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Copyright

Soetkin Verhaegen, Virginie Van Ingelgom, Louise Knops, Karen Celis, Kenza Amara-Hammou

Published On

2024-09-06

Page Range

pp. 249–278

Language

  • English

Print Length

30 pages

10. What do resentful citizens want from democracy?

Chapter of: Bitter-Sweet Democracy?: Analyzing citizens' resentment towards politics in Belgium(pp. 249–278)
Political resentment is increasingly discussed, especially in the context of citizens’ dissatisfaction with the current political system as expressed on social media, in the streets, and through support for populist parties. Political resentment is posited as the reflection of a deep discontent with representative democracy, leading to a longing for change. While it is often assumed that the change that the politically resentful look for lies outside the realm of democratic institutional arrangements, there are many alternatives to the current institutional design of democracies that may offer alternatives. This chapter asks two sets of questions. First, the chapter inquires what resentful citizens identify as problematic in the current functioning of democracy, and what they are resentful about. Second, the chapter asks what resentful citizens’ (anti-)democratic preferences are, and what alternative (democratic) institutional designs they prefer. These questions are answered using a mixed-methods design integrating survey data of representative samples of Flemish and Walloon citizens, focus groups with Belgian citizens, and democratic theory. Drawing on survey data and qualitative insights from focus groups discussions, the analyses show that citizens with higher levels of political resentment show lower satisfaction with the way in which democracy works, hold more populist attitudes, are more likely to vote blank or abstain, and are more supportive of referenda and citizen fora. The latter democratic innovations may attract the support of resentful citizens because of their perceived novelty and shift away from the ‘distrusted representatives’. Remaining hope and expectations vis-à-vis representatives, however, also calls for reflections on how to improve representative relationship in a way that responds to the resentful citizens’ concerns. Recursive and reflexive representative relationships are discussed as a way forward in that respect.

Contributors

Soetkin Verhaegen

(author)
Assistant Professor at Maastricht University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4819-154X

Soetkin Verhaegen is an assistant professor of European Politics at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Political Science, at Maastricht University. She is an associate researcher at the Institute of Political Science Louvain-Europe (ISPOLE) at UCLouvain. Her research inquires into citizens’ perceptions of the (il)legitimacy of governance at different levels, European identity, youth, socialization, political participation, and elites. Her work has been published in, amongst others, American Political Science Review, Oxford University Press, European Journal of International Relations, Comparative European Politics, and Journal of Common Market Studies.

Virginie Van Ingelgom

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5049-1862

Virginie Van Ingelgom is a F.R.S.–FNRS Senior Research Associate and professor of Political Science at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain-Europe, UCLouvain. Her research interests focus on democracy and legitimacy at the subnational, national, European, and global levels, on citizens’ attitudes towards European integration, on policy feedback, and in qualitative and mixed methods. Her previous work has been awarded the Jean Blondel Ph.D. Prize by the European Consortium for Political Research (2012) and an ERC Starting Grant (Qualidem, 2017-2023).

Louise Knops

(author)
Assistant Professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2495-7993

Louise Knops is assistant professor in environmental humanities at the Université libre de Bruxelles. During the writing and editing of this book, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests range from affect and emotions, to political theory, social movements studies and environmental politics.

Karen Celis

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7579-9107

Karen Celis is full professor affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Department of Political Sciences. She co-chairs the VUB Center for Democratic Futures (DFUTURE) and RHEA, the Centre of Expertise on Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality, and, until last year, the VUB Academic Advisor on Equality Policy. She conducts theoretical and empirical research on the democratic quality of political representation from an intersectional perspective. She leads political science and interdisciplinary research programmes and projects about gender, diversity and intersectionality; about resentment and polarization; and about democratic design and innovations.

Kenza Amara-Hammou

(author)
Postdoctoral Researcher at Université Catholique de Louvain

Kenza Amara-Hammou is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain-Europe, UCLouvain. She completed her dissertation on how people in socio-economically difficult situations think about political representation. Her main research interests are political theory, representation, activist research, participatory action and cross-disciplinary research. She is currently working on bottom-up normative theory building and co-creation.