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Research papers on Political polarization

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  1. Political Polarization on the Digital Sphere: A Cross-platform, Over-time Analysis of Interactional, Positional, and Affective Polarization on Social Media

    Moran Yarchi, Christian Baden, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik · 2020 · Political Communication · 435 citations

    Political polarization on the digital sphere poses a real challenge to many democracies around the world. Although the issue has received some scholarly attention, there is a need to improve the conceptual precision in the increasingly blurry debate. The use of computational communication science approaches allows us to track political conversations in a fine-grained manner within their natural settings – the realm of interactive social media. The present study combines different algorithmic approaches to studying social media data in order to capture both the interactional structure and content of dynamic political talk online. We conducted an analysis of political polarization across socia

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  2. Do Search Algorithms Endanger Democracy? An Experimental Investigation of Algorithm Effects on Political Polarization

    Jaeho Cho, Saifuddin Ahmed, Martin Hilbert, et al. · 2020 · Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media · 160 citations

    This study examines algorithm effects on user opinion, utilizing a real-world recommender algorithm of a highly popular video-sharing platform, YouTube. We experimentally manipulate user search/watch history by our custom programming. A controlled laboratory experiment is then conducted to examine whether exposure to algorithmically recommended content reinforces and polarizes political opinions. Results suggest that political self-reinforcement, as indicated by the political emotion-ideology alignment, and affective polarization are heightened by political videos – selected by the YouTube recommender algorithm – based on participants’ own search preferences. Suggestions for how to reduce al

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  5. Affective Polarization in Multiparty Systems? Comparing Affective Polarization Towards Voters and Parties in Norway and the United States

    Erik Knudsen · 2021 · Scandinavian Political Studies · 74 citations

    A growing body of comparative studies on partisan hostility – a phenomenon known as affective polarization – is providing evidence that partisan affective polarization is generally no greater in the United States than it is in many European multiparty systems. This article takes the comparative literature on affective polarization one step further by presenting the first comparative study on affective polarization that simultaneously uses, compares and combines a direct measure of affective polarization towards voters (using the inter‐party marriage measure) and an indirect measure of affective polarization towards parties (using the like/dislike of party measure) while accounting for the fa

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  6. Democracy and the Epistemic Problems of Political Polarization

    Jonathan Benson · 2023 · American Political Science Review · 50 citations

    Political polarization is one of the most discussed challenges facing contemporary democracies and is often associated with a broader epistemic crisis. While inspiring a large literature in political science, polarization’s epistemic problems also have significance for normative democratic theory, and this study develops a new approach aimed at understanding them. In contrast to prominent accounts from political psychology—group polarization theory and cultural cognition theory—which argue that polarization leads individuals to form unreliable political beliefs, this study focuses on system-level diversity. It argues that polarization’s epistemic harms are best located in its tendency to red

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  8. A new regime divide? Democratic backsliding, attitudes towards democracy and affective polarization

    Theresa Gessler, Natasha Wunsch · 2025 · European Journal of Political Research · 39 citations

    Partisan‐based affective polarization has been posited as a key explanation for citizens' tolerance towards democratic backsliding, with voters more likely to overlook democratic violations conducted by in‐party candidates. Our study theorizes and empirically explores the reverse perspective on this relationship: focusing on the role of the opposition, we submit that backsliding may crystallize an affective dislike among opposition supporters towards the governing party and its supporters that stems from a regime divide over democracy itself. To probe the plausibility of this argument, we leverage original survey data collected in Hungary, where democratic backsliding under the Fidesz govern

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  9. Social Media Use and Political Engagement in Polarized Times. Examining the Contextual Roles of Issue and Affective Polarization in Developed Democracies

    Michael Chan, Jingjing Yi · 2024 · Political Communication · 38 citations

    Studies addressing the normative questions of whether social media use positively or negatively affects citizens' levels of democratic engagement and satisfaction with democracy have produced mixed findings.This study tests the proposition that political polarization plays an important contingent role in explaining these relationships.Combining Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) and World Values Survey (WVS) data, this study examines how issue polarization and affective polarization at the country level shape the relationships between social media use for political information and democratic outcomes in 27 developed democracies.The findings show divergent consequences of social media use continge

