Steven Van Hecke's research while affiliated with KU Leuven and other places
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Publications (73)
Enlargement did not play a major role in the 2014–2019 Juncker Commission. Also during the 2019 election campaign, the countries of the Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership were everything but the focus of attention. Brussels, however, is increasingly aware that something needs to be done, given the growing influence of Russia, China, Turkey, an...
The EU is certainly not unfamiliar with crisis management, at least not in the broad sense of the term. Its history is marked by crises and the last ten years were even labelled a polycrisis. This seemed to end after the 2019 European Parliament elections with a new Commission that wanted to prepare the EU for geopolitical policy-making that went b...
In the run-up to the 2019 European Parliament elections, European political families nominated their candidates to become president of the European Commission, as they had done previously in 2014. Although this so-called Spitzenkandidaten system was claimed to have played a significant role during the election campaign, in the end none of the candi...
Recent scholarly work on higher education institutions (HEIs) within an EU context has focused on how universities and their core activities have been affected by EU education policy. The organisation of HEIs in order to shape European decision-making on higher education, mainly through their presence in Brussels, has received much less attention....
As Belgium is still perceived as a traditional pro-integration EU member state, European solidarity is expected to be part of the country’s DNA. During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, the country has not displayed particularly strong solidarity, not even towards its neighbouring countries. Neither has it demonstrated positive political leadership.
The book was inadvertently published with an incorrect family name for one of the author in this chapter as Walle, B.V where it should have been Vande Walle, B.
High-stakes crisis management in the Low Countries: Comparing government responses to Covid-19
Like many Western European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands have been strongly hit by COVID-19. Almost simultaneously, the virus spread, caused a relatively high number of infections and severe lockdown measures were imposed; however, at the same ti...
COVID-19 has hit many countries all over the world, and its impact on (party) politics has been undeniable. This crisis situation functions as an opportunity structure incentivising opposition forces to support the government. Not much is known about what drives opposition parties to (not) support the government in crisis situations. This article i...
This article provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of COVID-19 crisis governance in the first half of 2020 from a cross-country comparative perspective. It focuses on the issue of opportunity management, that is, how the crisis was used by relevant actors of distinctly different administrative cultures as a window of opportunity. We star...
This article examines how Europarties selected lead candidates (Spitzenkandidaten) for the 2019 European Parliament elections, and investigates why these parties changed or did not change their procedural processes compared with the 2014 election. As external and internal factors incentivized Europarties to democratize their selections, the main hy...
Despite new challenges like climate change and digitalization, global and regional organizations recently went through turbulent times due to a lack of support from several of their member states. Next to this crisis of multilateralism, the COVID-19 pandemic now seems to question the added value of international organizations for addressing global...
Like many Western European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands have been strongly hit by COVID-19. Almost simultaneously, the virus spread, caused a relatively high number of infections and severe lockdown measures were imposed; however, at the same time, the crisis management response has been sufficiently different to justify a systematic comp...
Belgium has traditionally been characterized by a lasting permissive consensus on European integration issues. The Eurobarometer data shows that trust in European Union (EU) institutions is stronger than in national ones and the level of support for EU membership is relatively high, although slightly lower than was previously the case. In recent ye...
The COVID‐19 crisis has shown that European countries still remain poorly prepared for dealing and coping with health crises and for responding in a coordinated way to a severe influenza pandemic. Within the EU, the response to the COVID‐19 virus has a striking diversity in its approach. By focusing on Belgium, France, Germany and Italy, four count...
In the run-up to the 2019 European elections, the Europarties put forward lead candidates for the presidency of the European Commission. These Spitzenkandidaten were at the forefront of their electoral campaigns. This chapter focuses on how five Europarties—European People’s Party, Party of European Socialists, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats fo...
This Discussion Paper takes a comprehensive approach to understanding the role(s) of European political parties within the polity of the EU. Its focuses on how European political parties can (re)connect with EU citizens. The paper emphasizes the regulatory framework in which European political parties operate, their internal organization and the ou...
Europarties regularly organise summit meetings of party and government leaders prior to the European Council. So far only specific cases have been studied, with a focus on policy impact with regard to European Council meetings. By contrast, this article investigates Europarty summits – particularly the PES Leaders’ Conferences – empirically and sys...
This article examines the transposition performance of three regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Scotland. This paper introduces – for the first time – regional internal market scoreboards, mapping their transposition performances in terms of timeliness and conformity in the period 2010–2014. These regional internal market scoreboards are based on syst...
