The Role of Congressional Polarization and Divided Government in the New Ideological Partisanship

Abstract

The level of mass partisanship has gone through three distinct phases since WWII. The period directly after WWII was a period of high mass partisanship and low elite polarization. The 1970’s was a period of low mass partisanship with many predicting the end of political parties. Since the 1970’s the level of partisanship has increased. The two periods of high mass partisanship are much different from each other with the first being an era of government performance based partisanship and the more recent an era of ideological issue based partisanship. This shift between a government performance based to an ideological issue based partisanship is driven by increasing polarization at the elite level and the increasing prevalence of divided government. Contrary to previous findings (Hetherington 2001), it is argued that elite polarization does not increase the amount of mass partisanship, but instead only changes the basis of partisanship from government performance to ideological issues.