Social, political and commercial organisations are stakeholders in the environmental policy decision making. Their mobilised power and counter power determine to a large extent the content of the decisions taken. Lately, the environmental movement in Flanders has grown stronger in members, professionals, financially,... but it remains relatively weak in comparison with the traditional, strong and aften pillarised intermediary organisations like unions, farmers and employers organisations. Especially its limited informal access tothe policy makers is incomparable with the exclusive and privileged access of those big organisations. Nevertheless the environmental movement is becoming a policy insider instead of an outsider, but this threatens the movements independence and its movement functions.

This analysis concentrates on the linguistic laws of1921 and 1932 concerning the linguistic statuts of the civil servants, and on their contribution to the quest for political identity of Flanders. It exhibits the real political signification of the parliamentary debates on unilinguism and bilinguism. This debate is in the same time paradoxical and instructive for the future of the country. The paradox is that the Flemish circles were in favour of the bilinguism of the civil servants (which postulates a unitary conception of the State), and the Frenchspeakings for the other solution (supposing the linguistic duality ofthe civil servants). The unilinguist solution which was decided will certainly f acilitate the federalization of the civil services beginning in the sixties. In fact, every solution was in favour of Flanders: either the bilinguism would increase the number of Flemish civil servants (due to the ignorance of Dutch language by the Frenchspeakings), either the unilinguism would create the bases for Flemish own civil services.

This contribution deals with the consequences of European integration for the relation between civil servants and policians. Data of Belgian senior servants who are not involved in European policy networks are compared with data of Belgian officals who are in charge of European negotiations. This comparison shows firstly that officials are more central in European policy networks than in national policy networks. Politicians have only a limited and indirect access to these European networks. Secondly, the more civil servants are involved in these European policy networks, the less their political alienation. Furthermore, the organisational self-esteem do not affect the communication networks among civil servants and politicians. Finally, alienation and self-esteem do not affect the communication networks among civil servants and politicians. The exposure to politics and anciennity seem to be more important predictors.

Rankings of politicalparties are often used to map the multiple party preference of the electorate. This article shows how the obtained rankings may be analysed by means of the exploded logit-technique, which allows for testing both the difference between the rankings and the effect of either categorical or quantitative independent variables on the rankings. An analysis of the effect of age on the party preference rankings of the christian democratie (CVP) electorate in the 1991 Belgian parliamentary election shows that the older CVP-voters tend to rank the liberal and the socialist party equally, white the younger voters hesitate between the liberal and the green party. The younger CVP-voters are also significantly less averse of the far-right Vlaams Blok.

Presumed catholic or christian influence inside the french speaking green party of Belgium is a very strong stereotype since 1981. Nevertheless no scientific work has ever proved that supposition. Starting from a large survey among the 2 500 Ecolo's members, the authors examine and analyze the inventory of fixtures. They present the main features of the members and distinguish the outlines of catholic and non-catholic's members.