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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Comparative Governance
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1363083
This article is part of the Research Topic Researching Political Legitimacy: Concepts, Theories, Methods and Empirical Studies View all 9 articles

When legitimacy becomes the object of politics: The politicization of political support in European democracies

Provisionally accepted
Carolien Van Ham Carolien Van Ham 1*Erika van Elsas Erika van Elsas 2
  • 1 Department of Political Science, Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • 2 Political Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Gelderland, Netherlands

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Democratic legitimacy is essential for democratic stability, as democracies rely on citizen support to survive. However, perceived legitimacy gaps can also be an important catalyst for change and potential democratic renewal, begging the question when challenges to legitimacy become problematic for democratic survival. Easton distinguished between citizen support for political authorities and the political system, and argued that if support for political authorities declined, such declining support could either be resolved by the current political authorities changing course, or by citizens electing new political authorities at the next elections. However, if dissatisfaction with political authorities would not be resolved, lacking support had the potential to eventually ‘spill-over’ and undermine support for the political system as a whole. In most empirical research on legitimacy, the assumption is that such ‘spill-over’ is visible only if declining levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy start to undermine support for democracy as a political system. In this paper, we argue that ‘spill-over’ can also manifest in a different way: through the politicization of political support. When politics is no longer (only) about substantive policy decisions, but rather (increasingly) about the system itself, agreement on the rules of the game, or even on democracy as ‘the only game in town’, is no longer self-evident. In this paper we further develop our theoretical argument about the connection between legitimacy and politicisation, and argue that European democracies appear to experience growing politicization of political support, in terms of the association of political support with citizens’ substantive issue positions and voting behaviour. The paper demonstrates empirical evidence of such politicization of political support in 17 European democracies with European Social Survey data from 2002-2022. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the politicization of political support for democratic stability and renewal.

    Keywords: Legitimacy, Political support, Spill-over, System support, Politicization, Political trust, Satisfaction with democracy

    Received: 29 Dec 2023; Accepted: 15 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Van Ham and van Elsas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Carolien Van Ham, Department of Political Science, Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

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