OPEN SCIENCE Publications

The need for safety is one of the basic human needs. States implement different protective policies to fulfill the task of granting safety to their citizens. Aim of the present study conducted online on a representative sample of Polish citizens (N = 1,124), was to explore emotions potentially evoked by seven protective policies in the areas of: the economy, social welfare, health, personal security from crime and terrorism, one’s own way of life, tradition and culture of the country, as well as climate and environment. It also examined the relationship between emotional responses to protective policies across these different policy areas and the political orientation of participants, together with their socio-demographic characteristics. The results showed that emotions evoked by protective policies vary across areas of protection. Only four emotions (discouragement, anxiety, disappointment, and dissatisfaction) were indicated by more than 10 % of adult Poles in all areas of protection. Age of respondents was the most systematic predictor for all policies. Although there were general trends in emotional reactions to all policies, there were also area-specific emotions and their predictors. These include policy-specific emotions such as grief in the area of economy, despair in the area of healthcare (with gender and political orientation as predictors), and pride in the area of protecting traditions and culture in Poland (with political orientation as a predictor). Protective policy regarding climate was the only one that evoked only negative emotions. The area of economy was the one with the largest number of different emotions indicated.

Research on representation and responsiveness is based on the idea that voters have concerns about certain policy problems that representatives respond to these concerns with concrete policy outputs, such as laws. In addition, once adopted, this policy output can feed back on voters’ concerns which are then satisfied and do not demand more of the respective policy (negative feedback, thermostatic model (Soroka and Wlezien 2010)) or are, in contrast, incited toward demanding even more of the policy (positive feedback, policy overreaction (Maor 2014, Jones, Herschel, and Wolfe 2014)). In this research note, I argue that by focussing mainly on preference-policy linkages, existing research has underestimated the role emotions play in this “chain of responsiveness” (Powell 2004), especially when it comes to protective policies, that is policies that are presented as providing protection to citizens. I propose an amended concept of responsiveness which adds an emotional layer to the existing framework and present an empirical exploration on the emotion-policy link on the micro level using data from the European Social Survey which indicates the fruitfulness to bring in emotions more plainly in the literature on responsiveness.

Having long been largely ignored in political science, emotions have become increasingly acknowledged as integral to human life, making them the subject of academic interest for political and social psychologists, political scientists and policy scholars alike. Challenging an understanding of reason and affect as one of opposition, empirical as well as theoretical work analysing the effects of emotions in political communication, voting behaviour, populism and public policymaking is continuously growing. There is therefore an increased need to take stock of these recent scientific advances on the role of emotions in the political sphere, and more importantly, with regards to public policymaking. This two-fold literature review provides such a state-of-the-art in a systematic and critical manner, showing that whereas knowledge on emotions in the broader realm of politics is already extensive, there is far less on public policies. In fact, from a policy studies perspective, it is policy preferences and policy-related communication which have enjoyed most of scholarly attention, thereby neglecting the concrete role of emotion in the process of public policymaking. Future studies should focus more on the effects of emotions on the actual making of policies.

Policy responsiveness to the preferences of the citizen’s has been a major topos of academic discussions in political science in recent years. Much ink has been spilled on questions like whether responsiveness should be considered a major part of democratic representation (Druckman, 2014; Sabl, 2015), to what extent governments actually are responsive to citizens (Soroka & Wlezien, 2010) and to which groups (Bartels, 2008; Elsässer et al., 2020; Gilens, 2012). What these accounts have in common is that they usually focus on material policies to study representation. In this article, I argue that while this perspective is of great importance, it leaves out an important part of politics – emotions. According to my argument, this is problematic especially in an age of insecurity when threats and anxiety increasingly dominate politics. Therefore, bringing together theories of representation, insights from political psychology, political communication research and policy studies I develop a conceptual approach to studying emotional responsiveness and set out a research agenda for empirical studying this additional linkage between citizens and politics.

The literature review presented here examines research on protective policies and on emotions related to policymaking, political communication and politics in general, synthesising the findings of 430 academic articles and book chapters drawing mainly from policy studies and political psychology while also including works from related disciplines. On protective policies, the analysis shows that the concept itself has not been used widely hitherto, whereas protection is mentioned repeatedly in articles related to specific policy areas, such as social protection, environmental protection or health protection. On emotions in the realm of politics, the review illustrates that scholars have extensively investigated the affective dimensions of political behaviour and political communication. However, with some exceptions, extensive empirical studies on the concrete role of emotion in the process of policy-making are missing from the academic literature. Drawing together the results of these two parts, the review yields several important insights about possible interlinkages, namely on the target groups of protection, the origin of protection, the assessment of the need of protection, providers of protection, policy instruments providing protection, drivers of protection and the time horizon related to protection. These findings not only highlight gaps in extant research but also lead to an enhanced understanding of the cross-cuttingness of protection. This literature review served as an input for the internal workshop on the theoretical and conceptual foundations (T1.4) of the PROTEMO project. It can furthermore inform a theoretical conceptualization of protective policies as well as design empirical methodologies for the studies in the project and guide the development of hypotheses on how emotions affect the process of protective policy-making and vice versa.

