All variables are scaled to range from 0 to 1 for ease of comparison, except for age, which is measured in decades (see Table S2.7 in the online supporting information for complete analyses). Respondents in the Swedish Citizen Panel 8, conducted roughly nine months before the national election, who identified with a political party, were asked the likelihood that their party would be part of the governing coalition. Those whose left‐right placement conflicted with that of their party received a score of 0. In essence, partisan identity is likely to increase antipathy towards an out‐party. The expressive model of partisanship is grounded in social identity theory, a well‐established approach to the study of intergroup relations. Data: Swedish Citizen Panel (Panel 8, Panel 8‐2). Reassurance for minor parties included a reference to their likely role as a coalition partner. Partisanship is the term used to describe the support that an party gets from its supporters in opposition to the parties political opponents. Are Americans alone in defensively supporting their political party, ignoring disagreeable facts, distancing themselves from their partisan opponents, and exonerating their party even when it fails? We first examine this possibility in the United Kingdom, where two major parties—Labour and Conservative—dominate the electoral landscape and have alternated in government over the last few decades. The telephone survey component (CATI) was conducted at the Laps99 Nonetheless, partisan identity was a significant predictor of political engagement, although it had greater influence on participation in Sweden and lesser influence in the Netherlands. Overall, these analyses demonstrate that strong partisans react more emotionally to threats and reassurances to both the party's status and key issues. In the United States, scholars have provided abundant evidence of affective polarization manifested as increasing hostility between Democrats and Republicans (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015; Mason, 2015). Ideological intensity in the United Kingdom is a composite measure of five left‐right values such as the redistribution of income and the proper compensation of ordinary workers (see Table A2a in the online supporting information for item wording). In the Netherlands, an additional 29% of respondents who had voted for a party in the last election were asked the identity questions for that party. Consistent with results from the United Kingdom, more highly educated partisans in Sweden are less prone to biased reasoning in favor of their party. Moreover, once identified with a group, or in this instance political party, members are motivated to protect and advance the party's status and electoral dominance as a way to maintain their party's positive distinctiveness (Huddy, 2001). This is an interesting finding which suggests that affective polarization in Sweden has both expressive and instrumental components. Drawing on the United Kingdom, Dutch, and Swedish (Citizen Panel 8, 8.2) data discussed in this article, we found that the partisan identity scale predicts voting for one's party in all three countries. The People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) had received a plurality of the votes, followed by the Labour Party (PvdA). partisan and Politics Synonym Discussion of partisan. Ideological intensity also boosted in‐party voting but its effects are much smaller than that of partisan identity.1919 The link between strong partisanship, vote choice, and political action is a well‐established fact that is consistent with both the instrumental and expressive approaches. All paths depicted in the diagram are statistically significant. Analysis of the BES provides clear evidence of stability in partisan identity strength over time, a finding that is more consistent with expressive than instrumental partisanship. A social identity is a subjective sense of belonging to a group which is internalized to varying degrees, resulting in individual differences in identity strength, a desire to positively distinguish the group from others, and the development of ingroup bias, a preference for one's own group over others (Tajfel, 1981). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Leonie Huddy, Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Rd, Stony Brook, NY 11790. See http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/. Two key issues were identified for each party and the rated importance of each issue was combined for that party's identifiers to create a measure of issue importance (see Table S1.3 in the online supporting information). This resulted in 49% of Italians with a party. We will form a successful coalition whether it's with the Greens, the Left Party, or the Liberal People's Party and the Centre Party. This model tests the stability of partisan identity strength to a prior time point two steps removed from the current wave. We thus compare the effects of partisan identity among Italian (49%), British (86%), Dutch (91%), and Swedish respondents (90%) for whom we have a valid measure of partisan identity. We are