Party System Polarization Research Articles

Party system ideological polarization in Western Europe: data, trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties (1945–2021)

ABSTRACT Unlike other key party system properties (e.g. fragmentation, volatility), polarization lacks a publicly available cross-national and longitudinal dataset that can be used as an established source among the scientific community. This article aims to fill this gap by introducing a novel publicly available dataset of party system ideological polarization in Western European party systems. The dataset relies on multiple expert surveys and provides measures of party system ideological polarization for each parliamentary election and legislature in 20 Western European countries since 1945. The article also presents party system polarization’s comparative longitudinal trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties. It finds that party system ideological polarization is on the rise in Western Europe, mainly due to a progressive shift in the electoral support from ideologically moderate mainstream parties to more extreme challenger parties. Moreover, in recent years, high party system polarization has recurred in highly fragmented and volatile contexts, thus creating a detrimental context for the working of democracy.

Party-System Polarization and Individual Perceptions of Party Differences: Two Divergent Effects on Turnout

AbstractIn this article, we argue that party-system polarization and subjective perceptions of ideological party differences are conceptually and empirically distinct phenomena that affect electoral participation differently. Looking at 84 elections worldwide, we show that party-system polarization, and the sharp conflicts associated with it, depresses turnout because many citizens are put off by extreme party positions and unrewarding polemics. By contrast, the individual perception of differences between parties increases turnout because more citizens can find a party that is close to their own position and identify others as being further away. These opposite effects are possible because party-system polarization leads only some individuals to perceive differences between parties but leads others to avoid the emotionalized political arena. Moreover, individuals' ability to recognize differences between parties is not necessarily a consequence of party-system polarization. The contradictory findings in previous research are due to a conceptual and empirical blurring of these two essentially different aspects.

The Mobilizing Effect of Party System Polarization. Evidence From Europe

Does party system polarization mobilize voters? Polarization is increasingly shaping democratic competition across Europe. While often perceived to be negative, polarization can be an effective remedy against voter disengagement. This paper investigates two distinct, but often conflated mechanisms, which could explain why polarization leads to mobilization. Spatial polarization of parties diversifies electoral options at the ballot, while affective polarization mobilizes based on emotional considerations. This article then shows the link between polarization and turnout across 22 European countries. The results are complemented by a difference-in-differences analysis of German local elections. However, voting results alone do not inform about the mechanism at play. Survey data is used to show that negative affect appears to be the main driver of voter participation. Party polarization thus has ambivalent consequences for democracies: It mobilizes the electorate, but its effect is driven by negative emotions.

Turning off the base: Social democracy's neoliberal turn, income inequality, and turnout

AbstractGreater party system polarization has recently been shown to influence voter turnout under conditions of higher income inequality. This article builds on these findings by introducing into the framework the policy positions of social democratic parties. It does so through multilevel regression on a sample of 30 advanced democracies in 111 elections, from 1996 to 2019. In doing so, it contributes to the identification of party policy offerings as a mechanism moderating inequality and turnout. It finds that income inequality significantly reduces voter turnout, which is substantially magnified when social democratic parties adopt rightward welfare state positions. It also finds that social democratic parties can largely mitigate the negative effects of inequality on turnout for low‐income individuals by offering leftist welfare state positions. The findings carry important implications for understanding the electoral consequences of both party positioning and rising inequality in advanced democracies.Related ArticlesSimon, Christopher A., and Raymond Tatalovich. 2022. “The Turnout Myth and Referendum Voting in the United States.” Politics & Policy 50(3): 472–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12483.Stockemer, Daniel, and Stephanie Parent. 2013. “The Inequality Turnout Nexus: New Evidence from Presidential Elections.” Politics & Policy 42(2): 221–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12067.Wilford, Allan M. 2020. “Understanding the Competing Effects of Economic Hardship and Income Inequality on Voter Turnout.” Politics & Policy 48(2): 314–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12344.

The Activists Who Divide Us: A Cross-Country Analysis of Party Activists’ Influence on Polarization and Representation

What explains party polarization in multiparty systems? This study turns the spotlight to intraparty mechanisms, namely, the authorities and influence of party activists over the candidate selection process, as a potential source of party-system polarization. I hypothesize that parties in which activists possess more comprehensive selection authorities, the party elite will hold more extreme ideological positions, catering to activists' representation demands. Additionally, in such cases, the ideological gap between party elites and voters will be larger since more extreme actors overshadow the preferences of moderate party voters. Aggregating the intraparty effect of activists to the party-system level, I expect to find higher level of party polarization in countries where more parties allocate selection authorities to activists. Utilizing party-level data regarding candidate selection procedures as well as public opinion and elite position data from 19 countries and 93 parties between 2011 and 2017, I find support for my hypotheses.

