Euroscepticism in Belgium: Parties and voters in and toward the European Union

This PhD thesis focuses on Euroscepticism in Belgium. It presents four studies, each relying
on different and partly overlapping strands of the literature on Euroscepticism, public opinion
and voting behavior and party competition. Each of these studies contains an empirical
analysis, using various quantitative and qualitative research methods.
The first study focuses on the relationship between Eurosceptic supply and Eurosceptic
demand. It particularly looks at voters whose attitudes combine Euroscepticism with moderate
socio-economic views. Confronted with extreme-left and extreme-right Eurosceptic parties
(and no such offer at the socio-economic center), they might vote for a party that reflects their
Eurosceptic views, but not their socio-economic preferences. The paper identifies such
‘unserved voters’ in the Belgian population, and it tests hypothetical ways in which they may
deal with this dilemma when they vote.
The second study builds upon this knowledge and focuses particularly on the act of ‘issue-
voting’ in the context of Belgium. The paper shows that even in a context where EU
politicization is low, where Eurosceptic parties are particularly extreme in left/right terms and
have low electoral viability, voters opt for Eurosceptic parties because of their EU-attitudes.
The third and four papers use the multi-level governance context of Belgium to empirically
proof the point that Euroscepticism is a specific form of the more general concept of system-
opposition. The third paper looks at public opinion toward competence distribution in a multi-
level context, and the fourth paper investigates how political parties deal with system-
opposition and system-support towards multiple levels: the regional, the federal and the
European level.
The general conclusions from these four papers are, firstly, that EU politicization can only be
fully understood in the specific, national political and institutional context in which it takes
place. Secondly, the studies show that a more refined conceptualization and measurement of
EU politicization, going beyond binary conflict and Euroscepticism as its primary
manifestation brings additional and valuable insights, and should be further developed in the
literature.