Samenvatting

A vital element of liberal democracy is the relationship between a government and its citizens, which is often characterised by the concept of political support or its reverse, political alienation. Ideally, this relationship should display political support since this indicates a high level of trust in political institutions and satisfaction with democracy; however, this is not always the case in most democracies (Borre, 2000). When the degree of political alienation is high, this will damage a governments' legitimacy. In order to determine what causes a sense of alienation, studies show a strong connection between critical issues in generating political alienation among citizens (Miller, 1974). Borre (2000) created the theory of critical issues, which argues that it is a government's cosmopolitan response to a critical issue that conflicts with isolationist values, which will generate political alienation.
This research aimed to test the theory of critical issues on a larger scale as it has only proven itself to be trustworthy on a national level. By applying the theory using the 2015 Refugee Crisis, the impact of a critical issue on the degree of political alienation has been measured on an EU level. The central research question goes as follows: "How did the European Union's response to the 2015 Refugee crisis impact the degree of political alienation among EU citizens?". In order to measure political alienation, three indicators have been used; namely, the extent to which citizens feel their voice counts in the EU, the degree of distrust in politics, and the level of dissatisfaction with EU institutions.
The findings show that the EU created the European immigration policy to respond to the refugee crisis, which had a cosmopolitan nature. As predicted, some Member States were more likely to reject this policy rather than support it. The countries showing the most resistance were considered to be isolationist. To support Borre's theory, the degree of political alienation should have increased in more isolationist countries. However, in both cosmopolitan and isolationist countries, EU citizens showed more political support than political alienation in 2019 than in 2014. Therefore, the refugee crisis did not increase the share of politically alienated voters, and Borre's theory cannot be fully supported on an EU level.
Ever since this research did not take national events into account, it is recommended that future research focuses more on the role critical issues have on a national level. Additionally, even if the degree of political alienation did not increase, the share of Eurosceptic parties did grow significantly during the 2019 EP elections. Therefore, it is also recommended to conduct more research on the relationship between the politically alienated voter and one's likelihood of supporting anti-EU parties.