Sunday, February 18, 2024

Alexa Bankert's "When Politics Becomes Personal"

Alexa Bankert is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Georgia. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, and Political Behavior. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Distinguished Junior Scholars Award, given by the Political Psychology Section of the American Political Science Association.

Bankert applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, When Politics Becomes Personal: The Effect of Partisan Identity on Anti-Democratic Behavior, and reported the following:
Page 99 provides a detailed description of party affiliations among Dutch respondents in one of the many data samples I analyze in the book to show the distinction between negative and positive partisanship. While page 99 is necessary to assess the extent to which these two types of partisanship exist among Dutch voters, it does not provide any insights into their relationship or their differential effects on political behavior. It also focuses exclusively on the Netherlands - which presents only one of the five countries I investigate in the book. Yet, page 99 reiterates two interesting findings: First, negative partisanship is stronger than positive partisanship in many European multi-party system – which means that negativity in politics is not an exclusively American phenomenon. Second, right-wing parties tend to evoke the strongest levels of negative partisanship in many European multi-party systems. Ultimately, the book argues that partisan animus is not inevitable: We can be strong partisans without demonizing our political opponents.
Visit Alexa Bankert's website.

--Marshal Zeringue