Feedback, Legitimation, and Diverging Regional Paths in Belgium
(2012) Panel 2301 “Policy feedback and democracy” ESA RN 32 Mid-term Conference — Location: University of Milan (30.November.2012)
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- Do regional governments get legitimation gains from their social policy? Does regional social policy exert an effect that feed citizens’ preference for the regional level of government? Put in the words of the policy feedback literature, the question is whether, and how, regional social policy conveys a message to citizens about the relevance of the regional level of government to deal with social policy issues, that is, has an interpretive effect (Pierson, 1993). Hereafter, the chapter focuses on interpretive effects defined as legitimation gains for the regional level of government . Drawing on the extensive literature on legitimacy and legitimation in European Union studies , a government’s gain in legitimation is considered as an increase in its positive assessment by citizens (De Winter, Swyngedouw, & Goeminne, 2008). The interest in the feedback effect of regional social policy arises in a context where, across Europe, regional governments were entrusted with core social policy responsibilities in health care, education, labour policy and social assistance (Ferrera, 2005; Keating & McEwen, 2005; McEwen & Moreno, 2005), and where the working of democracy at the regional level is investigated with renewed attention (Jeffery, Hendersen, & Wincott, 2012; Swenden & Maddens, 2009). On the whole, national governments’ legitimacy is partly built on welfare and education systems. Data from major European surveys shows that as national social policy were devised and implemented, the citizens’ perception that the national level was the appropriate level to tackle social issues, and that national governments were legitimate bodies of government, reached increasing levels (Huseby, 1998). However, knowledge on the mechanisms by which this interpretive feedback effect happened is scarce. Exploring such mechanisms is worthwhile in a context where the issue of legitimation gains through social policy is set in a new fashion, at the regional level. To address the operation of interpretive effect of (regional) social policy, the methodological choice was made to focus on a single-case study that features an almost natural experiment (Svallfors, 2010). As an outcome of the federalization process in Belgium in the early 1990s, a single federal policy was turned into two autonomously devised regional policies. Belgian communities (French-speaking, Dutch-speaking and German-speaking ) were entrusted with person-related matters, mostly education, social assistance and parts of health care, family and welfare policy. In addition, as we will show, while regional social policy in Flanders has triggered an interpretive effect, social policy in Wallonia has generated no clear feedback loop on citizens’ preference for the regional level. This setting allows testing which characteristics of the policy facilitates or impedes the diffusion of a message about the regional level of government, and its impact on citizens’ preferences for the regional level. In this analysis of interpretive effect, a special attention is given to education policy, mostly because it is compulsory (everyone went to primary and secondary school), and provides each citizen with a similar set of politically relevant resources. Analytically, this chapter draws on Paul Pierson’s analysis of interpretive effect (1993). Such effects are the combination of policy visibility and policy traceability, that is, of a visible outcome and of the possibility to hold a given actor accountable for this outcome. The policy design, the policy performance and its evaluation, and the political discourses on the policy are the main features of the policy that are looked at (Campbell, 2012; Pierson, 1993; Schneider & Ingram, 1993; Soss & Schram, 2007). As a complement, the chapter also explores the impact of pre-existing conditions, namely regional identification, on citizens’ preference for the regional level of government. Puzzling is the fact that the patterns of Walloon and Flemish citizens’ preferences for the regional level are strongly diverging over time: since 1990, Walloons’ preference for the regional level has decreased, while Flemings’ preference has markedly increased, and the preference is stronger on the Flemish side. If the policy feedback explanation was to be accurate, differences in the design and perceived performance of Walloon and Flemish social policy, as well as in the discourse of the political elite should account for these diverging patterns. In fact, there are striking differences on both three factors, whose effect on citizens’ preferences for the regional level of government are further amplified by diverging patterns of regional identification. Flanders and Wallonia almost stand for the two opposing poles of a continuum: on one end, Flemish social policy seems to convey the message that the Flemish government is dealing with social policy, that it is doing it quite right, and in accordance to needs and values of the Dutch-speaking population; on the other end, Walloon social policy conveys the message that the regional government is dealing with social policy to a far lesser extent, and Walloons are not able to differentiate regional and federal social policy. As a consequence, the regional government is not held accountable for a poorly performing education policy. First, we provide a theoretical overview of the debates about the use of social policy as a legitimation instrument by regional governments. We underline how the regionalization of social policy across Europe provides a new opportunity to investigate the mechanisms behind interpretative effects, both in terms of policy visibility and policy traceability. Second, we turn to a presentation of our methodology, namely the experiment-like case study of Belgium, and dependent variable. In the third and forth sections, we analyze in turn the visibility and the traceability of regional social policy in Belgium. The chapter ends with conclusions on the contributions of our findings to the analysis of the mechanisms of policy feedbacks in European welfare states.
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Dupuy, C., & Van Ingelgom, V. (2012). Feedback, Legitimation, and Diverging Regional Paths in Belgium. Panel 2301 “Policy feedback and democracy” ESA RN 32 Mid-term Conference, University of Milan. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/205579