Political Renewal, Citizenship and Identity: The ‘New Political Culture' in Belgium

This paper explores the conception of citizenship as it was conceived and developed in the context of the new political culture, which was one of the Belgian ‘solutions' to the democratic crisis widely commented on in the 1990s. Although it takes as its starting point the Citizen's Manifestos of Guy Verhofstadt, now Prime Minister of Belgium, it does not offer a detailed analysis of these texts. Instead, it adopts a more theoretical focus which, with reference to the literature on multiculturalism, considers the question whether a contemporary (liberal) definition of citizenship accommodates a positive relation between identity and agency. Warning against pleas for political renewal that do not take into account the problematic relation between the languages of politics and culture, it hopes to encourage more deliberation on the function of diversity in particular and on the democratic process in general.