This contribution should be seen as an attempt to retrieve information from restcategories, such as «does not know» and «no answer». From these, and from other data as well, we constructed 10, mostly summating, indexes of political ignorance. Among them is an index of objective ignorance, that is about political events, persons and situations. The others aim at more subjective dimensions. Does the respondent feel informed about the political process: about government and party performance, partisan congeniality, modalities of voting, local politics social problems, political issues? There seems to be some evidence in favor of the following hypotheses. 1. The indexes tend to compensate each other: respondents who score low on one index, do not necessarily score low on the next one. 2. I t is difficult to ascertain the validity of an index of objective ignorance. Moreover it does by no means express all the (relevant) dimensions of political information. 3. A mong indexes of subjective ignorance one should distinguish between «policy» and «political» information; the latter seems to refer to a situation where strictly political rules of the game, a.o. those of political conflict, prevail. 4. Of all indexes the «political issues» index showed the most discriminating power, as well as the most expected associations.

This article is concerned with the relevance of the Left/Right continuum for the belgian voters. It shows the distribution of the voters along the Left/Right axis, and how the electorate in general and this of each party locate the parties on this axis. It compares also the case of Belgium with this of other countries.

This article examines the composition and the fragmentation of each belgian party's electorate, regarding the criteria of social class and religion/religious practice. It also uses the «index of relative party preference» ( Lijphart) to show the main implantation of the parties.

The first part of this article deals with the problem of fidelity to the father's party allegiance.Socialization by the parents seems to be more effective in catholic and socialist families than in liberal (= conservative) families; it may be intimitaly related to a socialization of a religious or a laicist nature.Socialization by the parents was more effective in the past; younger people show a tendency to be less influenced by it.Socialization by the parents is more effective when the ideological context tends in the same direction (catholics in Flanders, socialists in Wallonia). The second part of the article deals with the problem of voting homogeneity with couples. Results lead to the conclusion that the large uniformity of political behaviour within couples expresses two tendencies: the fact that in most cases one marries within the ideological «family». One belongs to and the fact that marriage exerts a socialization which is essentially influencing non-catholics.

According to an opinion poll which was carried out in the middle of 1975 with a representative sample of Belgian citizens, the problems which most imposed themselves about that time were economie problems, viz.inflation and employment. These two problems were perceived as the most pressing by the more active part of the population as well. However, the solutions that citizens favour for a broad range of problems are not logically consistent, and demonstrate that many citizens have but very little insight in the problems' structure. Yet, those who do feel more concerned, generally favour the same solutions as does the average citizen; there is no polarization to be noticed.Considerable differences are brought forward by splitting up the results in two main regions: Flanders vs. Wallonia. The ethnic and linguistic difference appears to be also a political difference as far as problem-solving is concerned. The type of solutions citizens favour also shows that the stereotype «conservative Flanders» vs. «progressist Wallonia» is not valid any longer.

Subject of this article is the Belgian citizen's oppositional behaviour taken in the largest sense and considered as an opportunity to express his preferences. Starting from the supposition that a policy decision is not perceived as being conform to the citizens' interests or beliefs, attention is focused on their propensity to engage in oppositional action and their preferences for different means of expression.Such propensity appears to be rather limited and therefore one has also examined their belief in the success of an oppositional action and their insight in contemporary societal problems. Those data are compared with the actual oppositional behaviour during the last five years, which was found to be even smaller than the propensity. Further, three scales are constructed, indicating similarities and dissimilarities, as far as means of expression are concerned, between the preferences of the whole population and the behaviour of the small number of opponents. In a second approach, the degree of politica! participation, dissatisfaction and information is successively examined in relation to the oppositional behaviour. This research reveals that each of these three elements induces a more intensive oppositional activity as well as a different behaviour concerning the use of oppositional means. Political participation however is the most infiuencing factor. Oppositional behaviour is a complex phenomenon. Information on the content of the oppositional action, not included in this inquiry, would complete this approach.

Results from an opinion poll, held in mid-year 1975, with a representative sample of Belgian citizens, show that the oppositions the citizens perceive, are partly of a universal nature and partly specifically Belgian. Those who have gat power vs. those who have not, young vs. old, male vs. female are oppositions that complement more specifically Belgian conflict dimensions: socio-economic problems, religion, ethnicity. The political parties are instrumental towards some poles on such confiict dimensions, but the instrumentality is not yet proportionalto the share of the poles in the total population; moreover, it is quite weak towards some poles. The image the public has about the power hierarchy in Belgium appears to coincide rather adequately with a ranking on the power hierarchy as established by the top-participants. People do realize who really is powerful. Besides, the basic institutions of parliamentary democracy are fundamentally recognized and accepted. One finds indeed quite unambiguous appreciations of the individual and social rights and freedoms, of the institutionalization of conflict solution and of the maintenance of the political entity.

This article tries to confront the answers to certain questions in the opinion poll with the analysis (as proposed by Dahrendorf) of class conflict in our types of societies. It is wrong to say that people have modified the image they have of society, or that they would not consider it in terms of division and conflict any langer: conflicts are rather well perceived by public-opinion; their aggravation is felt by many.According to the results of the poll, public opinion holds it that positions in the professional authority structure tend to be no longer identical with positions in the authority structure in society as a whole. This distinction goes together with a diminution of the importance of the professional role. While quite well perceiving authority conflicts, the public seems to try to keep at some «distance» from these conflicts.According to their electorate's structure, political «families» express images of society either rather in terms of division and coercion (being associated with a larger dissatisfaction, with feelings of relative deprivation), or more in terms of integration (being associated with more satisfaction).

T he article studies the answers collected for seven questions: four of these deal with the present functioning of the socio-political system; the three last questions concern the future of the system. One has studied respectively: the attitudes towards the basic values of the consumers' society; the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life in Belgium; the developments in satisfaction or dissatisfaction during the last four years; how the various main social categories judge their living conditions; the attitudes towards an eventual redistribution of national income; the opinions about the probable development of the political system; those opinions which reveal how one wants the political system to develop. The study of these two last items has allowed to tackle some problems of theoretical interpretation: revolutionary vs. authoritarian risk, dissatisfaction «within the regime» vs. «against the regime», ambivalence of political attitudes, social function of the political power, revolutionary attitudes and rational calculus.