Digitalization and Political Science in Belgium

For the last twenty years, political scientists in French-speaking Belgium have been federated under the French-speaking Belgium Political Science Association (ABSP) which is the IPSA representative for Belgium and heir of the once unitary Belgian Institute for Political Science. ABSP just celebrated its 20 anniversary and published a book in French that offers the state of the discipline in terms of teaching, research, and service: L’ABSP: 20 ans de science politique en Belgique francophone (Reuchamps et al. 2017). No fewer than 43 political scientists from all Belgian French-speaking universities and from the different fields in the discipline contributed to this edited volume. In this chapter, we build on these insights to present the state of political science in French-speaking Belgium in regards to the digital (r)evolution. Based on longitudinal data and perspectives about teaching, research, and service, we seek to assess how political science evolves in our – small – part of the world, with a special focus on how it has embraced (or not) the digitalization trend in the discipline.