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PILET Jean-Benoît
Units
Center for the Study of Politics
The Cevipol (Centre d'Etude de la Vie Politique) is a research center of the Philosophy and Social Sciences Department of the Université libre de Bruxelles. It specializes in political sociology and comparative politics. Research within the Cevipol focuses on political life, institutions, actors, and the norms and resources of democratic systems. The processes of action, mobilisation, and legitimation are examined with both qualitative and quantitative methods, from a contemporary perspective that takes into account the long view. While consistently opening fresh empirical debates, the Cevipol updates traditional themes of political science: the distribution of power and resources among social groups, the different forms of authority, elite recruitment, conflicts between interests, identity or memory, and the weight of norms and values. Four thematic axes structure the intellectual identity of the Cevipol - Parties, Elections, and Representation - European integration: redefining communities, sovereignties, and values in conflict - Identities, societies, powers in comparison. A qualitative approach of political systems - Sport and Politics
Projetcs
Folks, Authorities and Radicalism: between polarization and social construction (FAR)
The main objective of this project is to providea comprehensive and systematic analysis of the process of terrorism and radicalization in Belgium. More precisely, we propose an interdisciplinary agenda that interconnects three approaches that deal with different families of factors (political, sociological and criminological).
RepResent - Representation and Democratic Resentment
Existing democracies are challenged by critics such as Trump, Brexiteers and populists claiming that democracy is not representative anymore. RepResent takes these claims serious by empirically examining the relationship between popular democratic resentment and the functioning of representation. Is representation failing? And, is democratic resentment driven by failing representation? Democratic representation consists of several dimensions, a substantive (policies), a procedural (institutions) and a symbolic dimension (feeling represented by representatives). Adequate representation entails there is congruence between the preferences of citizens and the actual policies, democratic procedures and representatives. RepResent is novel in the sense that it systematically compares citizens' views with elites' views, that it tackles all three dimensions at the same time to assess their individual contribution to democratic resentment, and that it does so in a dynamic over-time design. Concretely, RepResent examines the 2019 elections in Belgium, the campaign that precedes it and the term that follows. Its institutional structure makes Belgium a good, even a critical case. Using a large variety of methods all with a dynamic component and ranging from traditional panel surveys, over content analyses and experiments, to focus groups and interviews, RepResent aims to dig deep into one of the root causes of the widespread democratic resentment characterizing current politics.
Evidence of a growing disengagement of citizens from politics is multiplying. Electoral turnout reaches historically low levels. Anti-establishment and populist parties are on the rise. Fewer and fewer Europeans trust their representative institutions. In response, we have observed a multiplication of institutional reforms aimed at revitalizing representative democracy. Two in particular stand out: the delegation of some political decision-making powers to (1) selected citizens and to (2) selected experts. But there is a paradox in attempting to cure the crisis of representative democracy by introducing such reforms. In representative democracy, control over political decision-making is vested in elected representatives. Delegating political decision-making to selected experts/citizens is at odds with this definition. It empowers the non-elected. If these reforms show that politics could work without elected officials, could we really expect that citizens' support for representative democracy would be boosted and that citizens would re-engage with representative politics? In that sense, would it be a cure for the crisis of representative democracy, or rather a curse? Our central hypothesis is that there is no universal and univocal healing (or harming) effect of non-elected politics on support for representative democracy. In order to verify it, I propose to collect data across Europe on three elements: (1) a detailed study of the preferences of Europeans on how democracy should work and on institutional reforms towards non-elected politics, (2) a comprehensive inventory of all actual cases of empowerment of citizens and experts implemented across Europe since 2000, and (3) an analysis of the impact of exposure to non-elected politics on citizens' attitudes towards representative democracy. An innovative combination of online survey experiments and of panel surveys will be used to answer this topical research question with far-reaching societal implication.
Reforming Representative Democracy?
Dans les démocraties contemporaines, une part importante de la population se déclare mécontente de la façon dont le système représentatif fonctionne. En réaction, de multiples réformes institutionnelles sont mises à l'agenda et approuvée à travers l'Europe (Bedock, 2017). Cela va de réformes visant à renforcer la transparence aux initiatives soutenant une plus forte participation des citoyens à la politique. Il semble que les partis politiques et les élus jugent que la réponse au mécontentement citoyen soit de repenser les institutions démocratiques. Mais est-ce vraiment le cas ? Le projet propose de répondre à cette question en trois temps à partir du cas belge. Premièrement, nous allons dresser un inventaire de toutes les initiatives de réforme institutionnelle observées au cours des 25 dernières années. Ensuite, nous allons tenter de mieux cerner le rapport des citoyens belges à la démocratie représentative. Comment l'évalue-t-il ? Quels sont les reproches qu'ils lui adressent ? L'objectif est de dépasser les modèles et outils actuels qui visent à saisir les attitudes des citoyens à l'égard de la démocratie. Pour cela, nous proposons de combiner une approche inductive et qualitative par des focus groups avec une enquête quantitative. Enfin, nous allons étudier les attitudes des citoyens belges par rapport aux réformes institutionnelles proposées au cours des dernières années. Une dernière composante majeure de ce projet est l'attention portée aux citoyens les plus désavantagés politiquement, socialement et économiquement (femmes, moins éduqués, minorités ethniques). L'une des pierres angulaires de la démocratie est d'octroyer à chaque citoyen le même poids. Tout diagnostic du malaise démocratique qui ignorerait les plus faibles serait vain. Ces groupes sont toutefois difficiles à approcher (Braconnier et Mayer, 2015). Notre projet leur prêtera une attention toute particulière, et fera en sorte de bien les inclure dans nos dispositifs de collecte de données.
