Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy

A black box in the study of representation in European democracies is our knowledge about elected but also unelected candidates. What is their background? How are they recruited? What are their campaign aims, strategies, resources and tools? How do they relate to their (constituency and central) party and their voters? How do they consider democratic governance at national and European levels? This book focuses on the triadic relationship between candidates and the other poles of the delegation and accountability triangle: political parties and voters. The chapters rely mostly on the Belgian Candidate Survey (CCS project) gathering about 2000 candidates belonging to 15 parties running for the 2014 federal and regional elections. Most conclusions do not hold only for the Belgian partitocracy but answer broad political science questions on elite recruitment, electoral strategies, personalisation, party cohesion, and descriptive and substantive representation. Its multilevel semi-open electoral system, atypical federal structure, and extreme party system fragmentation make Belgium a rich but complex case offering findings highly relevant to research on candidates in other democracies.
Audrey Vandeleene is Researcher in the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden.
Lieven De Winter is Senior Professor of Political Science at the Centre of Political Science and Comparative Politics (CESPOL), Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
Pierre Baudewyns is Professor of Political Science at the Centre of Political Science and Comparative Politics (CESPOL), Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.