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Copyright

Jonas Lefevere, Patrick van Erkel, Stefaan Walgrave, Isaïa Jennart, Pierre Baudewyns, Benoît Rihoux

Published On

2024-09-06

Page Range

pp. 139–162

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

6. Congruent, yet resentful?

Issue incongruence, resentment and party position knowledge

Chapter of: Bitter-Sweet Democracy?: Analyzing citizens' resentment towards politics in Belgium(pp. 139–162)
This chapter investigates the relation between a voter’s policy incongruence and resentment. Incongruence refers to the mismatch between voters’ and parties’ preferences: we hypothesize that incongruence will be positively related to resentment. The more incongruent voters are with either their own preferred party (egotropic incongruence) or the whole party system (sociotropic incongruence), the less likely voters can expect policy that aligns with their preferences, and thus benefits them. Such incongruence likely fosters resentment. We further hypothesize that the relation between incongruence and resentment is moderated by voters’ party issue positions knowledge. Using the 2019 RepResent survey data, we find no support for the hypothesized relation between incongruence and resentment. Rather, we find strong indications that citizens’ party position knowledge moderates the relation between incongruence and resentment. This indicates that it does not just matter that citizens are incongruent with their preferred party and/or the party system, but also that they know they are incongruent.

Contributors

Jonas Lefevere

(author)
Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4428-3570

Jonas Lefevere is assistant professor of political communication at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research focuses on political communication, electoral behaviour, and the strategic communication of political parties. He has published on these topics in, amongst others, Political Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Party Politics.

Patrick F. A. van Erkel

(author)
Assistant Professor at University of Amsterdam
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9235-7706

Patrick F. A. van Erkel is an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include electoral behaviour, public opinion, political communication, and polarization. He has published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, Electoral Studies, and Political Communication.

Stefaan Walgrave

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1814-1015

Stefaan Walgrave is a professor of Political Science and Head of the Media, Movements, and Politics research unit at the University of Antwerp. His work focuses on social movements and protest, public opinion and elections, media and politics, and the information-processing of political elites. He has published widely on these topics in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Political Communication, Political Behaviour, and the American Sociological Review.

Isaïa Jennart

(author)
PhD Researcher at University of Antwerp
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7436-8164

Isaïa Jennart is a PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research focuses on political knowledge and, more precisely, citizens’ knowledge of the issue positions of political parties. He is further interested in public opinion, voters, electoral campaigns and voting advice applications.

Pierre Baudewyns

(author)
Associate Professor at Université Catholique de Louvain
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5266-5803

Pierre Baudewyns is associate professor of political behaviour at the School of Political and Social Sciences, UCLouvain. His research focuses on electoral behaviour among citizens and elites, and survey methodology. He has published on these topics in journals such as Electoral Studies, West European Politics and Comparative European Politics.

Benoît Rihoux

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9836-5056

Benoît Rihoux is a full professor in political science at the School of Political and Social Sciences, UCLouvain. He is an international leader in the field of comparative methods and designs, focusing particularly on Configurational Comparative Methods (CCMs) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). He also publishes on mixed- and multi-method designs and is involved in diverse disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary projects, including management, evaluation, development, health systems research, and medicine, involving QCA and multi-method designs.