Losing the electoral battles and winning the policy wars: Ethnoregional conflict in Belgium

Several ethnoregional political parties achieved dramatic electoral successes in industrialized democracies in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the most successful and prominent of these parties were the Belgian ethnoregional parties, the Volksunie (VU) in Flanders, the Rassemblement Wallon (RW) in Wallonia, and the Front Démocratique des Francophones (FDF) in Brussels. These three parties have declined dramatically since the late 1970s. Although they appear to be electoral failures they have experienced impressive policy successes. The major Belgian parties had always been skeptical of the ethnoregional parties’ proposals for the federalization of the centralized state. Yet, in the years following the electoral decline of the ethnoregional parties, Belgium has federalized. Survey data and comparative analysis are used to account for the electoral failures and policy successes of the ethnoregional parties in Belgium. The conclusion generalizes from the Belgian cases to the successes and failures of other ethnoregional parties in stable democracies.