Discontent with politics is high, political participation is low and politicians meet cynicism about their intentions. But does political alienation stand alone or is it embedded in a broader sentiment of disaffection: societal unease?
Amongst the general public across western societies, a negative view on the state of society is often discussed. The French call it ‘malaise’, the Germans ‘Unbehagen’ and the Dutch and Flemish ‘maatschappelijk onbehagen’, but they all but point to the same phenomenon, a discomfort with the direction society is heading. However, this societal unease has received little scientific attention.
Over the last few decades, scholars have widely signaled discontent with various aspects of society. Political scientists are troubled by decreasing levels of political trust and engagement and the rise of populism and extreme right parties. Sociologists investigate the supposed loss of social capital, failing integration of immigrants and xenophobia and socioeconomic inequality. Criminologists focus on the perception of ever increasing levels of criminality. Nevertheless, empirical research on the commonality between these varied attitudes remains limited and fragmented.
This paper has three aims. First, it proposes a theoretical model of societal unease by integrating a broad range of interdisciplinary literature. Second, the commonalities among attitudes are studied, testing whether this model of societal unease holds empirically. We employ confirmatory factor analysis in a case study of the Netherlands (with survey data from 2012) and prove that our theoretical model of societal unease exists empirically. Finally, we use the scale of unease to understand its relationship with various types of disengagement with politics: political alienation, political cynicism and electoral abstention.