Does Austerity Cause Polarization?

AbstractIn recent decades, governments in many Western democracies have shown a remarkable consensus in pursuing fiscal austerity measures during periods of strained public finances. In this article, we show that these decisions have consequences for political polarization. Our macro-level analysis of 166 elections since 1980 finds that austerity measures increase both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream parties, thereby boosting party system polarization. A detailed analysis of selected austerity episodes also shows that new, small and radical parties benefit most from austerity policies. Finally, survey experiments with a total of 8,800 respondents in Germany, Portugal, Spain and the UK indicate that the effects of austerity on polarization are particularly pronounced when the mainstream right and left parties both stand for fiscal restraint. Austerity is a substantial cause of political polarization and hence political instability in industrialized democracies.

Partisanship, Electoral Autocracy, and Citizen Perceptions of Party System Polarization

This paper examines how partisanship and electoral autocracy (vis-à-vis democracy) influence people’s perceptions of party system polarization in their country. Although partisanship generally enhances subjective party system polarization, I posit that this relationship depends on who is in power and the nature of political regime. Cognitive dissonance between losing an election and believing that one’s party is the best motivates partisans of parties out of power to see their country’s parties as less ideologically distinct compared to partisans of governing parties. Political regimes matter too because higher stakes of political competition and skewed information environment in electoral autocracies not only encourage all citizens to see parties as more polarized, but also magnify the positive impact of partisanship—particularly co-partisanship with governing parties—on subjective party system polarization. Using individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (1996–2019), the empirical analyses support these expectations, even when accounting for party system polarization based on expert party placements. These findings have important implications for scholarly debates on partisanship, electoral autocracy, and the nature of subjective electoral supply in contemporary electoral regimes.

Party system polarization and the effective number of parties

Polarization is a key characteristic of party systems, but scholars disagree about how polarization relates to the number of parties in a system. Different authors find positive, negative, or null relationships. I claim that when polarization is measured using the weighted standard deviation of standardized party positions, seat-level polarization is equal to NS−112+NS−1, where NS is the effective number of seat-winning parties. This relationship is what one would expect if parties were drawn randomly from a super-population with an effective sample size somewhere between the effective and raw number of parties. I test this claim using multiple datasets which report party positions and seat shares, before extending my analysis to consider vote-level polarization, the range of positions, and polarization in presidential and parliamentary regimes. My work extends the Taageperaan research agenda of building interlocking networks of equations relating key quantities of electoral and party systems.

Ideological extremism, perceived party system polarization, and support for democracy

AbstractDoes ideological polarization undermine or strengthen people’s principled support for democracy? In this study, we suggest that different manifestations of ideological polarization have different implications in this respect. Using data from 11 surveys conducted with representative samples of the adult populations of a group of liberal democratic countries, part of the Comparative National Elections Project, we look at how people’s level of ideological extremism and their perceptions of ideological polarization in their countries’ party systems are related with their support for democracy. We show that citizens who hold more extreme ideological positions are indeed less supportive of democracy and that such a negative relationship is strengthened as citizens’ extremism increases. However, we also show that the citizens who display higher levels of principled support for democracy are those who perceive parties to be neither too distant nor too close to each other in ideological terms. In other words, while a very polarized partisan supply seems to undermine popular commitment with democracy, very low polarization may have similar consequences.

Keep Them Engaged! Investigating the Effects of Self-centered Social Media Communication Style on User Engagement in 12 European Countries

ABSTRACT On Facebook, patterns of user engagement largely shape what types of political content citizens can see on the platform. Higher engagement leads to higher visibility. Therefore, one of the major goals of political actors’ Facebook communication is to produce content with the potential to provoke user engagement, and thereby increase their own visibility. This study introduces the concept of self-centered social media communication style which focuses on “salient” and “owned” issues with populist and negative appeals and investigates how user engagement is related to its main elements. We also explore how users’ receptivity to these content-related factors is shaped by country context. More specifically, we hypothesize that users are more likely to react, comment on and share posts focusing on salient topics or issues “owned” by parties rather than more permanent policy issues, and posts including populist appeals and negativity. Further, we test how these effects are moderated by geographical regions and the level of party system polarization. We manually coded 9,703 Facebook posts of 68 parties from 12 European countries in the context of the 2019 European elections. Our findings show that users are more likely to engage with immigration-related, domestic, populist and negative posts, but react less to posts dealing with environmental or economic issues. While issue ownership does not play a significant role for user engagement, country context plays a minor role. However, some populist appeals are more effective in more polarized countries.

