Federalism as ‘problem’ in the social imaginary of Flemish citizens

Although citizens are crucial for the vitality and legitimacy of federal systems, citizens have only recently emerged as a focal point of federal studies. A series of studies have investigated the attitudes of citizens towards federalism and the sociological drivers behind it (Henderson et al., 2014; Verhaegen et al., 2021). Studies focus mostly on the relevance of regional identity, the levels of trust from citizens towards political/federal institutions and the impact of a regions’ wealth on the attitudes of citizens. While these citizen-based studies provide useful insights into citizens’ attitudes and preferences on federalisation, an important question remains unresolved: the meanings and conceptions that citizens themselves attribute to federalism. Indeed, federalism is a fuzzy concept that gives rise to various and sometimes divergent definitions and approaches in the literature (Hueglin, 2013). When analysing citizens’ attitudes towards federalism, most studies tend to assume a unified understanding which glosses over the multiple and perhaps contradictory meanings which citizens associate with federalism. This is particularly true in a political environment where the notion of federalism is politicised and likely to give rise to competing views and assumptions across the population. In our article, we propose to address this gap by applying the concept of “the social imaginary”(Taylor, 2002; Van Wessel, 2010) to tap into citizens’ conceptions of federalism. This choice assumes that the attitudes and preferences of citizens vis-à-vis political institutions are not just a matter of rational interests and preferences but also deeply intertwined with their imagined ideals of a polity, their experiences, and the unmet expectations they may have when confronting their ideal perceptions to reality. Based on a series of focus groups among Flemish citizens (in 2008 and 2018), and drawing on critical frame analysis and thematic analysis, we find that, in contrast to existing literature on federalism as a tool of conflict management, citizens perceive federalism as a source of conflict and as a system that requires improvement. Furthermore, it appears that the imagined solutions are intertwined with citizens’ grievances towards and ideals of the state. Mobilising the framework of the social imaginary helps us to unpack unexplored dimensions of citizens’ attitudes towards federalism, in a context where federalism is a particularly contested and politicized issue (the Flemish-speaking community in Belgium). In addition, our paper contributes to the existing federal studies, by proposing a bottom-up and interpretative framework to study federalism, from citizens’ own words, lived experiences and stories.