3 - Affective Political Economy

Summary

This chapter describes and justifies the book’s theoretical framework, which proposes that economics influences democratic discontent by fomenting cultural discontent, with emotions connecting economics and culture. After briefly discussing the economic consequences of the Great Recession and the collapse of the commodities boom, it explains the affective intelligence theory (AIT) of emotions. AIT conceptualizes emotions as continuously operating surveillance systems, producing specific motivational and cognitive patterns that are not tied to the situation that aroused them. Given this, the chapter proposes that economic turmoil generates resentment and anxiety, which primes large groups of citizens to become aggressive, hostile toward outgroups, and hyperattentive to threatening information. Individuals so influenced gravitate toward social narratives that emphasize group conflict and prejudice against opposing social groups, thus fomenting cultural discontent. This, in turn, produces democratic discontent. The chapter concludes by discussing various contextual factors that may inhibit or intensify this theoretical process or prevent discontent from manifesting in certain ways.