LIST OF PANELS

Recently, the role of emotions in defining or influencing behaviour, including political behaviour, has been acknowledged, and research is increasingly addressing how affective processes shape our attitudes, actions, and decision-making. Policy studies have also started to analyse how emotions are reflected in policy discourses and how they influence policy change and support for policies. However, we lack solid empirical evidence as well as widely accepted theoretical models on the role of emotions in almost all aspects of politics. Conceptual and methodological problems abound, e.g., How to define, categorise and measure political emotions? How do we analyse the interplay of emotions with other political variables, like ideology, values and identity? What is the analytical model that best grasps the role of emotions in political action: should we consider them dependent, independent or mediating variables? The above questions are even more pressing in the field of policy studies and most of the empirical papers on the role of emotions in policy are seriously under-theorised. With some exceptions empirical studies don’t relate to the theories of the policy process. The course aims at presenting some conceptual as well as methodological challenges concerning the research on the role of emotions in the policy process, thus contributing to the research agenda of this emerging field. The course builds on the research being done in the framework of the EU Horizon project MORES – Moral emotions in politics: how they unite, how they divide, led by Zsolt Boda.

Preconference Course