Theme 3: Polarization and Social Identity

Polarization in most countries

• Division is based on views of specific leaders and parties

• Supporters of different parties have similar ideological views

Exceptional polarization of the United States

• Political divisions are fundamentally ideological

• Increasing different on core values

Predictive Support for Political Violence and Democratic Erosion

• Threat perception

• Aggressive personalities

• Structural Incentives

• Elite normalization

Affective polarization

Emotional dislike of the opposing party

Ideological polarization

Difference in policy opinion

Pernicious polarization

elites instrumentalize mass emotions

Opinion sorting

• process by which people with similar views increasingly cluster together

• alignment of existing (identical or similar) views with party identification

• People find their “team”

• Increases clarity of intraparty differences

Elite Ideological Polarization (2000s)

• Politicians can’t compromise

• Encouragement for bipartisanship and initial calls to change congressional rules

Affective Polarization (2010s)

• Emotional hatred between ordinary partisans driven by misperceptions about the other side’s demographics, beliefs, and intentions

• Americans dislike the other party as people (based on their actual identity and not policy disagreement)

• We can agree on policy and hate each other still (growing faster among older Americans

Crisis of Intervention (2020s)

• Interventions can reduce emotional dislike, BUT

• It has no effect on antidemocratic attitudes or political violence

• Studies are showing that feelings do not equal behavior in political behavior

Do politicians benefit from polarized politics?

• Polarization mobilizes the base and justifies extremes

• High incumbency rates

Key Takeaways for Contemporary Polarization

• The problem isn’t that we hate each other, but the that feeling may be being exploited.

• Threat perceptions drive democratic threat

• Structural incentives matter more than addressing feelings and information