Elite Polarization Research Articles

Correction to: Can Credibility Overcome Elite Polarization?

Correction to: Can Credibility Overcome Elite Polarization?

Collaborating on the Carceral State: Political Elite Polarization and the Expansion of Federal Crime Legislation Networks, 1979 to 2005

Collaborating on the Carceral State: Political Elite Polarization and the Expansion of Federal Crime Legislation Networks, 1979 to 2005

Can Credibility Overcome Elite Polarization?

Abstract Political scientists Alexander Gazmararian and Dustin Tingley's incisive new book Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse contends that credibility is key to unlocking the deadlock over climate policy. They claim that fossil fuel communities have often been skeptical of any transition away from fossil fuels with good reason. In similar situations, policymakers have often failed to follow through on policies meant to mitigate economic dislocation. Drawing on a wealth of quantitative and qualitative evidence from energy-producing communities, including surveys of residents and officials alike, Gazmararian and Tingley find that different policy features that bolster credibility can build support for a transition to clean energy sources. The book provides a much-needed view of the energy transition from the ground-up. Yet the book pays less attention to a principal-agent problem at the heart of the clean energy transition: many of the elected representatives of the communities most affected by the transition don’t acknowledge any need for a transition. What's more, in a highly polarized environment, the impact of policy feedbacks is likely to be muted. Drawing on the experiences of the ACA and Canada's carbon tax, we suggest that even when the policy features that the authors propose are present, support for clean-energy policies may not rise dramatically.

The Effect of Elite Cues on Policy Attitudes through the Lens of Affective Polarization in Taiwan

The personalization of politics and elite polarization have attracted considerable scholarly attention. We conducted an online experimental survey on policy proposals and voters’ evaluations of candidates during the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election. We see an elite effect on voters’ policy attitudes when controlling for party-related factors. The effect shows up as a negative cue but not as a positive cue. Moreover, the negative effect varies by candidate. These findings suggest that in policy attitude formation, opposition to a candidate has a stronger effect than liking a candidate. Overall, this study extends our understanding of the elite effect from the perspective of personalized politics with evidence from the Taiwanese electoral context. This information is critical not only for understanding the political consequences of polarization but also for understanding how it relates to opinion formation among citizens.

The impacts of ideological polarization among political elites on citizens’ attitudes toward opposing-party supporters via an affective channel

ABSTRACT Recent studies have reported that the ideological polarization of party elites induces citizens’ affective polarization toward parties in the United States, while others have found that American citizens’ affective polarization strengthens their biased attitudes toward opposing-party supporters. This study tests the implication of the literature that affective polarization mediates between the ideological polarization of party elites and biased attitudes against fellow citizens using survey experiments in the United States and South Korea. We find three common results between the two countries. First, the manipulation of the ideological distance between the two parties does not influence respondents’ relative affect between them. Second, however, there appears to be a positive correlation between the relative affect and biased attitudes toward fellow citizens. Finally, mediation analysis further reveals that the manipulation does not affect the biased attitudes through the relative affect. We conclude by briefly discussing the key findings.

Polarization All the Way Down: How Coverage of Elite and Partisan Polarization Spills Over to Perceptions of the U.S. Mass Public

ABSTRACT How do ordinary citizens perceive and respond to different kinds of political polarization in the U.S.? Recent work shows that people believe that the parties are intensely polarized but, in reality, the extent of polarization depends on whether we focus on political elites or the mass public. This paper reports results from two survey experiments with samples from Dynata and CloudResearch (total N = 2,940) exploring how people perceive ideological and affective polarization among (a) party elites, (b) partisan voters, and (c) ordinary Americans in the mass public. I show that participants believe that the public is both ideologically and affectively polarized, only marginally less than partisans and elites. I also find some evidence that news media creates perceptual spillover between elites, partisans, and the mass public: participants given information about (non)polarization for only one group nonetheless update their perceptions of all three groups in parallel. Given the dominance of information about elites and elite polarization in the U.S. media environment, I argue that top-down spillover from news stories about elites may help to explain why people think the public is more polarized than it really is.

