This article is based on a definition of political and civil servant leadership as a behavioral steering style towards the realization of organizational goals. By means of a grounded theory methodology we get some insights in the characteristics and the interaction between both leadership styles in Flemish cities. This two-faced leadership is depicted by means of a tandem metaphor. First, we identify the relevant dimensions to describe the leadership tandem. It becomes apparent that political leadership styles differ greatly both in time and in scope. Civil servant leadership is generally characterized by a weak but presumably growing impact. This combination results in considerable leadership tensions, which is reinforced by several contingency factors: i.e. the influence of the dominant alderman model, the financial situation, the number of staff, the tendency to professionalize, the dominant political and civil servant culture and the structure of central government (e.g. on a Flemish, Belgian and European level).

This paper deals with the linkage between changes in the political culture and changes in class-party alignments. First, we investigate how the political culture in Western countries has changed over time. Three views are tested using data on party-manifestos. The first predicts that only new-leftist issues will increase in salience. The second predicts that both new-leftist and new-rightist issues will emerge at the same time. The third, which is empirically corroborated, predicts that first new-leftist issues will emerge followed by a rise in new rightist issues.
Second, we investigate how the emergence of these new issues has affected the traditional class-party alignments. We show that the middle class increasingly votes left-wing as newleftist issues become more important and that the working class increasingly votes rightwing as new-rightist issues become more important. The middle class also appears to alienate from the traditional party of their class as new-rightist issues rise in salience.

This study reports the results of qualitative interviews with 28 extreme right wing activists in Flanders (Belgium). We focus on the (ideological) motives for activism (why did they become active?) and the trajectory followed in becoming active (how did they become active?). The results show that these activists are primarily motivated by ethnic nationalism. All other ideological stands (e.g. rejection of foreigners, authoritarian attitudes and rejection of actual politics in Belgium) seem to be derived from this core of ethnic nationalism. The trajectory followed is primarily one that relates to socialization and continuity: most interviewees grew up in a family in which nationalism was of primordial importance. A minority of respondents, however, followed trajectories that refer to compliance or to conversion (deprivation).

Various authors have claimed that postmodern concepts of citizenship have become more important in contemporary Western societies. The new generation of citizens are said to be more critical toward the political system, less likely to participate in conventional politics, but they remain strongly interested in politics and social life (Norris, Inglehart, Dalton). Michael Schudson developed the concept of a ‘monitorial citizen’, who is interested in politics, with high levels of political efficacy and who turns to political action if needed, but does not participate in traditional political organizations. Based on the European Social Survey (2004) we investigate whether this type of citizenship actually occurs in Belgium, and found that approx. 9 per cent of all respondents can be labeled as ‘monitorial citizens’. In accordance with the theoretical expectations, most of them are young and highly-educated citizens. A multivariate analysis shows that, controlling for education, ‘monitorial citizens’ also score relatively high on political trust.

In this article we explained the differential electoral appeal of the extreme right in the municipalities of Antwerp. The electoral geography of the Vlaams Blok demonstrated that the further one lives from the city of Antwerp, the less likely one is to vote for the extreme right. This phenomenon was explained trough a specific urbanization pattern and the so called contamination hypothesis. We also found that the presence of migrants and the unemployment rate had a significant correlation with the score of the VB. This helped to understand why some municipalities were characterized by a long distance from the city and yet a high score for the VB. The supply side of the VB was also analyzed. This revealed that the proportion of preferential votes for the VB correlated highly with the electoral score of the VB in the municipalities of Antwerp.

On December 1st 2005, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt proposed the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’: a core group of Eurozone countries surrounded by a confederation of states. A European social-economic policy, technology cooperation, a common justice and security policy, a common diplomacy and army will make the EU stronger and less patronizing, said Verhofstadt. In this article, we look back over the main political and economic developments in the EU in 2005. This year will probably go down in EU history as the year in which the constitutional treaty was rejected. Yet, as demonstrated, despite a feeling of total malaise, a number of knotty dossiers came to a conclusion and new initiatives were taken.

Parties supposedly take great care to assure an equilibrium in the socio-geographical composition of their lists of candidates. In this contribution it is investigated whether the parties which participated to the 2004 regional elections in Brussels indeed presented lists in which the criterion of equilibrated geographical distribution was taken into account. We compared the presence of candidates living in disfavoured neighbourhoods, middle class neighbourhoods and rich neighbourhoods for the different lists which participated in the elections. It is shown that elected politicians overwhelming tend to live in the richer areas of the Brussels Capital Region. This is not due to a funnel effect in which predominantly the candidates living in richer neighbourhoods were able to get elected. Parties had, indeed, in general distinct socio-geographical profiles of their candidates and these merely got reflected in the overall results of those getting elected.

This paper deals with the electoral and political consequences of urban region formation. The electoral geography of new political parties differs substantially from that of traditional ones. New parties are mainly successful in different parts of urban regions. The declining traditional parties have rather a regional pattern, although some of them show new spatial patterns too. These developments are interpreted in the context of the cleavage theory, in which old and new cleavages are linked with a different spatiality. Following the Anglo-Saxon literature an increasing process of polarisation is hypothesised between the welfare state orientated city and a neo-conservative and neo-liberal suburban fringe. This article examines and proofs the existence of these processes in the urban region of Brussels by means of individual-level and ecological electoral data.

The relationship in political terms between the Brussels Capital Region and the Brussels communes is characterized by the cumulation of mandates. On average 68% of the members of the Brussels Regional Parliament simultaneously held an office in one of the 19 communes. At the regional elections of 2004 even twelve of the 19 mayors were directly elected into the Brussels Parliament. This feature of intertwining mandates was mainly valid for the French liberal party, the FDF and the Frenchspeaking Christian-Democrates. In this manner not only did the Brussels communes have access to the Parliament but to the Brussels Regional Executive as well. The cumulation of mandates is though but one example of the intertwining of the Brussels Capital Region and its communes.

At least four criterions/methods to measure mechanical effects of electoral systems can be distinguished: measuring disproportionality, the reduction in number of parties, the party advantages and the threshold percentages. In this manuscript we focus on the thresholds. We first concentrate on a description of legal, theoretical, and empirical thresholds as measures of mechanical effects. Further, we analyse the relationship between (the natural logarithm) of district magnitude and the empirical threshold and between the empirical threshold and the effective number of parties. As starting point we take districts in Spain, Portugal and Hungary as the level of analysis. We clearly show that there is a negative causal connection between district magnitude and the threshold percentage and between threshold percentage and the number of parties.