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  10. The effects of disagreement and unfriending on political polarization: a moderated-mediation model of cross-cutting discussion on affective polarization via unfriending contingent upon exposure to incivility

    Han Lin, Yi Wang, J. Lee, et al. · 2023 · J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. · 33 citations

    Cross-cutting discussion is the foundation of deliberative democracy. However, previous research has reported inconsistent results regarding the effects of exposure to dissimilar perspectives on political polarization. This study aims to extend the literature by exploring how cross-cutting discussion influences affective polarization through unfriending and how this indirect effect is contingent upon exposure to incivility. The study analyzes panel data from a two-wave online survey conducted in South Korea (N = 890). The results show a significantly positive indirect effect of unfriending, suggesting that cross-cutting discussion further reinforces affective polarization via unfriending.

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  11. Breaking free from linear assumptions: Unraveling the relationship between affective polarization and democratic support

    L. Janssen, Emma Turkenburg · 2024 · SSRN Electronic Journal · 24 citations

    Scholars increasingly raise concerns about the alleged detrimental impact of affective polarization on citizens’ democratic attitudes. Yet, prior studies on the relationship between affective polarization and democratic support have yielded mixed results: Whereas some scholars report evidence that affective polarization erodes citizens’ support for democracy, others report null findings. In this research note, we posit that one relevant explanation for these mixed results is that the relationship between affective polarization and democratic support is not linear, but rather negatively curvilinear (i.e., an inverted U‐shape). Though extreme levels of affective polarization may harm citizens’

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  12. Hate prompts participation: Examining the dynamic relationship between affective polarization and political participation

    Sangwon Lee, Jihyang Choi, C. Ahn · 2023 · New Media & Society · 15 citations

    Political participation has long been considered a cornerstone of democracy. While most studies on political participation have been grounded on a normative approach, which assumes that political participation is driven by positive civic actions, recent studies suggest that political participation is also driven by negative forces such as overconfidence in knowledge and partisan communication flows. This article builds on the latter line of research by exploring the role of affective polarization on political participation. While this line of research is not new, it suffers from a lack of clear causal order. This study relies on three-wave panel data collected during the 2022 Korean presiden

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  13. The Personal is Political: Political Attitudes, Affective Polarization and Fertility Preferences in Hong Kong

    A. Cheung, Lake Lui · 2024 · Population Research and Policy Review · 10 citations

    This study examines the relationship between political attitudes, affective polarization, and fertility preferences among married couples in Hong Kong. Using dyadic data from a representative household survey (N = 1586 heterosexually married adults), we investigate how individuals’ attitudes toward democracy and levels of affective polarization are associated with their fertility preferences. We also explore the influence of spouses’ political attitudes and affective polarization on one's fertility preferences. We found that individuals with stronger support for democracy have lower fertility preferences. This negative association between political attitudes and fertility preferences is furt

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  14. Affective polarization and democratic erosion: evidence from a context of weak partisanship

    Loreto Cox, Pedro Cubillos, Carmen Le Foulon · 2025 · Political Science Research and Methods · 10 citations

    Can the “us versus them” dynamic in politics undermine support for democracy even in the absence of strong party identification? While much is known about affective polarization in the USA, its impact on democratic commitment in other contexts remains understudied. We examine Chile’s 2022 plebiscite, where voters decided whether to approve or reject a new constitution amid low levels of party trust and identification. Through an experiment using an unobtrusive primer, we successfully induced short-term affective polarization, heightening animosity across multiple dimensions. Our findings show that individuals primed to this polarization significantly reduced their support for democracy, mi

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  15. Political polarization, legitimacy and democratic education

