The Role of Emotions in Policy Process Research – A Mechanismic Perspective

Emotions are a key ingredient of the societal and political life. Although they have been mentioned in core readings of the discipline, their role in theories of the policy process has rarely been put centre stage. Quite surprisingly, the same holds true for interpretive approaches, where emotions also lead a rather shadowy existence. This gap results partly (but not only!) from a lack of clarity on how emotions can be conceptualized when studying the policy process. As a result, the role that emotions play within the policy process remains opaque. Against that background, the proposed paper has two aims: First, by a thorough and systematic reading of the literature, the paper aims to take stock of the role that emotions play in different theories of the policy process. Second, the paper suggests to conceptualise the role of emotions in the policy process as elementary causal mechanisms. Mechanism-based explanation has gained momentum in the social sciences in recent years, and it is also being increasingly discussed in policy process research. The paper argues that an understanding of emotions as elementary causal mechanisms allows for a better understanding of the role of emotions in policy process research. At the same time, the paper argues that an explanation of policy change based on causal mechanisms can offer a complementary perspective for policy process research, which might also stimulate scholarly exchange across different theoretical perspectives on the policy process.