The why of partisanship. Party identification as collective identity.

Paper for the Political Awareness, Engagement and Identity Panel. Party identification has become one of the key concepts of political analysis in contemporary democracies. Its influence on political engagement and political knowledge is well known and described in the literature (for review see: Holmberg 2007). Party identification is related to political participation (the propensity to vote and vote choice in particular). It is also a heuristic which saves information costs and lens throughout which partisans perceive other parties, politicians and policies. Yet there is hardly any research that would explain the content of the party identification. The few existing studies prove the existence of various motivations that link partisans and parties (Borre, Katz 1973, Głuchowski 1983, Mayer 2018, 2019). None of them explains what meaning is hidden behind partisanship and how it is developed. We believe that such results would lead to better understanding of the political system. The aim of the present paper is to examine the reasons why citizens identify with a party, why they self-represent as a “we” and how the collective sense of “we-ness” is constructed. Using an analytical framework for collective identity research (Kaina 2013, Kaina and Karolewski 2013) we attempt to answer the questions related to the development and content of shared common grounds of adherence (partisans’ collective identity). In order to answer the research questions, we use qualitative and quantitative data from the Political Branding survey which applies projective techniques to measuring hidden needs and motivations of Polish citizens related to political parties.