In recent years, due to major crises linked to the pandemic, war and migration, climate change or economic imbalances, feelings of insecurity have been on the rise in Europe. Therefore, governments throughout Europe have made protection a central claim of their programs - such in the Danish security election in 2022 or the recent German federal election dominated by the issue of insecurity. However, to date, we do not understand this new context very well in which policy-making around the issue of protection takes place. This is the starting point of the research agenda of the PROTEMO project.
Against the background of rising (subjective as well as objective) insecurity, the PROTEMO consortium investigates how protective policies are related to emotions both in their development (by studying how emotions affect the policy-making process) and in their effects (by investigating how individuals and groups react emotionally to protective policies). PROTEMO cocnceptualizes protective policies as policies that are communicated by political actors as providing safety and security to citizens, policies that are directed at what political actors perceive as emotional needs of citizens (i.e. feeling appreciated, safe, accomplished, or part of a community). PROTEMO will tackle the emotional dynamics of protective policies from three angles:
1) It studies how policy-makers perceive and influence the emotional needs of citizens and how these perceptions as well as the emotions of policy-makers themselves play out in the policy process;
2) It investigatse what emotional reactions, judgements and actions protective policies elicit among individuals and publics in society; and
3) It analyses how emotional reactions by citizens feedback on the policy process and are, in turn, be responded to with policies. These perspectives therefore aim both to understand how affect how affect and emotions matter in the policy process toward protective policies and to explain the emotional reactions to these policies.
PROTEMO is interdisciplinary in nature and brings together sociologists, psychologists, political scientists and researchers from public administration. This enables us to tackle the research question from different perspectives and apply various methodological tools. Thus, PROTEMO will field a three-wave survey, conduct interviews with policy-makers, analyse political communication and use focus groups as well as use ethnography and in-depth interviews in a number of "deep dives" to study the emotional needs of particular social groups and how they emotionally react to policies that aim at protection.
PROTEMOs's results will make an impact in the social sciences through publications, conferences and the construction of a network of researchers studying protective policies and emotions. Beyond scientific impact, project members will exploit results through stakeholder workshops and policy roundtables to engage with policy makers and society.