Emotions are central to human behavior and, consequently, play a significant role in policymaking. While the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) incorporates the notion of “public mood” into the political stream, this concept primarily focuses on a fleeting, less intense, and diffuse emotional state that is not necessarily linked to a specific triggering event or policy-related object. To address this limitation, the current article draws on robust findings from political psychology, viewing and interpreting the MSF through an emotional lens. It investigates the intersections between emotions, on the one hand, and the assumptions and structural elements of the MSF, on the other, by sharpening existing concepts—such as the emotional agenda (policy) window, emotional decision window, and emotional policy entrepreneurs—to examine emotionality in policy dynamics. It concludes by discussing how an emotional perspective on the MSF can help scholars generate nuanced hypotheses, overcome the MSF's metaphorical language, and gauge when policy may be in search of a rationale.

The aim of this Systematic Review is to outline the current state of the art about emotional dynamics of social representations related to the perception of multi-layered citizenship, protection, and security. Additionally, it aims to investigate the emotional roots of protective policies and their emotional consequences for individuals, groups of citizens and non-citizens, as well as for democracy, political participation, and mobilization. Four research questions (RQs) were defined in this Systematic Literature Review:
RQ1: What different objects are mobilised in the social representations related to security or protection?
RQ2: What are the emotional dynamics generated by social representations related to protection and security?
RQ3: What are the dimensions of multi-layered citizenship related to social representations of protection and security?
RQ4: How are social representations of protection and security affected by social identities?

The literature review presented here examines research on the emotional needs of individuals, groups, and policymakers, emotional policy entrepreneurs, and emotional framing synthesising the findings of over 480 academic articles, books and reports, drawing mainly from political psychology, psychology, and policy studies, and including works from related disciplines. On emotional needs, the analysis shows that the concept of ‘emotional needs’ has informed research in psychology, business studies, marketing, and the health sciences, and less so in political psychology. These studies concur that the needs of safety and security, belonging, and recognition are fundamental human requirements for mental and emotional well-being, which play a key role for individual and societal stability. On emotional policy entrepreneurs, the review explores studies in the field of policy sciences which concur that emotional policy entrepreneurs employ emotional manipulation strategies, along with non-emotional strategies, to achieve their policy goals. On framing experiments on protective policies, the review explores experimental studies and examines what frames were used, with what outcomes, and what was the role of emotions. The analysis finds that most of the experiments with framing did not measure emotions. When emotions were measured, they were treated as moderators or as mediators in the communication process between policies and outcomes (e.g. attitudes toward these policies). This literature review will serve as an input for the internal workshop on the theoretical and conceptual foundations (T1.4). Bringing together the findings of these three parts, it highlights gaps in extant research, as well as the connections between how the emotional needs of individuals, groups and policy makers are understood and addressed, how emotional policy entrepreneurs operate in this context, and how emotional framing can be instrumental for the communication of emotional needs. These insights will inform the theoretical contribution of PROTEMO as well as provide the framework to develop hypotheses and design empirical methodologies for the studies in the project.

This report scrutinises the main theoretical and methodological debates that emerged throughout the PROTEMO project literature review process (WP1) in January-July 2024. Three literature review reports were delivered in July 2024, after an online workshop held in March 2024 and an in-person literature review workshop that occurred at Saarland University (Germany) in June 2024. The three reports focused on “Protective Policies and Affective Citizenship” (LRR1), “Emotional Needs and Emotional Entrepreneurs and Emotional Framing” (LRR2) and “Social Representations, Social Identities, Emotional Dynamics and Protection” (LRR3). The present report’s main objective is to summarise and explore June’s workshop debates, however, it frames these debates within the whole literature review process. It also includes the first version of the PROTEMO glossary of key terms, emerging from the three literature review reports. As the literature review process was guided by an interdisciplinary team, the current report also outlines geographical, cultural, epistemological and disciplinary issues, as well as how they are tackled through concepts of multi-layered and affective citizenship within PROTEMO. In the conclusion of this report, we describe the implications for the overall theoretical framework of PROTEMO, building on the Grant Agreement (Wenzelburger, Carbone, et al. 2023), as well as insights from the theoretical and methodological debates around the literature reviews.