Conditions of proximity and directional voting: Voter sophistication, political information, and party identification

This paper contributes to the debate among supporters of the proximity and the directional models of vote choice. It provides a two-fold contribution: first, I utilize a series of critical tests which allow for a straightforward identification of proximity and directional voters and the aggregation of the respective shares at the party, election, and country levels. Secondly, I focus on the reasons which reinforce these alternative or complimentary models. In comparison to the standard proximity model, directional voters are less educated and less informed. They are also more likely to select opposition parties and favor actors with somewhat unclear ideological platforms. At the election level, directional voting is also driven by party system polarization.

New parties and matryoshka scissions in Spain. The case of Podemos and Más Madrid

The economic crisis which began in 2008, and was further exacerbated by the political-institutional crisis of 2011–2014, has led to a transformation in the traditional Spanish party system. Instead of an imperfect bipartisan system, it has moved to a moderate multiparty one with two practically sealed ideological blocs, of similar weight and with intra-bloc mobility. However, in each bloc the dominance of the traditional party has been maintained (PSOE-social democrats and PP-conservatives) but sharing the space, in order to govern, with new agents of recent creation: Podemos-left, Ciudadanos-liberals and VOX-extreme right. The political-institutional crisis prompted a new complexity in the partisan system with the entry into Parliament of new actors but without the departure of any relevant party, resulting in a dramatic increase in the fragmentation and polarization of the Spanish party system. In this article we focus on the competition within the left bloc, in particular, the division of Podemos in the Community of Madrid to form the political party Más Madrid. We analyse the power fight, competition and electoral transfer between both parties during the 2019 local, regional and national elections and show that for the first time a dual vote has been established in the Community of Madrid. An anomaly in Spanish territories where no historical nationalities coexist. Our results also show that the left-left space has not expanded with the shift of social democrats to the ideological center. The paper concludes asking about whether this electoral flight could spread to parties with similar political stances in the different Spanish territories.

REGIONAL PARTY SYSTEM OF NORTHERN IRELAND: EROSION OF BIPOLARITY

The subject of the article is the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland in 2000-2010s, as well as the factors contributing to the observed changes. The research is based on the theoretical framework of J. Lane and S. Ersson and is chronologically outlined by the period of 1998-2021. Cross-temporal comparative analysis was used as a key research method. The parameters of the comparative analysis include the following variables: number of parties, effective number of parties, number of significant parties, fragmentation of the party system, ideological polarization and electoral instability. The first part of the article is devoted to the characteristics of the theoretical and methodological research design. The second part is devoted to the analysis of the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland, which is based on the study of structural and ideological elements. In the final part, the results and key findings of the study are presented, including the characteristics of the key factors in the dynamics of the regional party system. The results of the study demonstrate the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland regarding two parameters - electoral stability and ideological polarization. The degree of electoral stability of the regional party is slightly decreasing due to the redistribution of electoral preferences from unionist parties to alternative ones. The change in the parameter of ideological polarization of the regional party system is observed in two directions - the erosion of bipolarity, as well as the centripetal tendencies of ideologically extreme party actors. The key factors in the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland at the present stage are the following: instability of the regional political system based on ethno-confessional criteria; the issue of European Union membership and the future status of Northern Ireland; changes in the demographic structure of the regional community.

Party system polarization in developing democracies: the case of Turkey, 1950–2018

ABSTRACT This paper examines party system polarization over 19 general elections in Turkey from1950 to 2018. Using data on party policies from the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), we show that, contrary to the common view, party system polarization is not a persistent feature of Turkish politics. We also find that party system polarization on the left-right continuum reflects party differences primarily on social rather than economic or European integration issues. Finally, our results demonstrate that the military interventions in 1960 and 1980 reduced party system polarization in subsequent elections, even when controlling for other determinants of polarization. These findings have important implications for debates on party politics, military rule, and the prospects of democratic governance in developing democracies.

The Polarization of Legislative Party Votes: Comparative Illustrations from Denmark and Portugal

Abstract This article introduces and demonstrate the use of a ‘legislative polarisation index’. This extends a current measure of party system polarisation, as developed by Dalton (2008), and makes it possible to include legislative behaviour in the form of roll call votes into the assessment of polarisation. The article selects Denmark and Portugal to illustrate how the index works. The cases show that increased fragmentation and increased polarisation of the party system may become more moderate when parties on the political extremes become included in the legislative process.