doing better in the polls than the Social Democrats and we have stronger leadership. There is no recent CSES data for Italy, leaving us unable to compare the distribution of partisanship in our Italian sample with CSES data. Predicted levels are calculated while holding issue importance (left) and partisan identity (right) constant. The results of this OLS regression are displayed in Figure 4 separately for Labour and Conservative identifiers. Definition of partisanship noun in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. The instrumental approach to partisanship has dominated political science research since at least the mid-1970s, eclipsing the original conception of partisanship developed by Campbell and colleagues in The American Voter which involved a mix of instrumental beliefs and expressive feelings. In this research, the probability of voting for one's party ranged from a low of roughly .45 in the Netherlands and .5 in the United Kingdom at the lowest levels of partisan identity to a high of .9 for those at the highest levels. The survey was conducted some nine months before the election when the outcome was quite uncertain. Most importantly, and at odds with an instrumental approach, these cumulative processes minimize strong partisans' reactivity to accusations of poor party performance, weak leadership, or an altered platform resulting in a relatively stable political identity (Green et al., 2002). The two approaches diverge, however, in their explanation for the link between partisanship and in‐party voting or political action. The absence of stable and enduring partisan identities creates an opening for antipolitics forces that have the ability to destabilize Western democracies. In developing the theory, Tajfel and Turner (1979) placed key emphasis on the need among group members “to differentiate their own groups positively from others to achieve a positive social identity” (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987; p. 42). Ultimately, a VVD‐Labour centrist government was formed in November minus the inclusion of any of the minor parties. This latter step is analogous to correlating errors across items in the different waves but provides a more parsimonious solution to their common variance. The items in the Italian partisan identity scale were altered, making them less comparable to the other three countries. These comments promised either electoral victory or threatened defeat, conditions we refer to as threat and reassurance respectively (see Huddy et al., 2015 for greater detail). Defensive motivation increases with identity strength, leading to the prediction that the strongest partisans will work most actively to increase their party's status, including electoral victory (Andreychick et al., 2009; Ethier & Deaux, 1994; Fowler & Kam, 2007). In waves 1, 3, 4, 7, and 9, a subset of respondents were asked the partisan identity items with sample sizes ranging from a low of 4,558 in wave 1 to a high of 6,914 in wave 4 (individuals were not consistently assigned to these questions in the different waves). As noted, the level of partisanship was low in Italy, and levels of partisan identity were low in the Netherlands. It is important to note that the stability seen in party identity strength in the United Kingdom may be something of an overestimate. We also test the effect of the interaction between partisan identity and issue threat on anger. Party identification: Unmoved mover or sum of preferences? The expressive model of partisanship predicts such defensive animosity across party lines when the party is under competitive threat. For example, when asked if they say “we” rather than “they” when talking about their party, only 16% of Italians, and 25% of those in the United Kingdom strongly disagree whereas 80% of the Dutch and 65% of Swedes say they never feel this way. In the absence of partisan identities, cynicism and disengagement are likely to proliferate, and new political forces including antipolitics groups can gain ground against more traditional parties sowing instability and extremism. Partisan identity boosts confidence that one's party will be included in the government coalition. Meaning of partisanship. These results suggest that both the success of important political issues and party victory increase enthusiasm among partisans. When people criticize this party, it feels like a personal insult. Partisan identity strength thus seems especially powerful in shaping perceptions of political reality when that reality is at least somewhat ambiguous. We find initial confirmation of this process in the United States, showing that strong partisan identities are far more likely to motivate campaign‐related political action than strong and consistent ideological stances. We will form a successful coalition with the Liberal People's Party, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats, and maybe even the Greens will join us. For example, between elections a battle over a specific piece of legislation may not threaten the party's status. The AR2 model provides a good fit to the data (RMSEA = .06; CFI = .96). Not