Negative partisanship in changing political contexts in Western Europe

Negative partisanship (NPID), capturing strong antipathies developed towards one or more parties, is shown to be a fundamental motivation for political and interpersonal judgments and actions. Despite mounting interest in negative political attitudes lately, there is little discussion on how they changed throughout and can be understood in the context of the drastic transformations of the Western European ideological and partisan landscape in the past decades. This dissertation examines the extent and nature of NPID and what we can learn about its consequences in these changing political contexts. The first chapter maps changes in the prevalence and nature of NPID over time. It shows a declining trend after decades of stability in the 2010s. I argue that this decline is indicative of disillusionment and disengagement with, instead of openness to, what the party system offers. I show that those most affected by this decline are also people that are the least invested in politics and who exhibit the highest indifference and alienation from parties. I argue that these tendencies have implications for the legitimacy of democratic actors and processes. The second chapter re-examines the linkage between ideological polarization and negative partisanship in societies. NPID is fostered by polarisation along salient ideological conflicts within electorates, but the precise mechanism shifts with the changing relevance of different ideological cleavages over time and across political contexts. The growing dominance of populist ideas promotes new value-based and moralised conflicts that take precedent over the traditionally important left-right ideological extremity in motivating negative partisanship. The third chapter examines the power of negative partisanship in making interpersonal judgments. Using an experiment to disentangle the effects of ideology and partisan labelling in the United Kingdom, the study demonstrates that hostility is largely driven by perceived ideological (in)compatibility. Nevertheless, when faced with out-partisans whose political views resemble those of oneself, people ignore similarities and make judgments based solely on the partisan „otherness‟.