Belgium is often considered a textbook example of partitocracy (De Winter, 1998; Deschouwer, 2012). The dominance of political parties involves many functions and dysfunctions in a polity that is highly fragmented along linguistic and ideological lines. Political parties do not only aggregate citizens’ demands and preferences, participate in electi...
Belgium, like Italy, is often considered a text book example of partitocracy. The dominance of political parties involves many functions and dysfunctions in a polity that is highly fragmented along linguistic and ideological lines. Political parties not only assert their institutional position as gate keepers to what demands and interests are aggre...
The selection of leading candidates by the political families, the so-called Spitzenkandidaten, is relatively groundbreaking as it is the first form of political recruitment organized at the EU level. The literature on candidate selection procedures has so far concentrated on national parties and their procedures. To our knowledge the analytical mo...
In Flanders, every political party has its own political foundation or study centre. Although
their importance for the party organisation is widely recognised, a systematic
and comparative analysis of these study centres is still lacking. This article is the first attempt
to address this empirical void. Based on document analysis, interviews and su...
Deze analyse schetst het profiel van de Vlaamse kandidaten voor de Europese verkiezingen van 25 mei 2014 en is gebaseerd op de lijsten die de partijen hebben ingediend bij de Rechtbank van Eerste Aanleg te Mechelen en op informatie die voorhanden is op de websites van de politieke partijen en de individuele kandidaten. Dit onderzoek vergelijkt het...
In recent years, one of the most interesting and potentially promising developments in European Union (EU) party politics has been the establishment of European political foundations. At the time of writing, no less than 12 European political foundations are active in Brussels and beyond, and the total EU grant available to them for 2012 amounted t...
The abundant literature on the European Constitution has largely overlooked the role party politics played in the European Convention. This article fills this gap by analyzing transnational party groups: how they were organized and which purposes they served. It shows that they mattered, but in unexpected ways due to the particular set‐up of the Co...
From the early 1990s onwards, the issues raised by the admission of new members were central to the internal development of the European People’s Party (EPP). There were, for instance, the changes in the Italian party system and within the French centre-right, as well as the 1995 enlargement of the European Union (EU). Probably the biggest challeng...
Political parties are essential to democracy. Democracy is hardly imaginable without the notion of party democracy. Nevertheless, at the European level, political parties are relatively new, compared for instance with the party groups in the European Parliament (EP) and its forerunner, the General Assembly. It took a while for European political pa...
Europe is undergoing a period of considerable change. Its States and populations are having to adjust to new circumstances. European society is seeking a new identity. The end of ideological, political and military confrontation between East and West has created new openings as well as new opportunities for agreement and cooperation.
After its founding in 1976, the European People’s Party (EPP) welcomed a number of new member parties in accordance with the enlargement of the then European Community (EC). Following the accession of Greece in 1981, New Democracy (Néa Dēmokratía, ND) joined the EPP Group in 1982 and became a full EPP member in 1983. Despite its lack of affiliation...
After the European People’s Party (EPP) was founded and met with initial success, the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD) began a drift into irrelevance which had become obvious by the beginning of the 1980s.Diogo Freitas do Amaral, then EUCD President, took a first step towards merging the two organisations. However, the impulse, which so...
The aim of the EUROPEAN PEOPLE'S PARTY (Federation of Christian- Democratic Parties of the European Community) is European unity. This represents an extension of the successful policy adopted by the Christian- Democratic statesmen, Robert SCHUMAN, Alcide DE GASPERI and Konrad ADENAUER, who laid the foundations for what has already been achieved. We...
The first steps towards creating the European People’s Party (EPP) were taken by the Christian Democratic Group in the European Parliament (EP).In order to meet the challenge of establishing a European party organisation in the run-up to the first direct elections of the EP, a Political Committee was established within the European Union of Christi...
The relationship of the party to the Group in the European Parliament (EP)has been central to the founding and development of the European People’s Party (EPP). For a long time, the party heavily depended on the Group with regard to both resources and exposure: there was no party outside the Group.271 Changes at various levels have altered this sit...
The General Secretariat is the backbone of the party; it delivers indispensable support for the political leadership of the European People’s Party(EPP). The activities of the General Secretariat cover a great variety of tasks: administrative, financial, material and organisational support (particularly for meetings of the Presidency, the Political...
Although they are not an official party body, Working Groups have been an integral part of the European People’s Party (EPP) for a long time.They are the backbone of its political work, where high-profile representatives from EPP member parties develop common positions and strategies on major policy areas, and submit specific recommendations to the...