all respondents answered all eight items in all waves. The telephone survey component (CATI) was conducted at the Laps99 Last, we examine the Netherlands, a country with relatively low levels of partisanship. In this review, we focus on several European democracies (the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy) and evaluate evidence for and against an expressive model of partisanship in which democratic citizens act to defend their party in order to maintain its positive standing. We exclude an additional 435 respondents who changed their party identification at least once to examine stability and change in a common identity. The ITANES online panel study (CAWI component) was conducted with a representative sample of the adult population with Internet access recruited by the Italian market research company SWG from their online panel. This setup allows us to disentangle the status of the party from the status of the political issues associated with the party, directly pitting the expressive model of partisanship against its instrumental alternative. Moreover, we have demonstrated that partisanship in the United Kingdom is relatively stable over the course of an election cycle. The dependent variable in the model on the right is constructed as the difference between the in‐party and ratings of the out‐coalitional parties. A strong ideological stance is even more powerful than partisan identity in shaping polarization. Data was collected before and after the 2012 Dutch Parliamentary elections and is drawn from three time points: August 2012 (Elections 2012), after the national election in September 2012 (Dutch Parliamentary Election Study), and again as part of a module in December 2012/January 2013 (Politics and Values: Wave 6) with module‐specific response rates of 75.1%, 77.7%, and 85.7% respectively. In that sense, social identity theory provides a more dynamic account of partisanship than found in previous political behavior research. This resulted in 61% who adhered to or were attracted to a political party. In various studies conducted in the United Kingdom, Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Denmark, partisans are more willing to adopt an issue stance when it is experimentally associated with their political party than not (Brader & Tucker, 2009; Brader et al., 2012; Slothus & de Vreese, 2010).1515 (2015) experimentally threatened or reassured a respondent's party's position on health care and gay marriage. Strong partisan identifiers like their own party more than parties in the opposing coalition. Meaning and examples for 'partisanship' in Spanish-English dictionary. Party identification is central to the study of American political behavior, yet there remains disagreement over whether it is largely instrumental or expressive in nature. and you may need to create a new Wiley Online Library account. an online panel administered by CentERdata, Tilburg University, the Netherlands.55 Motivated Reasoning in Sweden (corresponding to Figure 5), Table S2.5. Table S1.2d. Moreover, the magnitude of this effect is roughly comparable among Labour and Conservative supporters. Based on this accumulated research, partisanship appears somewhat responsive to certain contemporary forces such as changing leadership but much less responsive to shifting party positions, providing modest support at best to the instrumental model. Stability of partisan identity (BES). The determinants of affective polarization are shown in Figure 8. In short, partisanship is a helluva drug. The decline of partisanship in Europe deserves careful examination, but strong partisan identities still have the ability to hold voters in place and maintain political stability. One way or another, the elections will mark a resurgence of Social Democrats and Sweden's Left. Ideological Intensity Scale (Economic Issues) for Sweden, Table S2.1 Fit Statistics for 4‐Wave Measurement Invariance (across waves) Model (BES Data), Table S2.2. Expressive partisanship generates many negative outcomes, including defensive reasoning and hostility toward out‐partisans that are incompatible with the instrumental model. In these data, partisanship was higher in Sweden (91%) and the United Kingdom (86%) than in the Netherlands (61%) and Italy (49%). The predicted probability of voting for the in‐party (based on analyses in Table S2.6) ranged from a low of 0.23 to a high of 0.78 as partisan identity increased from its lowest to highest value. In contrast, issue threats and reassurance focus on the implementation or failure to enact specific policies after the election. Fit Statistics for 4‐Wave Multigroup Measurement Model (BES Data), Table S2.3. Garzia (2013) provides supportive evidence, reporting that partisanship is linked to both social cleavages and leader evaluations in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, but that short‐term leader evaluations have eclipsed the importance of long‐term social factors in recent decades. This raises questions about whether this occurs in other polities. Sweden's political parties fall on a strong left‐right dimension and it appears that a threat