PARTISAN is a project funded by the European Research Council (Grant number: 101044069). Our aim is to investigate partisan prejudice in European multiparty systems. By partisan prejudice, we understand the negative or positive attitudes and stereotypes that citizens have towards supporters of different parties, simply based on the fact that they support that party. Such prejudice is widespread: people everywhere hold stereotypes about party supporters, and hearing that someone supports a party changes how you see and evaluate them. Partisan prejudice can be a challenge for democracies, as it may deepen societal rifts, lower social trust, weaken the acceptance of elite compromise and lead to discrimination and social ostracism. Partisan prejudice may be particularly worrying if it is based on misperceptions or undue generalization of others.
The overall research question of PARTISAN is: What are the origins and consequences of partisan prejudice in European multiparty democracies, and how can it be reduced?
PARTISAN aims to provide a novel theoretical framework and rigorous empirical evidence for understanding partisan prejudice, with the ambition of altering how voters and parties are studied in multiparty systems. As part of the project, we are implementing new survey questions and measurement tools in a cross-national survey conducted in 12 countries. We are also running survey experiments that use innovative empirical designs to provide rigorous causal evidence on our research questions.
For more on the work being done as part of this project, please check out our current research here.