From the beginning of the creation of the EPP, I was convinced that we also needed European political foundations. With the creation of the EPP in 1976, I drafted the first by-laws for the foundation of the EPP. However, political parties had not yet obtained the financial means to fund these foundations. This process would have to wait almost 30 y...
The daily business of the European People’s Party (EPP) is not handled by the Congress, which meets only every two years or so, but by the Political Assembly and the Presidency. The EPP statutes describe the Political Assembly,formerly known as the Political Bureau, as ‘the strategic organ’ of the party, while the Presidency – often referred to by...
The last decade of the 20th century saw, at least in Europe, the triumph of liberty, democracy and the rule of law. The 21st century poses new challenges to our values. Globalization, the new economy, the Information Society and new technologies demand new answers. The EPP will respond on the basis of our traditional values. These have to be reaffi...
The European People’s Party (EPP) Congress is the highlight of the party’s activities. Held at least once every three years, in different venues, it is the forum for agreeing on the political line or programme, for deciding about changes to the statutes and for introducing the party’s leadership and members to one another. The agenda is normally ce...
No other party body has seen a rise in importance and exposure equal to that of the European People’s Party (EPP) Summit. The Conference of Party and Government Leaders, as the Summit was called until 1995, was not foreseen in the original formation of the EPP. However, in parallel with the crucial role in the integration of Europe that the Europea...
The European People’s Party (EPP) did not appear out of the blue in 1976.It developed out of diverse forms of cooperation that had long existed among Christian Democrats in Western Europe. The first institutionalised cooperation dates back to the early twentieth century, when the International Secretariat of Christian-inspired Democratic Parties (S...
From the outset, much of the political activity of the European People’s Party (EPP) has been closely linked to its programmatic development. The co-founders of the party, Hans August Lücker and Wilfried Martens, were convinced that solid foundations were needed so that the process of building Europe would not be completely dominated by the preoccu...
Political parties at European level – Europarties – do not only seek to be represented in the institutions of the EU (office-seeking) and to strengthen their role in European Parliament elections (vote-seeking). They also try to colour the politics and policies of the Union, through the dissemination of ideas and the promotion of values linked to t...
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...
In his De passage naar Europa. Geschiedenis van een begin [The Passage to Europe: History of a Beginning], Luuk van Middelaar makes European integration intelligible by applying a distinction between three spheres - the states, the community and the intermediate sphere of the Member States - to various events that have proven crucial in 'the making...
Despite some recent studies addressing the Europeanization of political parties, we know very little about the relationship between national political parties and transnational party federations. By contrast, the framework for analysis developed in this article considers the active role of national parties in transnational politics and the specific...
Although demography has never figured prominently in contemporary political ideologies, there may be a great need to include such issues as demographic changes accelerate. This article seeks to offer a framework within the ideology of Christian Democracy and Conservatism for demographic change. The author's argument centres on divergent and shared...
As aspects of immigration policy are brought into the competence of the EU, the role of transnational parties in co-ordinating policy choices across national boundaries grows in importance. Yet immigration is often seen as a cross-cutting issue and transnational parties have limited capacity to enforce programmatic uniformity across national member...
In my paper, I examine the relationship between Europeanisation and Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe. 1 I pay considerable attention to Europeanisation as such, starting with some theoretical considerations and the current debate in the field of political science. In this way, my paper contributes to the new research agenda on Europea...
This article examines the application of the principle of subsidiarity in the EU, particularly the ways in which and the extent to which subsidiarity has shaped the institutions of the EU. It is argued that, after one decade of implementation, there has been some institutional impact, yet in a way that was not intended. The role of the Commission,...
In the framework of the European Convention during 2002-3, transnational political parties established Groups in order to influence the final outcome of this particular process of institutional reform, A Constitution for Europe . This paper focuses on these party networks. It examines how they were organised and which purposes they served. They are...
Citations
... What the institutional framework (Kuhlmann, Hellstrom, et al., 2021), partisan preferences (Toshkov et al., 2022), cultural orientation (Yan et al., 2020), and different forms of policy emulation (Givens & Mistur, 2021) could not directly explain, has been attributed to governmental and administrative capacities related to national policy-making styles. In fact, in front of the uncertainties and ambiguities of the emergency, resorting to the conventional repertoire and toolkit , and to traditional 'ways of doing things', could be a sensible response to the unprecedented challenge, and even an opportunity to consolidate or, conversely, change pre-existing governance patterns (Kuhlmann, Bouckaert, et al., 2021). Zahariadis et al. (2023 have been the first to adapt the original classification of policy-making styles, and then systematically employ the refined categories to survey the national responses to the pandemic in ten different political systems. ...
