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 integrates the literature on rally-around-the-flag, political opportunity structures, party types and party goals. More specifically, we focus on the behaviour of opposition parties towards the government’s crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse whether and how the party type influences the position of the party vis-à-vis the governmental coalition, focusing on the case of Belgium. We categorise the seven opposition parties in Belgium as challenger or mainstream parties and explain their behaviour on the basis of policy-, office- or vote-seeking motives. Our analysis is based on party voting behaviour, elite interviews and an analysis of the main plenary debates.

This paper shows how interactive governance can be helpful in dealing with information asymmetries in the design and administration of public policy. It describes the checks and balances of a properly incentivized mechanism design of contextual or situational contracting that reveals information on diversity in demand for public intervention, deals with complexity, creates commitment to the public cause and disciplines uncooperative behavior. The contractual mode, moreover, discloses the actual trade-offs between rivalling criteria of good governance such as individual freedom, efficiency, distributional concerns and sustainability, deepening our insight in who gets – or pays for – what, when, where, how and why, as the key issues of policy analysis. Evidence from early applications is combined with suggestions for rolling out this new mode of relinking public policy, implementation and external control.

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 increased Europeanisation, defined as the increased mentioning of the EU in party programmes (i.e. programmatic Europeanisation) and the incorporation of the EU in political party structures (i.e. organisational Europeanisation). Our empirical analysis shows that salience does not adequately explain the level of Europeanisation. Rather, the ideological position of parties seems to provide for a stronger case. The findings therefore call for more in-depth research on intervening variables in order to better explain the varying Europeanisation of (Flemish) political parties.