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In this article, building on de Wilde (2011) and Schattschneider (1960), we elaborate on the notion of principled politicization, a process of politicization by which regime principles become salient in public debate in a way that also articulates or implies structural alternatives. First, we argue that in contrast to other conceptualizations of politicization, which focus on policy issues, or “issue‐based politicization,” principled politicization concerns another type of political conflict that differs in terms of topic (regime principles) and content (alternatives). As such, this type of debate is inherently related to the concept of democracy. Second, adopting an applied political theory approach, we put the notion of principled politicization to the test by empirically studying citizen discussions about the EU. We examine whether citizens draw on EU regime principles and discuss alternatives. To do so, we conduct a qualitative secondary analysis of four datasets, consisting of interviews and focus groups with participants from different socio‐economic backgrounds and political leanings. This data was collected in Belgium, France, and the UK at four different points in time (1995–2019). We report that some citizens do engage with EU regime principles and consider alternatives to the principles they observe being implemented. This article suggests that politicization can strengthen EU democratization when debates include and, in fact, reflect the challenges to democratic principles themselves.

While European elections are often seen as remote from EU issues, considerations specifically linked to the EU came to the forefront in the wake of the 2014 European elections: the economic and financial crisis, the new process of designation of the European Commission President, and the alleged increase of Eurosceptic votes. This increased salience of political debates about the EU asks for a reconsideration of the ‘second-order nature’ of European elections. In this context, as in 2009, the Belgian electorate voted for the regional and European levels on the very same day. Belgian voters were thus offered the opportunity to split their ticket between both levels. This allows comparing the occurrence and determinants of these ‘immediate switching’ behaviours in 2014 with those of the presumably less politicized EP elections in 2009. We do that by employing the 2009 and 2014 PartiRep Election Study data. On the one hand, the article shows that split-ticket voting cannot be explained by economic voting, European identity, and attitudes towards integration in 2014. On the other hand, the unique configuration of the Belgian elections enables us to observe that the introduction of Spitzenkandidaten did enhance split-ticket voting for voters who could directly vote for this candidate (in Flanders), while this did not increase split-ticket voting among voters who could only indirectly support the candidate (in Wallonia).

Regionalization has been a defining feature of European politics since the 1970s. Previous work has studied political drivers of the movements of competences to the subnational level, including the role of citizens’ preferences. Yet, we still know little about how these new divisions of competences between government levels have impacted the development of public opinion about this division. The article builds on the literature on policy feedback and argues that institutional regionalization may both directly and indirectly affect support for regionalization through normative and interpretive effects. To empirically qualify these expectations, the article uses eight cross sections of the Flemish and Walloon populations in Belgium (1991–2019). This approach explains differences in support for regionalization between citizens that were socialized in different institutional and regional contexts. The analyses show that Walloons who came of age in the context of more institutional regionalization tend to be more supportive of regionalization. In Flanders, in contrast, support for regionalization is most consistently and substantially explained by regional and Belgian identification. However, our analyses show no support for the expectation that coming of age in a more regionalized Belgium is associated with a greater sense of regional identification.

Resentment is a complex, multi-layered emotion, within which perceptions of unfairness and feelings of anger are central. When linked to politics, it has predominantly been associated with the alleged “crisis of representative democracy” and populism. However, recent studies have shown that resentment can intervene positively in people’s relations to politics and political institutions by facilitating certain types of political participation (Capelos & Demertzis, 2018). Despite this, the concept of resentment, and hence its role in contemporary representative democracy, is often poorly defined, with empirical investigations of its manifestation(s) remaining scarce. Borrowing a conceptualization of resentment as “resentful affectivity,” our article draws on the analysis of focus groups carried out in Belgium (2019–2020) with individuals where resentful affectivity is likely to be observed (i.e., contemporary movements of contestation such as the Yellow Vests, Youth for Climate, and individuals who occupy a socially disadvantaged position). We find that experiences of intense anger, fear, disappointment, and the unfairness of representative democracy, i.e., of how representative democracy works on the ground, coexist simultaneously with remaining hopes in the democratic system. We show how this complex blend of emotions confronts citizens with what we call a “democratic dilemma.” We document the different ways in which citizens cope with this dilemma and conclude by highlighting both the positive and negative ways in which resentment intervenes in the contemporary “crisis of representative democracy.”

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed the counter-concept, depoliticisation, theoretically and often with a normative background, whereas comparative politics and EU studies have increasingly taken to deliver empirical studies on the politicisation of the European Union. These latter studies most often rely on the indicators of salience, actor involvement and polarisation in and of political debates and processes. International Relations, last not least, increasingly discusses the politicisation of international politics and international organisations. This is why the contributions in this Critical Exchange bring together differing strands of the debate and aim to rethink politicisation in both theoretical and empirical understandings and usages. Kari Palonen starts the exchange with an overview on historical usages of the concept. Claudia Wiesner follows with an approach to challenges and possible pathways of concept specification. Veith Selk discusses politicisation and its linkages to populism. Niilo Kauppi and Hans-Jo¨rg Trenz, as well as Claire Dupuy and Virginie van Ingelgom, critically regard the state of the art in studying EU politicisation and depoliticisation. Philip Liste closes with a discussion of the linkages between the concepts of juridification, depoliticisation, and politicisation in transnational politics. Taken together, the contributions raise a number of crucial issues in the academic debate on politicisation: the conception of politics and the political that politicisation relates to, its linkage to depoliticisation and juridification, and the relation of politicisation and populism.

Part of a review symposium on a book by Ettore Recchi, Adrian Favell, Fulya Apaydin, Roxana Barbulescu, Michael Braun, Irina Ciornei, Niall Cunningham, Juan Díez Medrano, Deniz N. Duru, Laurie Hanquinet, Steffen Pötzschke, David Reimer, Justyna Salamońska, Mike Savage, Janne Solgaard Jensen and Albert Varela, Everyday Europe. Social transnationalism in an unsettled continent (2019).

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»Zugehörigkeitsgefühl und Gleichgültigkeit Europa gegenüber: Eine Erhebung unter jungen Brüsselern«. This paper proposes to contribute to testing the hypothesis of a \"drag effect of the habitus\" and investigating empirically the significations of the \"I/we/they\" categories. It is based on \"focus groups\" organised with 35 young people in Brussels who were interviewed about their relations to the politics at different levels. It aims more generally at gaining a better understanding of how the feelings of belonging work, by focusing on the supposed lack of them and indifference regarding Europe today. The article firstly sums up what the \"habitus drag effect\" consists of, according to a certain reading of Elias's work. This section also aims at stressing how this idea from Elias although formulated in the 1980s is still stimulating to consider the EU and legitimacy issues 30 years later. The next section briefly reviews the recent evolutions in EU studies, the major advances and the remaining blind spots. The last and most important part is an attempt to illustrate how empirical material contributes to investigating these blind spots. At the end, the discussions with the young \"Brüsselers\" partially validate, on the one hand, partially refute, on the other hand, and in any case enrich some of the propositions formulated by Elias's historical sociology, particularly around the \"we/they\" relationships.