Peter Bursens

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• Ph.D Political Science
• Professor (Full) at University of Antwerp

The COVID-19 pandemic gave a new impetus to the study of citizens’ political trust in times of crisis. Especially because trust is seen as an important precondition for citizens’ compliance with crisis measures, research into the determinants of citizens’ political trust became highly relevant. Contrary to trust research during previous crises, exi...

Objectives: In federal systems both the people as a whole (demos) and the statespeople (demoi) need to be represented, be it in a unicameral or bicameral set-up. In Belgium, this is increasingly debated, to the extent that the abolition of the second chamber is on the political agenda. What are the theoretical and empirical alternatives to organize...

European Union (EU) agencies are known to have a high risk of capture by regulated business interests. To limit this risk, agencies try to involve a diverse set of stakeholders. One way of doing so, is to install advisory councils (ACs): permanent bodies with a fixed number of stakeholders selected by the agency. Current scholarship has mainly stud...

Federal systems tend to have two venues of representation to ensure that both the people as a whole and the constituent units are represented at the federal level. While this double representation is put forward as a basic (normative) feature of federal systems, little to no empirical research has been conducted on this issue. This contribution the...

Overall, Belgium’s governance of the pandemic showed elements of continuity and some—perhaps lasting—changes. The early phases of the pandemic triggered cooperative intergovernmental relations to take containment measures and urgent health policies, with an uncontested leading position at the federal level. Yet, with respect to economic measures an...

How do members of regional parliaments engage in EU policymaking? This paper examines how and why members of the Walloon, Flemish and Brussels regional parliaments vary in their EU-contacting activities, by adapting a German survey. Belgium makes a relevant case, as the ‘in foro interno, in foro externo’ principle entitles regions to conduct foreig...

SAMENVATTING In deze bijdrage gaan we op zoek naar verkla-ringen voor de variatie in vertrouwen in verschillende overheids-niveaus om de COVID-19-crisis aan te pakken (lokaal, regionaal, nationaal, Europees) tijdens meerdere fasen van de pandemie (van april 2020 tot mei 2021). Om dit verschil in vertrouwen van burgers in overheden om de pandemie aa...

It is clear EU law specialists do not agree on how the EU should deal with newly independent states. What seems to be clear, though, is that the Lisbon Treaty does not provide an unambiguous legal framework to deal with internal fragmentation. Hence, the conclusion must be that the solution will have to come from the political world, of course with...

Constitutionally, Belgium represents the most extreme case of regional entities wielding power over EU external trade policymaking. Formally, the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels regions can wield veto power over Belgian positions. Yet, only once has a Belgian region actually made use of this capacity, when Wallonia temporarily blocked the conclusion...

The staff flow between the public sector and organised interests is metaphorically defined as ‘revolving door’. This paper seeks to explain variation in hiring behaviour across interest organisations (IOs). Using data from the Comparative Interest Group-survey project, we show that revolving door practices do not occur systematically across IOs but...

Is Euroscepticism Contagious? How Mainstream Parties React to Eurosceptic Challengers in Belgian Parliaments Euroscepticism has long been absent among Belgian political parties. However, since the start of the century, some Eurosceptic challengers have risen. This article examines the effect of Eurosceptic competition on the salience other parties...

The Conference on the Future of Europe aims at revising the democratic institutions of the EU. This contribution assesses representation in the EU through the lens of demoicracy, focusing on how the demos and the demoi are represented and how this interacts with the executive‐legislative balance and party politics. As the Belgian polity is a living...

Role-play simulations have become commonly used active learning methods to teach about complex, dynamic political processes. However, an understanding of why there is variation in student learning during such simulations is lacking. This study focuses on the development of student self-efficacy in negotiating over the period of one simulation. We i...

Over the last five decades Belgium has evolved into a federation with the aim of pacifying the divergent preferences of its constituent communities. In the light of the ongoing pressure on the current Belgian federal model, this article questions what other models might be appropriate for the Belgian political system. To that end, we take stock of...

The introduction of the symposium sets out a possible research agenda on producing systematic empirical evidence of the effect of active learning tools to the discipline of political science, inspired by and drawing from educational research. It discusses the core research questions of such an agenda. Do active learning environments enhance politic...

