Uncivil Political Discourse in Televised Election Debates in the Netherlands from 1981 to 2023

Although scholars and members of the public worry about incivility in politics, research examining when and why political elites engage in uncivil discourse is scarce. This study aimed to contribute to the literature by directly gauging incivility, over time, in a non-U.S. context. A preregistered longitudinal content analysis of 34 televised election debates in the Netherlands in the period 1981-2023 was conducted. This dataset included 9,159 speech acts by 68 unique politicians. The results showed that, although most speech acts were classified as civil, the prevalence of political incivility in Dutch televised election debates did increase in the second half of the investigated time period. In addition, incivility was associated with the speaker’s party’s populism, but not gender and incumbency status, and was more likely when a previous comment had been uncivil. Finally, incivility was more prevalent in debates or debate segments featuring only two, rather than three or more, politicians. Potential causes of the increase of incivility in recent years, such as the rise of populism, are discussed.