Party Families as a Cross-Cutting Cleavage on the Individual Level: The case of Belgium

Within divided societies, state-wide political parties have the potential to serve as a stabilising cross-cutting cleavage. Belgium is an exception in this regard as there are hardly any parties that are active across the entire country. However, in the various regions, parties from the same party family are present, and the assumption is that these “sibling parties” can function in the same manner as a national party. Using the 2019 CSES Belgian dataset, this study investigates whether sibling parties can attract similar voters across the ethnocultural cleavage and therefore act as a cross-cutting cleavage. Results show that in Belgium, regional differences within party families tend to be limited, with the Greens clearly serving as the most coherent party family, and the Liberals as the least coherent. We close with some speculations about what these findings imply for the stabilising function of party families within a divided political system.