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... The role of the European party-groups Following the Spitzenkandidaten-success in 2014, most European parties kept the same procedure for selecting their candidates in 2019 (Wolfs et al., 2021). Only in the case of the ALDE party it was apparent that member state governments had become more attentive to the process. ...
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... Direct procurement can also be a helpful tool in the pandemic situation, which has demanded from the public administration to 'navigate' in a whole new market (Goff et al. 2020) and has put the Member States in a difficult situation (Van Hecke, Fuhr & Wolfs, 2021) where procurement, according to McKee (2020, 1), 'has failed on a massive scale'. Therefore, there is a need to rethink and recalibrate procurement policies (Love et al., 2020), to achieve more efficiency (Wang et al., 2020) and to start measuring their impact (Gutiérrez et al., 2019). ...
... While the Netherlands and Belgium experienced the start of the COVID-19 pandemic at the same time, and while at first glance the countries' official response and actions appeared similar-schools, for example, were closed only a few days apart in mid-March 2020 -several interesting differences in approach and background were present [21]. Belgium instituted a hard lockdown, with strict rules on when people could leave their residence, while the Netherlands asked their residents to stay home as much as possible, and recommended limiting nonessential travel, but without as dramatically enforcing it [21,22]. ...
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... In many countries, EU salience is traditionally low, for example because of a high level of consensual support for the EU or because other (often domestic) issues grab attention (Bursens, 2002;Wolfs & Van Hecke, 2020). At the same time, increasing European integration is assumed to lead to a growing Europeanisation of national policy debates as well as of EU-related party competition, especially as a reaction to crises (Hutter & Kriesi, 2019;Serricchio, Tsakatika & Quaglia, 2013). ...
... B. Knill & Tosun, 2020). Koordination als Prozess bezieht sich insbesondere auf "Strategien und Instrumente, mit denen Regierungen Organisationen oder Programme koordinieren" (Bouckaert et al., 2010: 16 Anfang des Jahres 2020 erfolgte im Kontext der beginnenden Coronapandemie ein abrupter Übergang dieses Systems in einen bis heute anhaltenden Krisenmodus (siehe u. a. Behnke, 2020Behnke, , 2021Kropp & Schnabel, 2021;Bouckaert et al., 2020;Kuhlmann et al., 2021a;Waldhoff, 2021 Die Zielsetzung der Bund-Länder-Konferenzen bestand in der Orchestrierung einer gemeinsamen Linie, "was oft, aber nicht immer gelang" (Korte, 2021: 33;siehe auch Franzke, 2021b;Münch, 2020;Schnabel, 2020;. ...
... In 2014, the internal nomination of three of the six 'Spitzenkandidaten', or simply presidential hopefulls, was affected by distribution requirements. Five years later, the number was down to two (Wolfs, Put, & Van Hecke, 2020). Interestingly, the actual voting procedure did not take geographical spread of support in account. ...
... Woulter Wolfs and Steven van Hecke note in their analysis of ALDE that over time the Europarty has faced 'growing difficulties to adopt a common electoral platform for the elections for the EP, particularly as the number of member parties increases'. 39 The clashes between classic and social liberals have been strong. The ALDE manifesto for the 2014 EP elections has a pro-market orientation, which tends to accentuate the ideas of classic liberals. ...
... According to the 'party article' in the Treaty (Article 10, paragraph 4 of the Treaty on European Union), 'Political parties at European level contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of citizens of the Union.' However, Europarties are easily perceived as being part of the 'Brussels bubble' that should do more to reach out to civil society and citizens ( Van Hecke et al 2018). Europarties have introduced membership for individuals, but in her pioneering study Hertner (2019) showed that Europarties had only very small numbers of individual members, with national member parties often against giving individual members stronger participation rights in terms of leadership selection or policy formulation. ...
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... Yet, there is also evidence from the PES that a lack of commitment by the heads of government has reduced its significance (e.g. Van Hecke & Johansson, 2013a, 2013b. Obviously the relative bargaining weight of individual Europarties is stronger when they are more strongly represented in the European Council (Hix & Lord, 1997;Johansson, 1999Johansson, , 2002aJohansson, , 2002bJohansson, , 2016Johansson, , 2017Lightfoot, 2005;Tallberg & Johansson, 2008). ...
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