    Anniina Leiviskä · 2024 · Ethics and Education · 9 citations

    ABSTRACT Political polarization is often argued to be a major threat to democracy. This article examines whether the two different forms of polarization, ideological and affective, may risk some of the core assumptions of democratic legitimacy. The paper argues that ideological polarization is linked with increasingly radical ideological positions being accepted as legitimate contributions to democratic processes, which may lead to the erosion of the democratic culture of society. Affective polarization, in turn, presents a risk to the type of political collaboration that characterizes legitimate democratic processes. The article presents some remarks on how these forms of polarization could

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  16. Polarization and Democracy in Central Europe

    Petra Guasti, Aleš Michal · 2025 · Politics and Governance · 8 citations

    This article examines the dual role of polarization in fostering political mobilization for and against democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Populist movements in this region often drive democratic decline, yet, notable cases, such as electoral victories in Czechia (2021) and Poland (2023), suggest that civil society can counter these trends. Following Schedler (2023), we perceive polarization as a fundamental democratic conflict about democratic norms and values. This study investigated how varying forms of polarization— ideological, affective, intransigent, and partisan sorting—affected the mobilization dynamics for and against democracy. We highlight that polarization affected mobiliz

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  17. Affective polarization and democratic identity: a comparison of Italy and Norway

    S. Bein · 2025 · Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft · 3 citations

    On the one hand, political polarization is necessary for a plural democracy, which must never be satisfied with a permanent lack of alternatives regarding its central principles and values. On the other hand, polarization can become dysfunctional for democracy when the absoluteness of the rejection of political opponents leads to the endorsement of anti-democratic attitudes and measures, when politics is seen as a zero-sum game and the diversity of legitimate opinions, attitudes, and identities is neglected. The identity of democracy is to prevent this in the long run and to balance competing elements instead. Based on this premise, the article aims to explain why the extent of affective pol

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  18. Examining the Territorial Dimension as a Source of Affective Polarization in the Spanish Multinational Democracy: A Longitudinal Analysis

    Daniel Balinhas · 2024 · Ethnopolitics · 2 citations

    ABSTRACT Research has found that citizens’ perceptions of elites’ left-right polarization are one of the causes behind affective polarization (AP). However, in many countries, political conflict and competition extend beyond the left-right axis. Using a 12-wave panel dataset, this paper examines the relationship between perceived polarization along the two main axes of political competition in Spain (the left-right axis and the territorial one) and AP. The findings reveal that perceived territorial polarization can independently contribute to AP, and provide preliminary evidence on how the salience of the territorial conflict affects this relationship. Furthermore, the impact on AP of the pe

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  19. Affective partisan polarization, citizens’ attitudes, and political behavior in Swiss democracy

    Benjamin Jansen, Alois Stutzer · 2026 · Zeitschrift für schweizerische Statistik und Volkswirtschaft/Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik/Swiss journal of economics and statistics · 2 citations

    Abstract There is a concern that citizens with different political positions and party affiliations increasingly dislike each other. We examine this affective polarization, which is often associated with a weakening of democracy, in the context of Switzerland’s multiparty landscape with proportional governmental representation. Evaluating the long-term development of affective polarization in Switzerland with both historical and newly gathered data for 2023, we find an increase between 1999 and 2003 but hardly any change over the last two decades. In a complementary perspective based on voters’ revealed preferences, our analysis of straight- vs. split-ticket voting behavior in national parli

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  20. Consecuencias inesperadas de la polarización política: Purga y reconstrucción de la Corte Constitucional en EcuadorUnintended consequences of political polarization: Purge and reconstruction of the Constitutional Court in Ecuador

    Julio Ríos-Figueroa, Patricia Sotomayor Valarezo · 2025 · International Journal of Constitutional Law · 2 citations

    In this article we investigate the impact of affective polarization around the figure of Rafael Correa on the institutions of democracy, specifically on the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. We argue that this polarization led, first, to the purge of the Constitutional Court in 2018 causing a breakdown of the institutional order and stability that had been maintained since 2007. But the same polarization, in a second moment, also produced that the Court appointed after the purge had a different composition than the previous ones, with more diverse and innovative profiles. The new set of magistrates, in turn, initiated a transformation of the constitutional jurisprudence and the political ro

