A Comparison between the Federal Planning Bureau and the Walloon Political Parties, concerning their Use of Knowledge: An in-depth study of different institutions and their use of the concept sustainable development

This thesis is an inquiry into how institutions use knowledge. First, organizations use knowledge to define themselves, their missions and the actions of their members. This is what is called the structuration of information. Second, organization can also interact with information that directly contrasts their reason of existence. This is what is called the implementation of accumulated information. How these two ways of handling information interact in an institution, can be traced back with the use of a new information framework. Concretely, the thesis applies the information framework on the modern democracy and looks at how this institution uses knowledge. Two mechanisms are pointed out: the market economy and the bifurcation between the private and the public sphere. After showing how these mechanisms help structure information, we present two institutions that play a crucial role in the up-keep of these mechanisms: the political parties and the Federal Planning Bureau. The political parties interplay with, represent and support the two mechanisms. The Federal Planning Bureau helps them in this, but also has the liberty to question how political parties use these two mechanisms. This thesis concludes with the question of how the FBP and political parties can improve on their role in the up-keep of the Belgian democracy. The political parties should stop using neoliberal discourse and policies that harm the working of the two aforementioned mechanisms. The FPB should also make its arguments politicized, if they want to increase the political use and influence of their reports. Instead of keeping the status quo they should strive for more pluralism in their documents that arranges arguments according to how political parties use information.