State of Disgrace: Popular Political Discontents about the Dutch State in the 2000s
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: While it is widely acknowledged that politics and politicians have fallen from grace among large parts of the public in western democracies, it is less clear what the latter’s political discontents are about. To find out, we performed an interpretative content analysis of the letters to the editor of the largest popular Dutch newspaper in the 2000s (2000–2009). \n \nIt yielded three empirically grounded discourses of political discontents about ‘the state’—shorthand for the government, its agencies, officials, judges, politicians and political parties—‘the incompetent state’, ‘the alienated state’ and ‘the corrupted state’. The relevance of these findings is subsequently discussed in the light of research on political distrust
Source: Parliamentary Affairs
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gst036
Authors: R. Kemmers, S. Aupers, D. Houtman, J. van der Waal
Institutions: Erasmus University Rotterdam, KU Leuven
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2120778326