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  21. Winners’ Restraint or Affective Majoritarianism? Elections, Polarization and Political Support

    Damjan Tomic, Sergi Ferrer, Enrique Prada, et al. · 2026 · Comparative Political Studies · 2 citations

    Research on the impact of elections on attitudes toward democracy has focused primarily on satisfaction with democracy. Building on this, we analyze how winning and losing elections, along with affective polarization, shapes citizens’ support for norms of democratic restraint and consent. We propose that partisan animus weakens the “reservoir of goodwill” that helps citizens accept democratic norms that may go against their self interest. Using a comparative study of 35 elections and two quasi-experimental case studies, we find that while differences between winners and losers in their support for norms of restraint and consent can be statistically significant, they are substantively small c

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  22. Fostering Open-Minded Political Engagement through Online Interscholastic Discussions: Toward Reducing Affective Political Polarization

    Brett L. M. Levy, Alina Lewis · 2025 · Democracy & Education · 1 citations

    This study explores how political discussions among diverse youth can support students’ open-minded political engagement. For this study, we collaborated with two teachers to adapt and enact instruction aimed at supporting students’ discussion of controversial issues across political, geographic, and cultural boundaries. During an instructional unit exploring various ways to strengthen our election system, students engaged in discussions with their classmates and with peers from another school via an online video discussion board. We collected data through observations and interviews. Our findings indicate that the instruction enhanced students’ understanding of their political bubbles and t

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  23. Mitigating Affective Polarization in Korean Democracy : Two Experimental Studies of the Role of Superordinate Identity and Political Elite Cooperation

    Jun Young Choi, Sang Hee Park, Bon Sang Koo · 2024 · Korean Political Science Review · 1 citations

    정서적 양극화는 한국의 민주주의에 매우 부정적인 영향을 미치는 요인이다. 그러나 한국에서는 정서적 양극화의 원인과 그것이 민주주의에 지니는 함의에 관한 연구들만 진행되었을 뿐 정작 이 문제를 어떻게 해결할 것인지에 관해서는 거의 연구가 이루어지지 않았다. 이 연구는 서구에서 정서적 양극화를 줄이는 데 효과적인 것으로 확인된 상위정체성에 대한 강조와 정치엘리트 간 협치가 한국 유권자 사이에 형성되어 있는 정서적 양극화를 완화하는 데도 도움이 되는지 두 개의 실험을 통해 검증하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 실험결과에 따르면 한국인이라는 상위정체성이 강조되었음에도 당파적 유권자의 정서적 양극화 수준은 감소하지 않는 것으로 나타났다. 이와 같은 결과가 실험설계상의 오류인지 아니면 한국인이라는 상위정체성은 정서적 양극화를 줄이는 데 실제로 아무런 효과가 없는 것인지는 향후 추가적인 검증이 이루어질 필요가 있다. 반면 정치엘리트 간 협치는 당파적 유권자의 정서적 양극화 수준을 효과적으로 떨어뜨리는 것으로 나타났다. 이와 같은 결과는 정치엘리트 간 협치는 단순히 여야 간 교착상태를 타개하기 위한 수단 이상의 의미를 지닌다는 점을 보여준다. 즉 협치는 분열된 국민을 통합하는 중요하고 효과적인 방법이 될 수 있다.

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  24. Intraparty and Interparty Political Disagreement as Predictors of Affective Polarization and Willingness to Engage in Interparty Contact: The Moderating Role of Political Difference Management Styles

    Tatsuya Suzuki, Alcides Velasquez, Yan-Bing Zhang · 2023 · Communication Research · 1 citations

    Interpersonal political discussion is a normatively valued practice in a democracy, shaping polarizing attitudes and influencing future contact intentions in divided political landscapes. Applying social identity, intergroup contact, and conflict management styles theories, in this article, we investigate the associations between political disagreement with in-party and out-party members, affective polarization, and willingness to engage in interparty contact. Additionally, we examine how these associations are contingent upon individuals’ styles for managing political disagreement. Using cross-sectional survey data (N = 732), we found that better quality of disagreement with out-party membe

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