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Towards a dramaturgical understanding of emotions in environmental policy.

Citizenship
Conflict Resolution
Contentious Politics
Democracy
Political Participation
Decision Making
Policy-Making
Christina Klubert
Utrecht University
Christina Klubert
Utrecht University

Abstract

keywords: drama, citizen engagement and emotions in the energy transition In response to challenges of sustaining public support for climate policy amidst political backlash, a growing body of literature has begun to explore the affective dimensions of climate change and climate policy (Norgaard, 2011; Neckel & Hasenfratz, 2021; Martiskainen & Sovacool, 2021). Public engagement around climate policy is perceived as emotionally charged and emotions themselves as destabilizing forces that, above all, “need to be kept in check” (Hogget and Thompson, 2002:107; Voss & Amelung, 2016; Martiskainen & Sovacool, 2021). This perspective is reinforced by the predominance of psychological approaches to the emotions that frame them as individual responses to global challenges. Alternatively, a growing body of socio-cultural theories treat emotions as socially experienced and practiced. This paper contributes to this literature by offering a dramaturgical take on emotions in the policy process. Emotions are not only shaped by perceptions of societal shifts but are also produced by how public engagement is staged and performed. This staging, moreover, and citizens’ reaction to it, is guided by institutionalized political conventions. We argue that the way public engagement is dramatized risks establishing an ‘emotional regime’ that constructs a binary emotional field between policy practice and citizens’ lived emotional experience of climate policy, thereby, contributing to the hotness of the policy process. This article has three aims: (1) to develop a theoretical framework of emotions in the policy process grounded in socio-cultural theories of emotions (Hochschild, 1983; Reddy, 2001; Ahmed, 2004, 2013; Scheer, 2012; Mesquita, 2022) and interpretative policy sciences (Yanow, 2000 ; Wagenaar, 2011); (2) to conceptualize the performative and dramaturgical dimensions of emotions in policy contexts (Goffman, 1959; Hajer, 2009); and (3) to discuss tensions that arise from the particular emotional regime that public engagement performs. Ultimately, we argue that this perspective opens new possibilities for reconstituting democratic citizen engagement in climate policy