Politicization of fake news debates and citizen attitudes towards fake news and its regulation

As fake news becomes a pressing social concern, governments from many countries have considered legislation against fake news. This study examined how citizens formed opinions about fake news and an anti-fake news bill in South Korea where political elites provide polarized discourse regarding fake news and associated regulatory politics. Progressive leaders more intensely criticized fake news and proposed an anti-fake news bill whereas conservative leaders vehemently opposed the bill. The analysis of survey data showed that elite polarization may affect citizens’ perceptions of fake news and attitudes toward anti-fake news legislation. Strong partisans tended to believe that fake news is more hostile toward their in-group and had stronger third-person perceptions, and such perceptions were positively related to the support of anti-fake news legislation. Moreover, progressive voters tended to have stronger hostile and third-person perceptions than conservative counterparts, reflecting endorsement of their in-group leaders’ positions. News reception about the bill further increased the gap in the level of support for the bill between progressive and conservative citizens.

Elite polarization and democratic backsliding in Tunisia: tracing agency-driven mechanisms

ABSTRACT Recent research has identified a strong correlation between polarization and democratic backsliding. The creation of antithetical groups in society is a necessary element in this type of autocratization process. Nevertheless, the agency-driven mechanisms through which elite polarization becomes harmful for democracy have been less explored in the literature. By resorting to process tracing methodology, the article analyses how elite polarization contributed to derailing the democratization process in Tunisia. The article identifies three necessary mechanisms through which elite polarization became a risk for democracy: politicization reinforcing pre-existing party cleavages; exclusion politics based on ontological contestation (“either us or them”); and the systematic delegitimization of democratic institutions and processes. In Tunisia, Parti Destourien Libre’s (PDL) political campaign followed these steps creating the context in which President Saied could start a democratic backsliding process.

Resentment and Polarization in Indonesia

Abstract Is political polarization in Indonesia here to stay? For years, scholarly consensus on partisanship in Indonesia viewed weak partisan identity, collusive party behavior, and the predominance of personality as features of a system that would prevent the emergence of deep polarization. In the wake of religious and ethnic mobilizations during three contentious elections, the question of whether polarization has come to Indonesia is increasingly salient. Where previous studies have focused on elite polarization, we focus on whether polarization has a mass base. Using an original, nationally representative survey of 1,520 Indonesian adults shortly before the 2019 election, we tested whether political preferences in Indonesia reflected any of four underlying sets of resentment—religious, anti-Chinese, anti-Java, or regional. We found links of varying strength between each of these resentments and political preferences. Analyzing the sources of resentments, we find evidence that different resentments may travel through different channels: religious resentment through organizational membership, anti-Chinese resentment through exposure to social media, regional resentment through awareness of regional resource disparities, and resentment of Java through having experienced the old politics of Java—Outer Islands conflict. These links between political affiliation and resentment suggest that polarization is here to stay, so long as politicians make use of real, underlying resentments.

They’re Still There, He’s All Gone: American Fatalities in Foreign Wars and Right-Wing Radicalization at Home

What explains right-wing radicalization in the United States? Existing research emphasizes demographic changes, economic insecurity, and elite polarization. This paper highlights an additional factor: the impact of foreign wars on society at home. We argue communities that bear the greatest costs of foreign wars are prone to higher rates of right-wing radicalization. To support this claim, we present robust correlations between activity on Parler, a predominantly right-wing social media platform, and fatalities among residents who served in U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at both the county and census tract level. The findings contribute to understanding right-wing radicalization in the US in two key respects. First, it examines widespread, nonviolent radical-right activity that, because it is less provocative than protest and violence, has eluded systematic measurement. Second, it highlights that U.S. foreign wars have important implications for domestic politics beyond partisanship and voting, to potentially include radicalization.

