Emotions and political regimes

Considering the recent challenges to democracies in Europe and beyond, the issues of regime stability and change have become more important than ever. In this chapter, we argue that these issues cannot be addressed without considering the emotions prevalent in that regime. We define political regime as a formal and informal set of rules regulating the operation of government and its interactions with society (‘Regime (Comparative Politics)’, 2011). A regime consists of ‘institutions, operational rules of the game, and ideologies’ (Easton et al., 1995, p. 8). Since every political regime depends on the support or at least obedience of the people, we claim that norms related to emotions (Hochschild, 1979) act as supplementary rules regulating the interactions between the political power holders and society. In the theory section, we develop the concept of emotion regime, which is primarily based on the concept of emotional regime (Reddy, 2001), supplemented by some aspects of emotional climate and emotional culture (de Rivera, 1992).

This chapter is part of „Research Handbook on the Sociology of Emotion“ (edited by Helena Flam).

Illustration: Works by Panevėžys photo artists on the 'Panevėžys' hotel, Panevėžys, 2021