From bike paths to federalism: A study on the normative policy feedback of regionalisation

Studies on regionalisation have often made sense of citizens’ preferences regarding the reorganisation of the state by focusing on identarian and functional factors. However, the progressive decentralisation of power to lower levels of government has also triggered important structural changes, which go far beyond the level of political elites. Citizens, too, are affected by these changes as they adapt to a new multi-policy environment while navigating their everyday life. From the literature on policy feedback, we know that policy experiences shape citizens’ political attitudes and behaviours. Recently this paradigm emerged in the scholarship on regional studies: new findings suggest that the experience with gradual regionalisation itself may have a socialising effect on citizens’ preferences towards the federal states depending on citizens’ coming of age period (normative policy feedback). Authors theorise that citizens’ experience of significant institutional change during their formative years may shape their normative understanding of how a state is ought to look like. Yet, despite the growing theoretical attention for regionalisation from a perspective of normative policy feedback, we still lack an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. How do experiences with regionalisation through its policies durably shape citizens’ preferences towards it? This paper attempts to answer this research question by qualitatively exploring the case of Belgium as a crucial case. Using interview data with Dutch-speaking citizens from two different age groups, the study abductively explores how the normative meaning-making of regionalisation differs between citizens who came of age in unitarian Belgium and citizens who came of age in federal Belgium. The paper finds the following: When discussing federalism, citizens make sense of their preferences through a variety of everyday policy experiences as illustrations. Yet, despite locally similar experiences, their normative evaluation varies depending on their coming-of-age period. Resulting from the experience of a different, regionalisation-related context during their formative years, the meaning-making of citizens on why regionalisation needs to take on a specific form varies. Older citizens, for example, defend language communities as the acquis of a cultural struggle and despite chaotic language regulations in Brussels insist on maintaining them. Younger participants, on the other hand, often seek to abolish them in order to resolve a perceived democratic deficit. The paper thus highlights two elements. First, it showcases the need to study regionalisation related policy experiences when investigating individual preferences. Second, it affirms that preferences towards regionalisation are coloured by a normative and durably acquired understanding of how a state is ought to look like.