In Belgium, regionalist parties recorded significant electoral successes in each of the three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels). The ideology of these regionalist parties is focused on the demands for territorial reforms and more decentralisation in the state structures. Mainstream parties tried to accommodate these demands by implementing different strategies. In 1977, the Christian-democrat and socialist parties decided to form a government – at the national level – with regionalist parties. The VU (Flemish regionalist) stayed in the government until 1979 and the FDF (Brussels-based regionalist) until 1980. The VU also participated in the national government between 1988 and 1991.
The paper will analyse these government participations from the ideological perspective. While in government, regionalist parties had to negotiate with mainstream parties and managed to obtain reforms towards more decentralisation. Yet, they had to make compromises on other policy issues. Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of regionalist party manifestos for national elections before and after being in government, this paper intend to analyse the impact of the government participation on regionalist ideology. We will not only evaluate whether it lead to a moderation or radicalization of their territorial demands but also whether one can observe a change in their party positions on other policy issues. We will demonstrate that the governing experience of these parties had an important impact on the parties’ electoral platforms on a large number of policy issues.