to a party's key issues is just as effective as a threat to status in elevating feelings of anger among strong partisans. Each condition is interacted with partisan identity strength to determine whether strong partisan identifiers react most emotionally to status threat and reassurance, as predicted by an expressive partisan approach. When I meet someone who supports this party, I feel connected with this person. Entries are standardized regression parameters for wave‐to‐wave changes in latent partisan identity strength (with standard errors in parentheses), based on an auto regressive (AR2) model. Analyses are conducted among respondents (N = 4,263) who completed surveys at all three time points. As we evaluate the expressive partisan identity model, it is important to keep in mind that nonpartisans are excluded from the analysis. We began this review with an understanding that partisanship matters beyond American shores but noted that its nature and degree of political influence in Europe remains a subject of debate. Moreover, partisan identity is likely to strengthen over time as a young voter consistently supports one party over others in successive elections (Dalton & Walden, 2007). In the United States, an alternative expressive identity approach to partisanship has gained credence. All variables are scaled to range from 0 to 1 for ease of comparison, except for age, which is measured in decades (see Table S2.7 in the online supporting information for complete analyses). We thank Martin Rosema for providing the initial impetus for this research and the PIs of the British Election Studies, the Swedish Citizen Panel, the Italian National Election Study, and the LISS for providing space on their surveys for questions on partisan identity. This definition has generated two competing views of partisanship: instrumental and expressive (Arceneaux & Vander Wielen, 2013; Lupu, 2013). √ 100% FREE. In recent decades, the Italian political system has been characterized by frequent partisan change with parties disappearing, morphing into new parties, and ousting their leadership. Among supporters of these larger parties, electoral success was evident and less subject to motivated reasoning. More strongly identified partisans rate their own party more favorably than the out‐party. Our current goal is to evaluate whether partisan identity has the same characteristics regardless of its level. In contrast, the strength of identity among Labour supporters seems to fluctuate more over time. Analysis of the BES provides clear evidence of stability in partisan identity strength over time, a finding that is more consistent with expressive than instrumental partisanship. First, we consider the stability of partisan identity; greater stability is more consistent with the expressive than instrumental account. More specifically, in U.S. data, the partisan identity scale better accounts for campaign activity than a strong stance on subjectively important policy issues, strength of ideological self‐placement, or a measure of ideological identity (Huddy et al., 2015). Brader and colleagues (2012) include the additional caveat that the adoption of a policy associated with the party is more likely for parties that are better established, more ideologically consistent, or in the opposition. The Social Democrats will return to hold our central place in the leadership of the country.”, “2014 is going to be an important election for sensible political ideas. How voters respond to politicians' policies and performance, Intergroup emotions: Explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context, Identifying organizational identification, I disrespectfully agree”: The differential effects of partisan sorting on social and issue polarization, Affective intelligence and political judgment, More than wishful thinking: Causes and consequences of voters' electoral expectations about parties and coalitions, Mobilization, participation, and American democracy, Arousal, processing, and risk taking: Consequences of intergroup anger, The stability of party identification in Western democracies: Results from eight panel surveys, Political parties, motivated reasoning, and issue framing effects, Anger, fear, or sadness: Faculty members' emotional reactions to collective pay disadvantage, An integrative theory of intergroup conflict, The social psychology of intergroup relations, Party identification as a cross‐national concept: Its meaning in the Netherlands, Party identification and beyond: Representations of voting and party competition, Party identification, social identity and political experience: Partisanship, Rediscovering the social group: A self‐categorization theory, Election night's alright for fighting: The role of emotions in political participation, Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio‐psychological perspectives, Tables S1.1a and S1.1b in the online supporting information, online supporting information (Tables S1.1a–S1.1b), Table S2.1 in the online supporting information, Table S2.2 in the online supporting information, Table A2a in the online supporting information, Table