This study contributes to current self-efficacy research in two ways. First, it responds to the need for more context- and competency-specific self-efficacy research by expanding the research field to the context of role-play simulations and focusing on the outcome of self-efficacy in negotiating. Second, aiming to investigate sources of self-effic...

The Treaty of Lisbon opened the door for the inclusion of subnational parliaments in the EU decision-making processes. However, authors have so far mainly focused on the involvement of national parliaments and only rarely included both regional and national parliaments in one single analysis. Consequently, we know little or none about the variation...

Researchers have been struggling to capture the learning outcomes of role-play simulations of political decision-making, which shows in inconsistencies in findings. In this systematic review study we argue that research designs should not ignore the contextual features of these simulations. This review aims: (1) to comprehensively map variation in...

Current research struggles to illuminate significant learning outcomes of role-play simulations, such as Model European Union (MEU) and Model United Nations (MUN). In this study, we introduce a model for measuring simulation effects, distinguishing between cognitive, affective and regulative learning outcomes. In particular, we introduce the MISS-m...

Europeanization literature has found that, in general, subnational authorities prefer to target the EU indirectly via member state channels. This article tests whether these findings hold in the non-legislative domain of the European Semester. With respect to the Belgian case, the article concludes that all Belgian subnational authorities indeed pr...

In this concluding chapter, we provide a concise review of all chapters in this volume and reflect on the ways in which simulations of decision-making in political science are given shape and are tested on their effects with respect to the participant’s learning. We also present some conclusive findings based on the different chapters as well as so...

This chapter provides a definition of simulations of decision-making in political science education as student-centred and active learning environments, introduces their design features and summarizes the challenges in current effect research. The chapter concludes with an overview of the parts (and chapters) included in this volume, highlighting t...

In this chapter we shortly introduce current perspectives in learning environment research in higher education and propose a general educational research model enabling to situate the various possible pathways in which effects of student learning in simulation-based learning environments can be investigated. In a next step, we discuss what kind of...

This volume deals with simulations as active learning tools to teach political science students. It presents perspectives of both political and educational scientists on simulations as instruments to teach about politics and more in particular about political decision-making. In this introduction to part 1, we first discuss the nature of politics,...

Simulationen haben sich zu einem populären Lehrwerkzeug in den Politikwissenschaften und den Lehrplänen von EU-Studien entwickelt. Befürworter weisen vor allem darauf hin, dass Simulationen im Einklang mit konstruktivistischen Lerntheorien stehen. Ihr Hauptargument ist: Studierende werden Entscheidungsprozesse der EU besser verstehen wenn sie ihr t...

European integration has created a multilevel political system that is dominated by executive actors. Despite the increasing competences of the European Parliament, a growing EU-awareness of national assemblies and an emerging attention of regional parliaments for EU affairs, the EU polity still lacks a sound parliamentary representation. As the EU...

In their response to Héritier's chapter, Dirk De Bièvre and Peter Bursens explore the dividing lines between the different patterns of covert integration she distinguishes, and provide some reflections about combinations of these different patterns. They do so by illustrating the great usefulness and wide applicability of these seemingly simple ana...

This book aims at capturing some of the most pregnant aspects of complex political decision making. The complexity of political decision making shows itself in many contexts and affects several constituting features of these contexts. This edited volume expands on the implications of complexity on issues of legitimacy, leadership and communication...

The argument that EU suffers a democratic deficit is commonly defended by the argument that as a polity, it is too diverse. This raises the question whether other heterogeneous polities are democratically illegitimate as well. We examine democratic support by analysing the conditions for perceived democratic legitimacy in diverse and non-diverse po...

Europe in Flanders: An exploratory study of the impact of European integration on Flemish political parties This article discusses the Europeanisation of Flemish political parties. Based on a dataset spanning the period 1999-2014, the article assesses whether the increase in EU salience at the level of the party (elites) after 2010 resulted in incr...

The multi-level system of the EU (European Union) constrains the institutionalized representation of the regional tier of government. Consequently, SNAs (sub-national authorities) seek to represent their interests through various lobbying practices, including taking part in the European Commission's open consultations. In this article, we argue tha...

This article probes into how regions organize themselves to deal effectively with the Europe 2020 reform program. More specifically, it maps governance structures of regional policy-making and implementation of Europe 2020 and explains variation in these structures between policy domains and policy stages. The empirical focus is Flanders as this Be...

