What causes negative partisanship?

Recent literature has shown that negative partisanship is a powerful driver of several political attitudes and behaviors, including how much a citizen tends to be polarized. But what drives negative partisanship? In this paper I explore three different sets of causes. The first two sets of causes are measure at the individual level, and they relate to personality (Big 5 and narcissism), cognitive and political attitudes (e.g. interest in politics, left-right placement, etc.). The third type of cause is systemic, and it relates to the party offer – namely, it takes into account the presence and the size of far-right parties in each country. The purpose of this design is to disentangle the weight of each set of variables, both across countries and in each single one. I will investigate this research question by using data collected across 12 West-European political systems. By systematically analyzing the possible drivers of negative partisanship across countries, this study seeks to contribute to the understanding of the formation of this social identity.