S2.3 in the online supporting information, Table A2b in the online supporting information, Table S2.4 in the online supporting information, Table S2.5 in the online supporting information, Table S2.5 in the online supporting information, Table S2.6 in the online supporting information, Table S1.2c. Huddy et al. In Sweden, data are drawn from the Swedish Citizen Panel, a largely opt‐in online panel run by the Laboratory of Opinion Research (LORE)66 For example, when asked if they say “we” rather than “they” when talking about their party, only 16% of Italians, and 25% of those in the United Kingdom strongly disagree whereas 80% of the Dutch and 65% of Swedes say they never feel this way. The items in the Italian partisan identity scale were altered, making them less comparable to the other three countries. Partisan identity has a sizeable effect on affective polarization. Table 1 provides wording and responses to all eight partisan identity questions included in preelection wave 3 of the British Election Study (BES) (all original item wording is listed in Tables S1.1a and S1.1b in the online supporting information). All variables are scaled to range from 0 to 1 for better comparison, except for age, which is measured in decades (see Table S2.8 in the online supporting information for complete analyses). First, we consider the stability of partisan identity; greater stability is more consistent with the expressive than instrumental account. Much of the evidence in support of partisan‐motivated reasoning outside the United States has focused on party cues and conformity. The two‐wave lagged identity has greater influence on Conservative identity in both wave 4 and wave 7. In actuality, the existing right coalition lost to a left coalition made up of the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Left party. Partisanship remains a powerful influence on mass political behavior within developed and developing democracies (Brader & Tucker, 2009; Brader, Tucker, & Duell, 2012; Dalton & Weldon, 2007; Green, Palmquist, & Schickler, 2002). Anger did not increase among those who held the party's position most strongly and cared most about gay marriage or health care. (support for a cause) partidismo nm nombre masculino: Sustantivo de género exclusivamente masculino, que lleva los artículos el o un en singular, y los o unos en plural. The elections will provide a super‐majority in the parliament that will mean less power for women, more hostility towards new immigrants, and no respect for the disadvantaged. (2015) experimentally threatened or reassured a respondent's party's position on health care and gay marriage. The results, shown in Figure 9, are consistent with our theoretical expectations. Overall, these analyses provide a novel aspect to the study of partisanship by examining affective polarization in the context of coalitional governments that are common in multiparty systems. In the United States, strong partisans vote more frequently for their party, vote at higher rates than political independents, care more about politics, and participate more actively (Abramson & Aldrich, 1982; Brady, Verba, & Schlozman, 1995; Campbell Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993). The link between strong partisanship, vote choice, and political action is a well‐established fact that is consistent with both the instrumental and expressive approaches. The expressive approach to partisanship is grounded in social identity theory (Green et al., 2002; Huddy et al., 2015)33 Huddy et al. To better illustrate the logic underlying the experiment, we included the wording of blog entries for Social Democrats in Table 2. The partisan identity items were asked of respondents who indicated that they had a party. There has been continued debate, however, on the stability of partisanship in more complex multiparty systems outside the United States. In the analysis, we contrast the influence of issue‐based and party‐status threat and reassurance on feelings of anger and enthusiasm. Affective polarization in Sweden. We utilize data from Panel 8 (November 14 to December 18, 2013) and add‐on Panel 8‐2 (December 10, 2013 to January 7, 2014) (Martinsson, Andreasson, Markstedt, & Riedel, 2013), conducted some nine to 10 months before the 2014 national election (September 14, 2014). Interestingly, education has a negative effect in the model, indicating a more sober assessment of a party's fortune among the best educated. His politics were based on loyal partisanship. We invited 16,130 panelists to take the Panel 8 survey and 9,279 completed it for a completion rate of 64%; 2,000 panelists were invited to complete Panel 8‐2 of which 1,496 answered the survey. We find evidence that strong partisans in Europe exhibit five characteristics of expressive partisans: stable partisan identity, motivated reasoning in defense of the party, the greater influence of identity than issues and ideology in shaping vote choice and political behavior, affective polarization bias in favor of one's own party, and the existence of strong defensive emotions aroused by partisan threats and reassurances.