Simulations have become popular teaching tools in political science and EU studies curricula. Proponents point out that simulations match with constructivist theories of learning. They argue that students will better understand EU decision making when they combine theoretical knowledge about negotiation theory with knowledge about how the EU works...

Simulations have become popular teaching tools in political science curricula. In particular, European Studies programs have often been complemented with all kinds of simulation exercises. Proponents argue that simulations have several advantages as teaching tools. This paper investigates pedagogical literature and presents a framework to assess th...

The debate on democratic legitimacy of multilevel political systems such as supranational organizations and federal states has not yet been conducted in a comprehensive way. While there is a fierce academic debate on the democratic deficit of the EU polity, the Belgian political system has hardly been analyzed from this perspective, although some o...

One conclusion in the literature on domestic European Union (EU) coordination is that the formal institutional properties of countries—devolved versus centralized or unitary—affect the nature of coordination practices. Basically, the view has emerged that domestic coordination is a largely bureaucratic process in which political control mechanisms...

This paper disentangles the impact of various dimensions of European integration on different aspects of the Belgian federal polity. We discern two opposite trends. While the institutional embeddedness of Belgium as an EU member state results in domestic centralizing tendencies and co-operative political practices, economic integration stimulates p...

This chapter examines the impact of Europeanization upon the sub-national authorities (SNAs) of European Union member states. The Europeanization of SNAs can be broken down to the effect of EU membership on the policies, politics, and polity of SNAs. With respect to policies, the scarce literature available suggests that SNAs implement EU legislati...

This chapter examines the impact of Europeanization upon the sub-national authorities (SNAs) of European Union member states. The Europeanization of SNAs can be broken down to the effect of EU membership on the policies, politics, and polity of SNAs. With respect to policies, the scarce literature available suggests that SNAs implement EU legislati...

This article argues that the literature on paradiplomacy has been very successful in conceptualizing the external activities of regions and in making descriptive inventories of paradiplomatic activities and instruments. However, we also claim that it has not yet delivered satisfactory explanations for the development of regional foreign activities....

This article argues that the literature on paradiplomacy has been very successful in conceptualizing the external activities of regions and in making descriptive inventories of paradiplomatic activities and instruments. However, we also claim that it has not yet delivered satisfactory explanations for the development of regional foreign activities....

Preliminary remarks: This draft paper outlines the research design of the edited volume on the 2010 Belgian EU Presidency (and will serve as the backbone of the introduction). It further elaborates the two questions of the kick-off workshop of the research network: (1) how to study an EU Presidency; and (2) what to study on the Belgian EU Presidenc...

This paper considers how subnational entities adapt under the pressure of European integration. In particular, the article looks at whether the combined institutional mechanisms of goodness-of-fit and mediating domestic factors offer sufficient understanding of adaptational behaviour by regions of member states. Empirical data come from the transpo...

In a paper on methodological aspects of Europeanization, Falkner (2003a) suggests that much more work should go into the operationalization of the variables used. This observation is also a relevant point of departure for an overview of the impact of the EU on the state structures of its member states. How can state structures be operationalized as...

This article investigates the impact of European integration on the Belgian federal polity. In particular, we substantiate two propositions. First, we show that European integration stimulates Regions, Communities and central government to cooperate. Second, Europe prevents the central government level from disappearing. Europeanisation seems to ha...

In the literature on European integration liberal intergovernmentalism and multi–level governance are often presented as competing approaches. In this article, the value of both approaches’ claims with respect to describing the involvement of the subnational level in European policy–making is put to a test. Empirical data are drawn from the Belgian...

This article addresses the issue of cohesion within the anti-globalization movement. More in particular it deals with the horizontal cohesion of the protesters. Drawing from social movement literature, hypotheses are elaborated with respect to the cohesion of opinions and behavior among the members of sub-movements. The data stem from a unique surv...

The Belgian Federation and European Policy-making: preference formation and representation of Belgian interests In this article we examine the organisation of European policy-making in Belgium. The core question is whether the federal level is hollowing out in favour of the regional level, with respect to European preference formation and interest...

This article addresses the issue of cohesion within the anti‐globalization movement. More in particular it deals with the horizontal cohesion of the protesters. Drawing from social movement literature, hypotheses are elaborated with respect to the cohesion of opinions and behavior among the members of sub‐movements. The data stem from a unique surv...