A New Journal with a Long Tradition

Sixty years ago, in 1959, the Belgian Political Science Institute launched the first issue of Res Publica. Today, Politics of the Low Countries (PLC) steps forward as its proud successor. For the first time in the journal’s history, it will be published entirely in English, aka the lingua franca of science. However, the shift to English is only the most recent language shift; until the end of the 1970s Res Publica was the journal of the Belgian political scientists and was published mainly in French. In those days even French superstars of political science, Maurice Duverger and Raymond Aron, wrote articles for the journal. Especially in the initial years of the journal only ‘francophone’ (or French) contributions appeared. It was not until 1962 that the first article in Dutch (or ‘Flemish’) was published, but, initially, this was more the exception than the rule. The number of Dutch contributions then gradually increased and Res Publica became a real bilingual journal. A change came about in 1978, when Wilfried Dewachter became editor-in-chief of the journal, and Res Publica became the academic outlet mainly (but not solely) for Dutch-speaking political scientists in Belgium. The number of francophone articles decreased continuously, and in 2006 the last scientific contribution in French was published. When the editors of Res Publica decided, in 2008, to collab‐ orate with the Dutch Political Science Association (NKWP), this sealed the ‘Dutchification’ of the journal. In the last decade Res Publica has decided to pub‐ lish articles only in Dutch, a decision that created a language barrier for the upcoming francophone scene of political scientists who also studied politics in the Low Countries. The transformation of Res Publica to Politics of the Low Coun‐ tries makes it possible to involve scholars working on politics in the Low Coun‐ tries in the francophone part of Belgium and in Luxembourg, but also in the rest of the world. That said, the choice of English as the language of publication of the journal is a pragmatic and not a romantic one. On the one hand, it feels uncomfortable that scholars can no longer communicate about their research in their own language. Some feel that it weakens the link between academics, political practitioners, the broader public and the students. Indeed, there is merit to this argument: we must prevent a language gap from arising in our academic system, as it may lead to a social gap. For early career scholars, in particular, the threshold for submitting first articles to a journal must be kept low. On the other hand, it is masochistic to sacrifice the understanding of politics in the Low Countries on the altar of a sort of cultural nationalism. The low countries constitute interesting cases from an international perspective, and for this reason we feel that there is a need to give an international audience access to studies focusing specifically on these coun‐ tries. Moreover, more and more scholars outside the Low Countries conduct interesting research on the Belgian, Dutch or the Luxembourg cases. It would be a