Agonistic and antagonistic affective polarisation – Exploring the link between dislike and political (in)tolerance from a theoretical and empirical perspective

Across liberal democracies, affective polarisation is often seen as a threat to the functioning of democracy and societal relations. From the perspective of democratic theory, however, it is not clear whether increasing dislike between citizens belonging to opposing political groups is necessarily a threat to democracy or whether it can also be part of healthy political struggles that invigorate and re-politicise democracy. Normatively, the answer to this question depends fundamentally on one's conception of the role of conflict in democracy. While some emphasise rational consensus and compromise, agonistic theories of democracy argue in favour of more conflictual, passionate politics. According to them, the crucial distinction between productive and destructive conflict is one between agonism and antagonism, that is, between seeing political opponents as adversaries or enemies. This paper aims to contribute to the emerging efforts to link agonistic theories of democracy with the literature on affective polarisation. Starting from Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy and conceptual work on affective polarisation, I argue that affective polarisation can take both an agonistic and an antagonistic bend and that it is, in particular, the nature of out-group "dislike" and its relationship with political intolerance that distinguishes one from the other. Complementing those theoretical considerations with insights from in-depth qualitative, narrative interviews with affectively polarised individuals, I provide a tentative operationalisation of the difference between agonistic and antagonistic affective polarisation that takes into account not only different expressions, targets and dynamics of "dislike" but also the link between dislike, identity, and political (in)tolerance. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of this distinction for democratic theory as well as for empirical research on affective polarisation.