Overlapping polarization: On the contextual determinants of the interplay between ideological and affective polarization

Previous literature has distinguished two types of polarization: ideological and affective. However, little is known on how the interconnection of these two polarizations (which we call overlapping polarization) varies depending on the political context. Is affective polarization always associated with ideological polarization? What is the role of the institutional framework (i.e., democratic age and popular election of the head of state) and the party system (i.e., elite polarization and number of parties) in determining how wide this overlap is? This article examines the contextual determinants of overlapping polarization by using information from the four first CSES waves. According to our analyses, the individual-level positive effect of ideological polarization on affective polarization is stronger when the party system is ideologically polarized and in older democracies, and is weaker in presidential democracies and when the number of parties is higher.

Conflict or choice? The differential effects of elite incivility and ideological polarization on political support

How does elite polarization impact citizens’ political support? While elite polarization generally has a negative connotation, we argue that it is crucial to distinguish its potential manifestations. The present study analyzes the impact of perceived elite polarization on political support by disentangling the effects of elite incivility from those of ideological polarization, and, additionally, by analyzing different dimensions of ideological polarization (i.e., along a general left–right, economic, and cultural dimension). Using survey data from the Dutch Parliamentary Election Survey 2021, we find that perceived incivility has a negative impact on political support. In contrast, perceived left–right polarization and economic issue polarization have a positive effect on political support, while cultural polarization has no effect. These findings show that elite polarization can convey both perceptions of conflict and choice to citizens, and that its impact on political support crucially depends on the dimension of polarization under study. Our study thereby refines our knowledge of the attitudinal consequences of elite polarization.

Response to Nicholas F. Jacobs and Sidney M. Milkis’s Review of Political Choice in a Polarized America: How Elite Polarization Shapes Mass Behavior

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"Flattening the curve": Communication, risk and COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey.

This study examines Turkish online news media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. It explores media framing narratives, particularly how they reflected and promoted elite polarization or consensus in the COVID-19 debate. The findings shed light on Turkish political power dynamics during the first stage in the national response to the pandemic. The study highlights the calculations of political partisans who are keen on building a fragile consensus in an increasingly polarized society.

Polarization of the Rich: The New Democratic Allegiance of Affluent Americans and the Politics of Redistribution

Affluent Americans used to vote for Republican politicians. Now they vote for Democrats. In this paper, I show detailed evidence for this decades-in-the-making trend and argue that it has important consequences for the U.S. politics of economic inequality and redistribution. Beginning in the 1990s, the Democratic Party started winning increasing shares of rich, upper-middle income, high-income occupation, and stock-owning voters. This appears true across voters of all races and ethnicities, is concentrated among (but not exclusive to) college-educated voters, and is only true among voters living in larger metropolitan areas. In the 2010s, Democratic candidates’ electoral appeal among affluent voters reached above-majority levels. I echo other scholars in maintaining that this trend is partially driven by the increasingly “culturally liberal” views of educated voters and party elite polarization on those issues, but I additionally argue that the evolution and stasis of the parties’ respective economic policy agendas has also been a necessary condition for the changing behavior of affluent voters. This reversal of an American politics truism means that the Democratic Party’s attempts to cohere around an economically redistributive policy agenda in an era of rising inequality face real barriers.

Dynamics of Polarization: Affective Partisanship and Policy Divergence

AbstractWe explore the dynamics of affective partisanship and policy divergence in a behavioral voting model. Voters are adaptive and influenced by partisan affect, while political parties are rational and office motivated. We show that the affective partisanship of the electorate and the divergence of party platforms can be mutually reinforcing, thus providing an explanation for the observed co-movement of affective and elite polarization in recent decades. Whether the induced behavioral path exhibits low polarization or high polarization depends on the salience of group identity and the number of moderate voters. Thus, shocks to those factors, perhaps due to such events as economic crises or war, can lead to the polarization or depolarization of the electorate and of the elite.

