Ressentiment and Political Change: Analyzing Stability and Transformation Demands Across 30 European Countries

• In Event: 30469 - Right-Wing Populism in the US and Beyond

Abstract

This presentation examines the role of ressentiment—a multifaceted attitudinal construct encompassing distrust, moral indignation, anti-elitism, and future pessimism—in shaping political preferences across 30 European countries. While previous research has often linked political dissatisfaction to economic hardship, our findings suggest that ressentiment operates beyond material concerns, influencing public attitudes toward political stability and systemic change. Using a large-scale survey conducted between January and April 2024, we analyze the extent to which ressentiment informs citizens' demands for either maintaining the status quo, supporting moderate electoral shifts, advocating for new political actors, or calling for radical systemic transformation. Our multilevel logistic regression models highlight that ressentiment-driven attitudes strongly correlate with preferences for more disruptive political change, particularly in contexts marked by perceived elite unresponsiveness and distrust in media representation. At the same time, national economic conditions and institutional robustness shape the ways in which grievances are translated into political preferences. While in more economically developed countries dissatisfaction tends to be absorbed within existing democratic frameworks, in others, ressentiment fuels anti-establishment sentiments and demands for fundamental political reconfiguration. These findings underscore the significance of ressentiment as a key explanatory factor in contemporary European political dynamics, offering insights into the growing polarization between demands for stability and transformative change.

Authors

• Dávid Kollár, Szazadveg Foundation

• Tamás László, Eötvös Loránd University