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Project

Sabbatical Marc Swyngedouw: The redesigned political ideological space: socio economic and urban transformation processes, glocalization, transforming welfare state provisions and (re)new(ed) cleavages.

In twenty years' time, the political power space in Flanders has been completely distorted. The three traditional parties (CD&V, Open-VLD and sp.a) still accounted for 38.6% in the Flemish elections of 2019.
In 1999 they still accounted for 60%. The proportion of voters that the three traditional parties were able to win in the 1991 parliamentary elections in Flanders – the start of the ISPO election survey – was 66%. The CVP/CD&V is losing its dominant position from 1950 when it still obtained an absolute majority of 60.3% and only 15.4% in 2019. But things are also going fast for the two other traditional parties. Sp.a 29.7% (BSP/PSB) in 1961, 10.1% in 2019. Where PVV/Open-VLD was able to grow from a small to a medium-sized party with varying success after WWII, with a peak in 2003 (24.4 %), it has since faded away and in 2019 it still accounts for 13.1%. The existence of the three traditional parties is openly questioned. This is happening at a time when Europe, as the most directly tangible element of globalization for ordinary voters/citizens, is gaining more and more power. Where economically the transformation from an industrial society to a service and financially driven society takes place. Where citizens increasingly come to live in an urbanized Flanders, but at the same time retreat to local customs, identities and values - glocalisation. Where welfare provisions evolve from need-based to merit-based. Where collective common identities are replaced by individual ones. The fault lines on which the three traditional parties are built appear to have lost their effectiveness. New challenges such as climate change, international migration, Covid19 prove difficult to absorb into the old fault lines. The central question is what is born of this disappearing social constellation? The rich Belgian National Election Research Data (BNES) of the CeSO-ISPO (1991 –
2019) placed in an international context may provide the beginning of an answer to this question

Date:1 Sep 2021 →  30 Jun 2022
Keywords:integration ethnic minorities, Voting behavior for extreme right and populist, Urban Developments and Social and Ethnic
Disciplines:Political sociology, Urban sociology and community studies, Race and ethnic relations