Putting the Political in Political Interest: The Conditional Effect of Politics on Citizens’ Interest in Politics

Given that political interest is one of the best predictors of political participation, it remains curious that the causes of interest are undertheorized and understudied. Notably absent from much of the research on political interest is an exploration of how variations in the nature of politics itself might have an impact on individual-level political interest. We develop a theory and a set of testable predictions about how partisanship interacts with the presence of a presidential (vs. midterm) election, the party of the sitting president, and elite polarization, to affect political interest. We report multilevel models that use ANES measures of political interest and partisanship and the DW-NOMINATE Senate polarization measure (from 1960 to 2008) and discuss the implications of our findings for the long-term prospects of an interested electorate.

Elite polarization and mass policy attitudes: A study of the 2010 senate election

Objectives This study aims to test the extent to which campaigns along with partisanship polarized public attitudes on a series of major policy issues during the 2010 Senate elections. Methods Data are drawn from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data and Campaign Media Analysis Group data, which are provided by Wesleyan Media Project. Results The findings of this article are two-fold: First, the 2010 Senate campaigns did not sweepingly boost mass polarization on policy attitudes in general. Second, polarization effect only demonstrated among low-information voters on economic policy issues but little on moral and non-economic issues. Conclusion This article argues that elite-driven mass polarization is based on a matrix of interconnecting varying degrees of information intensity, predispositions, and voters’ awareness level. In the context of low-intensity campaigns, low-information citizens are more likely to follow the party communications and thus are more likely to polarize their attitudes on self-interest issues.

When Policymakers are Asked: Why and How Polarization Varies Across States

This study brings a fresh perspective to elite polarization by examining how policymakers and party leaders interpret and respond to it. Polarization is examined through the language and lived experience of those most familiar with it—policymakers themselves. Face-to-face interviews posed qualitative and quantitative questions to 212 legislators and 13 key informants from two states that varied in polarization. Most legislators describe polarization in negative terms. Consistent with “Community Dissonance Theory,” analyses reveal differences in a legislature’s institutional culture with policymakers in the more polarized state reporting more fraying of the social fabric and fracturing of decision-making processes. Specifically, legislators report more limited opportunities to build relationships with colleagues across party lines and for the minority party to make meaningful contributions. Corroborating the “Theory of Pernicious Polarization,” polarization appears to function as a relationship-based process that leaders can use for instrumental political ends. Polarization depends on whether party leaders react to rifts in tribal, non-compromising ways and how the minority responds. Consistent with “Conditional Party Governance” theory, party leaders can contribute to dysfunctional polarization by encouraging homogeneity in their own party and polarity from the opposing party. Drawing on policymakers’ own words, states vary in whether elite polarization is dysfunctional.

Elite Communities and Polarization in Neoliberal Society: Consecration in Australia’s and Sweden’s Wealthy Neighbourhoods

‘Elite communities’ are the areas where the wealthy, and even ‘superrich’, live, socialize and raise their children as future economic and financial elites; they are the places where a few lead socially and economically privileged lives. Earlier studies have concentrated on the inner dynamics of these settings, focusing on the way residents are constructed and socialized as elites through their social, communicative and aesthetic abilities that are perceived as exemplary in contemporary neoliberal society. In this paper, we broaden the perspective, by exploring how these areas contribute to polarization, that is, how they generate distinctions based on money, morals and manners that are peculiar to neoliberalism’s idealization of ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘self-management’, ‘leadership’ and the pursuit of an ‘active lifestyle’. Our data come from two major ethnographic studies: one conducted between 2010 and 2015 of Sweden’s wealthiest community, Djursholm, that is populated by the country’s business and financial elites; the other conducted between 2016 and 2019 of three of Australia’s most prestigious and economically privileged suburbs, Toorak (Melbourne), Mosman (Sydney) and Cottesloe (Perth).