Attitudes about Regionalisation in Federal Belgium: The Role of Direct and Indirect Policy Feedback Effects across Cohorts

Regionalisation, in the form of a dispersion of political power away from national political centres to regional governments, has been a defining feature of European politics since the 1970s. Scholarship has shown whether and how regionalization was driven by public attitudes about the division of competences between governmental levels, and the extent to which other dynamics played a role. Yet, we still know little about the effects that these processes of regionalisation have had on the further development of citizens’ attitudes towards regionalisation (for an exception see Henderson et al, 2014). How do citizens react when they experience regional institutions and policies? This contribution tackles this question by building on the literature on policy feedback, which proposes a normative, resource and interpretative effect of institutional regionalisation (Pierson, 1993; Mettler & Welch, 2004). The paper extends this literature by further theorizing political socialization as part of the normative effect (Svallfors, 2010), and by specifying an indirect resource and interpretative policy feedback mechanism. It argues that regional institutions and policies may exert a socializing effect that feeds back citizens’ preference in favor of these institutions through processes of adaptive preferences. Empirically, we use a longitudinal perspective to qualify these expectations. Five cross-sections of the Belgian election surveys that were conducted between 1991 and 2007 are used. This approach explains observed differences in attitudes between citizens that were socialized in different institutional contexts and in different Belgian regions. The paper shows to what extent indirect resource effects are at play, implying that those who benefit from the transfer of competences to the regional level are in turn more positive about regionalisation. Additionally, it shows how regional identification is affected by institutional regionalisation and links back to attitudes about regionalisation. Finally, the results highlight the role of political mobilisation through elite discourses.