This book provides the first comprehensive examination of policy analysis in Belgium. At the domestic level, the book integrates knowledge about the science, art and craft of policy analysis at different levels of government and by all relevant policy actors that bear on the analysis of problems and on the search for solutions. For comparative purposes, the book's analysis of policy analysis at different levels in and outside government in Belgium highlights key comparative features of policy analysis in federal systems, in polities with a neo-corporatist consensus tradition in policymaking, and in countries with partitocratic features. The book also adds to a comparative understanding of how such international trends as the professionalisation of policy analysis, greater participation and coproduction are translated in specific contexts, as well as revealing whether there is any ground to claim that European member states are converging their policy-analytical styles under the pressures of Europeanisation.

The book brings together a number of invited experts as well as a number of early-career researchers who are currently engaged in policy-analytical research. For many of the chapters novel empirical data is gathered specifically for the purpose of the book, through surveys (on policy work and policy-analytical activities) and interviews with key players both within and outside government. Whenever possible, the editors of the book have strived to compose teams of contributors from both sides of the Dutch–French language border (from university research institutes in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia), in order to prevent bias and to provide maximum coverage of the multi-level setting of policymaking in Belgium. As such, the book, by the very nature of the Belgian polity, is comparative to start with, and attempts to draw comparative conclusions on divergence and convergence of policy analysis within Belgium.

The book has several goals. Policy analysis in Belgium will be a work of reference for students and practitioners engaged in policy analysis, as well as for scholarly exchange. It can be used as a textbook in university curricula, and provides background material for open and in-house training on policy analysis to government and civil society actors. By highlighting the features of policy analysis that are typical for Belgium and its regions, as well as those features that might travel across jurisdictions, the book will also enhance the comparative understanding of policy analysis in both its theoretical and normative dimensions.