Project title
Local elections in Wallonia and in Brussels
Research Team
• Université catholique de Louvain : Régis Dandoy (coord.), Damien Bol, Jérémy Dodeigne (coord.), Vincent Jacquet, Min Reuchamps (coord.), Anne Saudmont, Ferdinand Teuber, Audrey Vandeleene
• Université Libre de Bruxelles : Anissa Amjahad, Marie-Hélène Schrobiltgen
• Université de Liège : Geoffroy Matagne (coord.), Valentin Jaminet, Marine Kravagna
• Universiteit Gent : Koenraad De Ceuninck, An Heyerick, Ellen Olislagers, Herwig Reynaert, Kristof Steyvers, Tony Valcke
Contact
Régis Dandoy
Description
This inter-university project collects and analyses data on local elections in Wallonia and Brussels since 2012. The goal is to provide a better understanding of the local electoral process based on the local and national parties’ strategy with a comprehensive dataset on all lists presented in the Walloon and Brussels municipalities. The project covers amongst research questions: list formation strategies, alliances, candidate selection, nationalization of local elections and list’s electoral success.
Data collection and methodology
One of the methodological challenges of this project is to provide a reliable indicator of local and national lists formation able to travel the great diversity of municipalities and electoral contexts (large vs. small, urban vs. rural, degree of inequality, etc.). Indeed, despite some proximity with national parties, a large proportion of lists do no use a national label but a local label instead. Methodologically, this project aimed, therefore, to develop a new measure of the degree of nationalization of local elections in Wallonia and Brussels. Thanks to an original and innovative coding of all electoral lists, this project managed to identify and explain the local and national parties’ offer at the 2012 local elections. It covers the 262 Walloon municipalities and the 19 Brussels municipalities. The number of lists present per municipality vary between 1 and 12, totalizing 1.012 lists. For each list, various information was collected including list label, ideological proximity with national parties, candidates selection, non-partisan recruitment, degree of professionalization, incumbency, degree urbanization, degree of inequality, municipality size, etc.
Publication
Dandoy, R., Dodeigne, J., Matagne, G., & Reuchamps, M. (Eds.). (2013). Les élections communales de 2012 en Wallonie. Bruges: Vanden Broele.