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This unique book presents the first systematic overview of policy analysis activities in Belgium. Contributors from both sides of the Dutch-French language border (from research institutes in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia) use original empirical data, through surveys and interviews with key players both within and outside government, to provide a comprehensive study of policy analysis in a multi-level polity.
By the very nature of the Belgian experience, the volume is comparative, drawing conclusions on divergence and convergence of policy analysis, making it an important resource for both national and international scholars.
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the practice of policy analysis in Belgium and its federated entities. The book integrates available and new knowledge about the science, art, and craft of policy analysis by all relevant policy actors at different levels of government. The book’s investigation of policy analysis in and outside government in Belgium highlights key comparative features of policy analysis in federal systems, in polities with a neo-corporatist consensus tradition in policy-making, and in countries with partitocratic features. The book also adds to a comparative understanding of how such international trends towards professionalizing policy analysis, and towards greater participation and co-production are translated into specific contexts. It also reveals whether there is any ground to claim that European member states are converging their policy-analytical styles under the pressures of Europeanisation.
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the practice of policy analysis in Belgium and its federated entities. The book integrates available and new knowledge about the science, art, and craft of policy analysis by all relevant policy actors at different levels of government. The book’s investigation of policy analysis in and outside government in Belgium highlights key comparative features of policy analysis in federal systems, in polities with a neo-corporatist consensus tradition in policy-making, and in countries with partitocratic features. The book also adds to a comparative understanding of how such international trends towards professionalizing policy analysis, and towards greater participation and co-production are translated into specific contexts. It also reveals whether there is any ground to claim that European member states are converging their policy-analytical styles under the pressures of Europeanisation.
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the practice of policy analysis in Belgium and its federated entities. The book integrates available and new knowledge about the science, art, and craft of policy analysis by all relevant policy actors at different levels of government. The book’s investigation of policy analysis in and outside government in Belgium highlights key comparative features of policy analysis in federal systems, in polities with a neo-corporatist consensus tradition in policy-making, and in countries with partitocratic features. The book also adds to a comparative understanding of how such international trends towards professionalizing policy analysis, and towards greater participation and co-production are translated into specific contexts. It also reveals whether there is any ground to claim that European member states are converging their policy-analytical styles under the pressures of Europeanisation.
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the practice of policy analysis in Belgium and its federated entities. The book integrates available and new knowledge about the science, art, and craft of policy analysis by all relevant policy actors at different levels of government. The book’s investigation of policy analysis in and outside government in Belgium highlights key comparative features of policy analysis in federal systems, in polities with a neo-corporatist consensus tradition in policy-making, and in countries with partitocratic features. The book also adds to a comparative understanding of how such international trends towards professionalizing policy analysis, and towards greater participation and co-production are translated into specific contexts. It also reveals whether there is any ground to claim that European member states are converging their policy-analytical styles under the pressures of Europeanisation.
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the practice of policy analysis in Belgium and its federated entities. The book integrates available and new knowledge about the science, art, and craft of policy analysis by all relevant policy actors at different levels of government. The book’s investigation of policy analysis in and outside government in Belgium highlights key comparative features of policy analysis in federal systems, in polities with a neo-corporatist consensus tradition in policy-making, and in countries with partitocratic features. The book also adds to a comparative understanding of how such international trends towards professionalizing policy analysis, and towards greater participation and co-production are translated into specific contexts. It also reveals whether there is any ground to claim that European member states are converging their policy-analytical styles under the pressures of Europeanisation.
This introductory chapter contextualizes and analyses the characteristics of the discipline and practice of policy analysis in Belgium. It first highlights the relatively young tradition of policy analysis in Belgium. Secondly, it identifies the characteristics of the Belgian political systems and their likely impact upon the nature of policy analysis. Thirdly, it specifies the current and emerging trends and challenges relevant for the practice of policy analysis and policy-making.
In Belgium, policy analysts do not constitute a long established, identifiable corps of professionals. Neither have they attracted much interest as a research subject. Only recently has empirical research started to map who they are and what they do. This chapter presents the demography of policy analysts as professionals. It maps who policy analysts are, how they are trained, what they are called, what job positions they hold, what they are supposed to do, and which networks they entertain. The chapter treats policy analysis as an emerging profession. It will trace the professionalisation of policy analysis in a traditional Weberian sense and examine how analysts acquire authority and credentials, through formal training, degrees, and certification. The empirical material is derived from two sources. The first source is a cross-regional questionnaire on policy analysis in the federal and regional governments. The second source is an analysis of developments of job descriptions of policy advisors recruited by Belgian central recruitment agencies.
Through their policy relevant research outputs and integration in policy networks, Belgian academics ‘speak truth to power’ (Wildavsky 1979) or ‘make sense together’ (Hoppe 1999) in political and public debates about policy problems and options. At the turn of the millennium, the federal and regional governments have moved to institutionalizing policy relevant research in what are called interuniversity research pillars, and middle to long term research programmes, thematically organised along the priorities decided by the respective governments. Next to these structural interfaces, there are other access points for academics to bring their expertise to policy-making. Sectoral academic experts maintain multiple relationships with knowledge brokers. They are welcome guests in opinion sections of the written and spoken media and hold positions in the strategic advisory bodies of different governments. Several of them are also active in think tanks, or act themselves as consultants in commercial university spin-offs. This chapter analyses the structural and individual access of academics to policy-making in Belgium. The empirical material is based upon documents analysis and budget information, on a study of knowledge utilisation in labour market and education policies in Belgium, and on a recent survey on the impact of social science research on Flemish policy-makers.
Both academic and applied policy analysis are relatively young disciplines that have found their way into academic curricula of universities only towards the end of the previous century. This is surprising given that policy analytical models were disseminated in Belgium already in the late 1960s, as was the case in the Netherlands. While this sparked the policy analysis movement in the Dutch government and academia, policy analysis instruction in Belgium remained subsequently underdeveloped, and policy analytical knowledge was taught in a fragmented fashion. The concept of the policy cycle was for instance taught under general courses on political science, or as a section in a course on public administration. Other policy analytical knowledge appeared under public management courses, or substantive policy courses such as social policy, socio-economic policy, and urban planning. On the basis of document analysis (including the regional accreditation reports), the chapter seeks to explain the development of policy analysis instruction from a fragmented into a more autonomous discipline. Next to this, the chapter analyses two more questions: whether official professional training curricula have also come to embrace policy analytical knowledge, and whether divergences in policy analysis instruction across the language border reflect different practices in government
