Concerns are frequently raised about politicians’ increasing use of incivility. Yet, there is little longitudinal empirical work testing whether politicians’ use of incivility is actually rising, and little is known about the determinants that affect the prevalence of incivility. This study analyzes incivility over time and proposes a multi-layered framework of theoretically-driven incivility-inducing determinants. A quantitative content analysis of 4,102 speech acts in 24 Belgian televised election debates over the course of 35 years (1985–2019) shows that politicians’ incivility did not increase but occurs in a volatile pattern with ups and downs over the years. Confirmed by our analysis of the studied determinants, incivility shows to be highly context-specific. Particularly, incivility levels are affected both by characteristics of politicians, such as populism, incumbency, and gender, and by debate determinants, such as the topic under discussion, the number of politicians simultaneously debating each other, and previous incivility occurrences in the debate.

Are televised election debates (TEDs) a blessing for democracy, educating citizens and informing them of their electoral options? Or should they be viewed as a curse, presenting superficial, manipulating rhetoric in one-way communication? In this article, I evaluate TEDs from a deliberative point of view, focusing on the potential positive and negative outcomes of framing by politicians, as well as on the pros and cons of displaying emotions in debates. I argue that the use of these two rhetorical devices in TEDs is potentially helpful in inspiring deliberation, perspective-taking and subsequent reflection in both politicians and voters. This leads me to conclude that televised election debates should be critically approached as communicative venues with potential deliberative qualities.

This study investigates to what extent affective polarization, and more specifically hostility towards opposing party supporters, finds its roots in ideological differences. We look into the way out-groups are constructed when there are more than two political parties, and at the role of ideology in this process. Hereby we position ourselves in the discussion between those who argue that affective polarization finds its root more strongly in group attachments vs. those who argue that it is mostly rooted in ideological differences. We conduct our study in the context of the highly fragmented multi-party system of Belgium which enables us to analytically disentangle party label cues from ideological distance. Our findings demonstrate that affective polarization is largely rooted in ideological differences between party electorates in Belgium. Additionally, we find that this particularly holds for citizens who are more ideologically invested, namely those with higher political interest and more extreme ideological views.

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Deliberative minipublics are becoming increasingly popular, with both scholars and practitioners highlighting their potential to bolster public approval of political decision-making. Yet, it remains unclear whether minipublics are able to do so in contexts where the public itself is deeply divided – a concern which becomes only more relevant as levels of polarization are said to rise across the globe. In this study, we argue that polarized citizens may perceive minipublics and their outcomes as less legitimate than more moderate citizens. We use original survey data from Northern Ireland (n = 932), a highly polarized society where a minipublic was organized on the contentious issue of the region’s constitutional future. We find that higher levels of ideological polarization and, to an extent, affective polarization are associated with lower levels of perceived minipublic legitimacy among the wider public, although effects are small. This offers novel insights into the role of minipublics in polarized settings.