A State of the Art on Emotions in the Context of Public Policymaking

Abstract

Having long been largely ignored in political science, emotions have become increasingly acknowledged as integral to human life, making them the subject of academic interest for political and social psychologists, political scientists and policy scholars alike. Challenging an understanding of reason and affect as one of opposition, empirical as well as theoretical work analysing the effects of emotions in political communication, voting behaviour, populism and public policymaking is continuously growing. There is therefore an increased need to take stock of these recent scientific advances on the role of emotions in the political sphere, and more importantly, with regards to public policymaking. This two-fold literature review provides such a state-of-the-art in a systematic and critical manner, showing that whereas knowledge on emotions in the broader realm of politics is already extensive, there is far less on public policies. In fact, from a policy studies perspective, it is policy preferences and policy-related communication which have enjoyed most of scholarly attention, thereby neglecting the concrete role of emotion in the process of public policymaking. Future studies should focus more on the effects of emotions on the actual making of policies.