The Personalization of Politics in the European Union

The personalization of politics, whereby politicians increasingly become the main focus of political processes, is a prominent phenomenon in modern democracies that has received considerable scholarly attention in national politics. However, little is known about the scope, causes and consequences of personalization in European Union politics. In her new book, Katjana Gattermann studies the interplay between four key dimensions of personalization concerning institutions, media, politicians, and citizens in EU politics, and, at this book launch, she and her fellow speakers will discuss how her findings have important implications for the future of personalized politics in the European Union.

This event is on-site only.

Published with Oxford University Press in August, 2022, The Personalization of Politics in the European Union argues that institutional personalization is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for media to increasingly report about individual politicians, and it shows that media personalization fluctuates across country and over time, while Members of the European Parliament increasingly engage in personalized legislative and communicative behaviour. These developments are conditional upon domestic media and electoral systems and have limited effects on citizen attitudes and political awareness.

The book concludes that, as additional political actors gain formal individual responsibilities, European Union politics also becomes more complex to disentangle. Ultimately, institutions provide more effective cues than individual politicians both for media to inform citizens about European Union politics and for the latter to acquire information that may help them understand and evaluate European Union politics.

About the speakers

Katjana Gattermann is Assistant Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Her latest publication is The Personalization of Politics in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Ben Crum is Professor of Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focusses on the way processes of internationalization – European integration in particular – affect established practices and understandings of democracy and solidarity.

Theresa Kuhn is Full Professor at the European Studies Department at University of Amsterdam. Her interdisciplinary research is driven by a fascination for how European integration and globalisation have reshaped everyday life, and how people react to these changes in their political attitudes and identities.

Claes H. de Vreese is University Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Society with a special focus on media and democracy at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include the role of automation, algorithms, and artificial intelligence in democratic processes as well as comparative journalism research, the effects of news, public opinion and European integration.

Lisa Herbig (moderator) is a PhD candidate in European Studies at the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES) of the University of Amsterdam and the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam (DIA). Focusing on European border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, her work investigates the public justification of restrictive measures by different political actors and their effects on political attitudes.