Party systems politicization and citizens’ political awareness: assessing the relationship on conflict over EU integration

Citizens’ awareness of politics includes a kaleidoscopic set of attitudes and behaviors related to individual structural characteristics (such as education or social status) and contextual elements. As the information within the political space changes, citizens’ awareness is supposed to change as well. Despite this consideration, the relationship between party political conflict and citizens’ awareness is relatively unexplored. While party politicization becomes a core subject in political science, its implications for citizens’ awareness remain largely unknown. Do individuals’ discussions, knowledge, and information about an issue change when party system politicization over that issue arises? Do more aware citizens react to party system politicization differently from less aware ones? This study addresses these questions by adopting a public opinion studies perspective and focusing on the politicization process of European integration on twenty-four EU countries between 2010 and 2019. As political parties represent a crucial driver of politicization, we analyze the relationship between salience/polarization over the EU in party systems and citizens’ different dimensions of political awareness. Results show different patterns between low- and high-aware citizens: low-aware citizens are poorly reactive to party system salience over the issue but engage more when polarization increases, while high-aware citizens, on the opposite, increase their awareness levels when party system salience raises but disengage from the issue as the level of conflict within party systems grows.