“They don’t know what it’s like to be at the bottom”: Exploring the role of perceived cultural distance in less‐educated citizens’ discontent with politicians

Noordzij, Kjell; Koster, Willem de; Waal, Jeroen van der

doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12800

Cited by 25 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…These types of sentiment echo previous findings on cultural distance between citizens and elites (Noordzij et al, 2020). Here, the participants felt a distinct disconnect, a sense of distance from elites who rarely understood their situation and do not try to improve it.…”

Section: Resentful Affectivity: Anger Fear Unfairness Disappointmentsupporting

confidence: 83%

“…This illustrated an explicit form of resentment towards politics that goes to the heart of the relationship between voters and representatives in representative democracy. The participants of this group from Molenbeek reached a broad consensus around not being listened to by politicians (Noordzij et al, 2020) and not trusting what they say. Perhaps more importantly, this was not a one-off experience, but rather a repetitive and long-lasting source of frustration.…”

Section: Resentful Affectivity: Anger Fear Unfairness Disappointmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma

Cells

Knops²,

Ingelgom³

et al. 2021

PaG

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Resentment is a complex, multi-layered emotion, within which perceptions of unfairness and feelings of anger are central. When linked to politics, it has predominantly been associated with the alleged “crisis of representative democracy” and populism. However, recent studies have shown that resentment can intervene positively in people’s relations to politics and political institutions by facilitating certain types of political participation (Capelos & Demertzis, 2018). Despite this, the concept of resentment, and hence its role in contemporary representative democracy, is often poorly defined, with empirical investigations of its manifestation(s) remaining scarce. Borrowing a conceptualization of resentment as “resentful affectivity,” our article draws on the analysis of focus groups carried out in Belgium (2019–2020) with individuals where resentful affectivity is likely to be observed (i.e., contemporary movements of contestation such as the Yellow Vests, Youth for Climate, and individuals who occupy a socially disadvantaged position). We find that experiences of intense anger, fear, disappointment, and the unfairness of representative democracy, i.e., of how representative democracy works on the ground, coexist simultaneously with remaining hopes in the democratic system. We show how this complex blend of emotions confronts citizens with what we call a “democratic dilemma.” We document the different ways in which citizens cope with this dilemma and conclude by highlighting both the positive and negative ways in which resentment intervenes in the contemporary “crisis of representative democracy.”

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Section: Resentful Affectivity: Anger Fear Unfairness Disappointmentsupporting

confidence: 83%

Section: Resentful Affectivity: Anger Fear Unfairness Disappointmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma

Cells

Knops²,

Ingelgom³

et al. 2021

PaG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Jarness & Flemmen 2019; Noordzij et al. 2019; 2020). This is likely to make such environments even more frustrating for cultural conservatives than might be expected from disagreements over specific policies.…”

Section: Evaluation Based On the Quality Of Representation And Substantive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The micro–macro interactive approach to political trust: Quality of representation and substantive representation across Europe

Noordzij

Koster

Waal

2021

European J Political Res

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The relevance of the macro-context for understanding political trust has been widely studied in recent decades, with increasing attention paid to micro-macro level interactive relationships. Most of these studies rely on theorising about evaluation based on the quality of representation, stressing that more-educated citizens are most trusting of politics in countries with the least corrupt public domains. In our internationally comparative study, we add to the micro-macro interactive approach by theorising and testing an additional way in which the national context is associated with individual-level political trust, namely evaluation based on substantive representation. The relevance of both types of evaluation is tested by modelling not only macro-level corruption but also context indicators of the ideological stances of the governing cabinet (i.e., the level of its economic egalitarianism and cultural liberalism), and interacting these with individual-level education, economic egalitarianism and cultural liberalism, respectively. As we measure context characteristics separately from people's ideological preferences, we are able to dissect how the macro-context relates to the levels of political trust of different subgroups differently. Data from three waves (2006, 2010, 2014) of the European Social Survey (68,294 respondents in 24 European countries and 62 country-year combinations), enriched with country-level data derived from various sources, including the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, are used in the multi-level regression analyses employed to test our hypotheses. We found support for the micro-macro level interactions theorised by the evaluation based on the quality of representation approach (with higher levels of trust among more-educated citizens in less corrupt countries), as well as for evaluation based on substantive representation in relation to cultural issues (with higher levels of trust among more culturally liberal citizens in countries with more culturally liberal governing cabinets). Our findings indicate that the latter approach is at least equally relevant as the approach conventionally used to explain context differences in political trust. Finally, we conclude our study with a discussion of our findings and avenues for future research.

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“…At the same time, they may have less human capital and associated cognitive resources to deal with administrative burden (Christensen et al 2019), and in principle, the providers of those services can also deny them the services that they depend on. Additionally, qualitative research on citizen participation suggests that low‐status citizens perceive government officials to be haughty, and may feel that they are looked down upon by government officials (Visser, De Koster and Van der Waal 2021; see also Noordzij, De Koster and Van der Waal 2020). On top of that, scholars suggest that clients' status and class affect how they are evaluated and treated by public sector workers (Harrits 2018; Raaphorst and Groeneveld 2018).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socioeconomic Status and Public Sector Worker Stereotypes: Results from a Representative Survey

Bertram

Bouwman

Tummers

2022

Public Administration Review

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What views do people have of public sector workers? Public sector workers are often portrayed negatively. It is unclear, however, to what extent such negative perceptions are shared among different groups in society. Using a large representative survey in the Netherlands, we study whether people's socioeconomic status is related to having more negative stereotypes about public sector workers. Contrary to expectations, education and income are unrelated to stereotypes. We do find a relation with subjective income: People with low subjective income have more negative stereotypes. Moreover, the sector people work in is highly relevant. People working in core governmental sectors such as central and local government have positive stereotypes. Other groups—such as private sector and non‐profit workers—have a far more negative image of public sector workers. These findings help us to understand people's perceptions of public sector workers and the problems various groups have with the state.

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“They don’t know what it’s like to be at the bottom”: Exploring the role of perceived cultural distance in less‐educated citizens’ discontent with politicians

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Cited by 25 publications

References 51 publications

Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma

Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma

The micro–macro interactive approach to political trust: Quality of representation and substantive representation across Europe

Socioeconomic Status and Public Sector Worker Stereotypes: Results from a Representative Survey

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