How the Political Becomes Personal – Exploring Citizens’ Accounts of Out-Group Dislike in a Context of Issue-Based Affective Polarisation

Research on affective polarisation increasingly moves beyond its original partisan context to include studies of issue-based affective polarisation – in other words, dislike between different political opinion groups. Not least against this background, the question emerges how and why political disagreement translates into deteriorating social relations between citizens. While research on affective polarisation has started to look into the causal effects of threat perceptions, specific emotions or stereotypes, this paper aims to shed light on how citizens themselves account for their dislike of their political out-groups. Building on in-depth interviews with ordinary citizens and political activists in the context of the German climate debate, it describes different ways in which “the political” becomes “personal”. It explores the different normative repertoires citizens build on to justify political dislike and discusses how this affects their relationship with politically other-minded citizens on a more personal level. In doing so, it highlights the role not only of emotions and moral convictions but also of different types of perceptions and interpretations that inform citizens’ ways of relating to their political out-groups: of truth, the political situation, the out-group’s position as well as their own role as citizens. By unpacking and systematising the variety of reasons citizens themselves provide for their political and personal dislike, this paper aims to help us move towards a more refined study not only of potential causes of affective polarisation, but also of ways to make political disagreement less detrimental for democracy.