and by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique — FNRS under grant no. PDR-T.1036.15.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Political science literature refers to the broader concept of political sophistication: although political knowledge is one of the best indicators of sophisticated voters (Lachat, 2007), political sophistication furthermore integrates the idea of political interest, exposure to political information, engagement in political activities and being more politically involved. In this article, we are, however, interested in the effect of metaphor as a cognitive provider of information for individuals with lower political knowledge.

2. The level of political knowledge of the respondents was measured on the basis of the five following questions (* denotes the correct answer): (1) What is the Federal Parliament made of? The Chamber and the Government/The Chamber and the Senate*/The Chamber, the Senate and the Parliaments of the federated entities/The Chamber, the Senate and the Government/No answer. (2) Among the following portfolios, for which is the federal Government not responsible? Foreign Affairs/Justice/Rail/Education*/No answer. (3) For which of the following political positions does one not need to be elected? The MPs at the federal level/The municipal councillors/The ministers*/The regional MPs/No answer. (4) In Belgium … there is an equal share of Dutch- and French-speakers/ … there is a majority of Dutch-speakers*/ … there is a majority of French-speakers/No answer. (5) What is the most important feature of a market economy? The mandatory membership of a trade union/An extended ruling of the national government on the economy/An active competition between companies*/Prosperity for all citizens/No answer.

3. We also ran full multivariate models that confirm the main trends in the findings from the bivariate analyses.

4. Both text groups emphasized the institutional and organizational dimensions of Belgian federalism whereas participants in the control group developed representations in line with the ‘identitarian reflex’.

5. We furthermore conducted empirical checks of robustness, testing the interaction effects of political knowledge with other variables of the model, as well as the interaction effects of the group conditions with the control variables. In all models, only the interaction effects of political knowledge and the metaphor were statistically significant.

6. The Belgian Tetris

From 1831 to 1970, Belgian politics came down to the central state, the provinces and the municipalities. Except for the powers devolved to the local authorities, the State took care of everything. In 1970, the constituent power created new institutions: communities and regions. And every state reform has been the occasion to take competences from the state (henceforth called the federal state) to redistribute them to federal authorities. This is the big Belgian Tetris, where we see the upper floor that is falling apart (decomposing), block by block, to the benefit of other authorities. In certain cases, the legislator is transferring homogeneous blocks (like education, handed over to the communities in 1989). In other cases, what is involved is just transferring some elements of a competence (this is the case with fiscality: the federal state remains competent but has assigned certain prerogatives to the federal entities). From now on, we therefore make a distinction between three types of competences. The ones that are exclusively exercised by the federal state (like Defense, for example). The ones that are exclusively exercised by the Regions and Communities (Education, Town planning, Public works, and so on). And the ones for which each power has some possibility of intervention. In the area of employment, for instance, the (federal) State is responsible for certain domains (unemployment legislation, for instance) and the Regions are in charge of other ones (training courses for unemployed people).

Source: ‘Le Soir’, 13–14/07/13, p. 8, written by Pierre Bouillon, translated by Julien Perrez and Graham Low.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS: [Grant Number PDR-T.1036.15].