Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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The main focus of this study is on the question of why political institutions change. By extension, the study is also about explaining and predicting the direction of change. Put simply, the study postulates that political institutions will change in order to be congruent with the society. / Change is analysed within the context of two federal structures, the Federal Republic of Germany and Belgium. During the same time period from 1949 to 1993, one transformed from a unitary state into a loose federation while the decentralised federation consolidated and became central. The puzzle which the research project deals with is about this change: Why did the institutions of 1949 fail to survive? / The prevailing institutionalist logic in comparative politics would suggest that once in place, institutions would have socialised the political actors into the existing structure by providing veto points in such a way that institutions would have been reproduced over time, but this has not been the case. Furthermore, why has change come about in two opposing directions, centralising and decentralising, despite many common characteristics between the two cases? / This study is based on a theory of congruence which argues that political institutions change in order to reflect underlying societal structures. More specifically, the argument is that political institutions in federal structures change to correspond to the ethno-linguistic make-up of the country. Accordingly, the unitary state of Belgium has changed its political institutions in order to accommodate the Flemings, Walloons and Bruxellois; while Federal Germany has centralised many issues despite explicit constitutional clauses against such changes. / According to the theory of congruence, when confronted with an ethno-linguistic structure that does not match the political one, the political structure changes; not automatically, but through the pressure of public policy concerns pursued by political actors. The ethno-linguistic community is the primary collectivity for which public policy decisions are made. The choices available to political actors are constrained by the demarcations of this societal composition. Decision makers might disagree over the substance of the policies, but they share the choice of venue in the form of the ethnolinguistic 'nation'. In case of a discrepancy between the ethno-linguistic societal structure and the political structure, public policy concerns wold exert a pressure towards congruence by demarcating a social collectivity for which policies are made different from the one set up by the political institutions. Thus, if the 'nation' is bigger than the unit that marked off by political institutions, the tendency would be towards amalgamation with the other subunits of the 'nation' and centralisation. If, on the other hand, the 'nation' is smaller than the unit defined by the political institutions, there would be devolutionary pressures on the unitary institutions. / The empirical research was carried out on two policy areas, education and mass media, through a paired comparison of Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium and Baden-Wurttemberg and North Rhine Westphalia in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Les fondements historiques de la nationalité belge, étude critique / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation histoire / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Origine et signification idéologiques de la scission communiste dans le parti ouvrier belge (1921) / Doctorat en sciences politiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Au lendemain de la Première Guerre Mondiale, les travaux de révision de la Constitution de 1919-1921 s’ouvrent sur des promesses substantielles de démocratisation du gouvernement représentatif hérité de 1831. Que deviennent ces promesses par la suite ?En privilégiant une approche interdisciplinaire, nous analysons l’évolution du droit positif belge qui régit la participation politique des citoyens et le lien entre électeurs et élus de 1831 à nos jours. Au terme de notre recherche, nous montrons que le constat posé par Bernard Manin dans son ouvrage Principes du gouvernement représentatif, selon lequel «la démocratie s’est assurément étendue, mais il est au mieux incertain qu’elle se soit approfondie » ,se vérifie dans le cas de la Belgique. Celle-ci a assurément augmenté le nombre de bénéficiaires de la participation politique mais, pour une large part, elle semble avoir perdu de vue l’approfondissement du contenu de celle-ci. A partir de 1919-1921, s’impose peu à peu la conviction selon laquelle la Belgique aurait basculé dans la démocratie grâce à l’universalisation du droit de vote. La face démocratique solaire du suffrage universel (masculin) tend à plonger dans l’ombre l’héritage aristocratique hérité de 1831. Nous montrerons que, pourtant, les attentes et les promesses de démocratisation formulées à cette date étaient plus substantielles que l’abolition du suffrage censitaire. Par la suite, sous l’influence du scénario selon lequel la Belgique aurait une fois pour toutes basculé dans la démocratie depuis l’universalisation du suffrage, les promesses de démocratisation semblent tomber dans l’oubli: l’approfondissement de la démocratisation n’est plus à l’ordre du jour et certains acquis démocratiques hérités des temps passés font l’objet d’inattentions. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences juridiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished