Caught in the Crossfire. A Study of the Quality of Political Debate on Democratic Legitimacy

While it is claimed repeatedly that political debates in the media have coarsened over time with detrimental effects on the democratic legitimacy of a political system, little effort has been made to investigate this. This project offers a theoretical innovation by the development of a framework to systematically think about the quality of debates between political leaders in the media and its effect on democratic legitimacy. Original data will be gathered on debate quality and its effects. In particular, using content analysis, the trends in debate quality will be studied in Flanders (Belgium) between 1992 and 2017. Insights into the effect of debate quality on indicators of democratic legitimacy will be gained building on four innovative experiments.

Keywords:politieke debatten

Disciplines:Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology