Articles
Author: Liesbeth Hooghe
Despite major institutional and political changes in the Belgian political system in the last 25 years, the electoral organization has been very stable.
The adaptations of the electoral organization have even been less in the province of Brabant, although the politica! developments have caused there additional problems. Brabant's electoral constituencies contain a rather strange mixture of heterogeneous electorates : (1) a constituency, which consists of the bilingual capital Brussels as welt as several Flemish communes, (2) a unilingual Walloon constituency, (3) a unilingual Flemish constituency. The proposed solutions for Brabant's complex situation can be summarized into six alternative systems of electoral organization, concentrating either on the functioning of the system of provincial allotment (II, III, IV : to prevent the election of a candidate from one language community in the unilingual constituency that is part of the other language community), or on a radical redrawing of the boundaries of the electoral constituencies (V, VI, VII : to separate the
Flemish and French electorale more neatly).
The impact of the six alternatives on the seats distribution among the political parties is rather restricted. The shifts of seats inside the parties (from one constituency to another) are more striking than between the parties. Alternatives IV and VI cause the largest reallocation of seats between the parties, whereas alternatives II, III and V result in only minor changes.
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How to Cite: Hooghe, L. (1987) “Nota over de herinrichting van de kiesindeling in Brabant”, Res Publica. 29(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/rp.v29i2.18953