Modeling ideological polarization in democratic party systems

There are mounting claims that increasing ideological polarization is reshaping democratic party systems with important effects on the functioning of electoral politics, the correlates of voting choice, turnout, and even the representativeness of government. Yet, our knowledge of what causes party system polarization is still developing. The primary research goal is to systematically combine and test existing theories predicting levels of party system polarization across 21 established democracies. Polarization levels have generally risen since the mid-1990s. A pooled model finds that characteristics of the electoral system and the party system largely determine the continuity of party system polarization. Polarization levels also appear linked to short-term factors such as citizens’ declining confidence in the economy and increasing concerns about immigration. The conclusion discusses the implications for party systems and politics in affluent democracies.

Political polarization, voting and democratic representativeness: Too much or too little?

This contribution evaluates the mediating role of different political contexts and levels of democratic consolidation on the effect of party system polarization on ideological vote and discusses how this relationship enhances democratic representativeness. The influence of party system polarization on ideological voting is analyzed in two areas: the voters' competence in identifying parties' ideological positions; and the voters’ tendency to vote for the most ideologically proximate party, which is one of the key features of the spatial theories of voting. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) from 1996 to 2019 and multilevel modelling techniques, the paper compares how those features vary across different types of countries, particularly older and newer democracies, and different regions of the world.

Party-system polarisation, legislative institutions and cabinet survival in 28 parliamentary democracies, 1945–2019

The resurgence of radical and populist parties has stimulated renewed discussions about the resilience of parliamentary democracy in Europe. This work contributes to this debate by analysing the extent to which positive parliamentarism, the prime minister’s parliamentary dissolution powers, the government’s power to table votes of confidence and the majority requirements for votes of no confidence serve as ‘shock absorbers’ moderating the effect of ideological polarisation in European parliaments. Fitting several Cox Proportional Hazards models to data for 752 cabinets from 28 European democracies between 1945 and 2019, the well-established finding that the restrictiveness of the constructive vote of no confidence mitigates the destabilising effect of strong extreme parties on non-electoral cabinet replacements is confirmed. More counter-intuitively, the absence of positive parliamentarism reduces the risk of non-electoral cabinet replacements when ideologically extreme parties are strong.

Rising Majoritarianism as Challenge For Democratic Governance - Turkey in Comparative Perspective

Introduction. In many countries, including EU members and their close neighbours, we can observe the so called democratic backsliding in the current decade. Political scientists have been discussing intensively the reasons behind this process. The proposed paper focuses on the rising phenomenon of majoritarianism which seems to contribute to the problems of democratic governance - particularly in the polarised and diverse societies in terms of the world outlook, beliefs and political sympathies -because of the dominance of a particular political and social group or groups in a political system. The aim of the article is to analyse different paths of development of majoritarianism in the 1990s and the 2000s and its impact on the political regime in the current decade. The case of Turkey as one of the “hardest" cases to indicate the phenomenon is compared to some selected states from Central Europe to verify the main hypothesis that the structural factors emerging within the historical process are behind the development of majoritarianism, which has been even strengthened in the current decade, including the pandemic period in 2020. Methods and materials . The author takes the qualitative approach. He uses the process-tracing method to investigate the development of majoritarianism in selected states and conducts the comparative analysis to identify the similarities and differences between Turkey and two Central European states - Hungary and Poland with reference to the analysed phenomenon. Results. At the turn of the 1990s and the 2000s a concentration of the party system, producing a decrease in the number of parties in the parliament and a rising party system polarization that strengthened the two largest parties and developed two ideological blocks resulted in the development of majoritarianism in the 2000s - mainly in Turkey and Hungary. It did not lead to the democracy decline at this time. In the second decade of the 21st century single-party governments (or coalition governments with one dominating party) sharing the majoritarian understanding of democracy have consolidated their power at the cost of the weakening of the opposition as well as have strengthened the executive - in relation to the legislature and judiciary. These processes have led to limitations in working of checks and balances system but also political and social pluralism due to increasing dominance of incumbents in political and social life of analyzed countries, particularly during the pandemic period. Discussion and conclusions . In Hungary and Poland the phenomenon of ma-joritarianism contributes so far to lowering the quality of democracy - in comparison with the Turkish situation reflecting rather the gradual change of the political regime to less democratic (i.e. a new type of authoritarianism).

Party System Polarization, Citizenship, and Immigrant Party Allegiances in Western Europe

This article examines the role of party system polarization in shaping immigrants’ party loyalties in their host country. It suggests that foreign-born individuals are more likely to become partisans when political parties take more distinct policy positions on immigration control. Moreover, this relationship is more pronounced among foreign-born non-citizens than foreign-born citizens. Using individual-level public opinion data from eight rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS), 2002–2017, and measures of party system polarization constructed using party policy positions from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) in 17 West European democracies, the analyses confirm these expectations. The findings presented here suggest that party polarization on immigration control enhances, rather than undermines, immigrant political integration in contemporary democracies.