What Emotions drive Political Polarization in Europe: The Role of Anger, Fear, and Ressentiment

Increasing affective political polarization has been observed in many Western countries, however, there is little known on how specific emotions drive this process. For some, the obvious answer is anger as emotion most strongly related to blaming and therefore loathing across party lines. On the other hand, fear is also related to radicalization, since insecurity lying in the core of this emotions encourages people to search for stability in finding scapegoats e.g. migrants or elites, seemingly responsible for their losses and thus developing extreme attitudes. Others theorize that from the powerlessness rooted in anxiety arises ressentiment leading to the political cynicism and mistrust, also related to populist support and the negative stance towards mainstream parties. Theoretically, all these mechanisms are plausible explanations of opinion and political polarization. Empirically, they have been tested only in the context of populist attitudes and voting, yet not in the context of polarization. With the unique data from ValCon survey I will investigate which of the emotion mechanisms is the most powerful explanation of occurring polarization in six European countries: France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Poland. Combining people’s emotional responses to politics (anger and anxiety), variables of relative deprivation, status anxiety, lack of political efficacy, and political cynicism (ressentiment) with extremity of their political attitudes, voting choice and felt distance to other parties (political polarization) I will try to disentangle the specific mechanisms of increasing contestation of political consensus in European societies, hoping to clarify how people’s feelings towards politics influence on their attitudes and political perceptions.