The smallest parliament in Belgium is the one of the German-speaking community with its 25 members. It is responsible for only 74.000 inhabitants and nine municipalities, but it is nonetheless a fully fledged parliament and government. Due to its limited size and therefore little attention in media and political science, its functioning is quite unknown. This article describes the profile of its politicians and examines the legislative and controlling function of the Parliament, while considering its relationship with the Government. As in other parliaments, we expect a dominant government but due to some distinct characteristics, we expect this to be even truer for the German Community. Therefore, while explaining the results of our research, the emphasis will be put on these characteristics.

Over the past decade many Western local governments have been experimenting with initiatives inviting the participation of ordinary citizens in public policy-making. However recurrently popular the idea of such participation, its practice is usually quite disappointing. Few ordinary citizens take an interest in participating in policy-affairs, and official policy-makers, anyhow, often seem to lack the will or means to contemplate or adopt their policy-suggestions. Hence, policy participation by ordinary citizens has a strong tendency to “evaporate”. In this article I address the question why this might be so. Drawing from the literature and qualitative interviews, I suggest five broad causal mechanisms to account for the phenomenon of participatory evaporation. This phenomenon seems, in fact, so overdetermined that it is hard to think of the conditions under which policy participation by ordinary citizens might work at all.

According to many observers, contemporary politicians too often are being swayed by the issues of the day. Elected representatives are supposed to permanently monitor public opinion in general and opinion polls in particular and to act accordingly. An analysis of in-depth interviews with Dutch MPs and a content analysis of an important, long-lasting debate in Dutch Parliament indicates, however, that this popular claim is a misconception. Elected representatives disagree on the content and manifestations of ‘public opinion’ and seldom take it into consideration in their role as representatives. Moreover, public opinion is taken seriously only if it is well-considered and based on substantive knowledge and conclusive arguments.