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The purpose of this review is to take stock of how party polarization affects governance in the United States. The article begins by defining polarization and discussing the means by which it can be measured. It is undeniable that the two parties have grown more sharply differentiated. Some evidence suggests that the substantive policy preferences of liberals and conservatives diverge more widely, but the case for ideological polarization in the spatial sense is not definitive. Effects on the institutional processes of US government have entailed a hardening of party divisions and a tendency toward centralization of power. Nevertheless, these more cohesive parties are not more effective than their predecessors at enacting policies or managing routine governing responsibilities. The consequences for public policy seem best characterized as "drift" ( Hacker 2004 , p. 246). There is little evidence that party polarization has promoted ideologically extreme policy outcomes or has systematically advantaged either liberalism or conservatism.

Recently, researchers and reporters have made a wide range of claims about the distribution, nature, and societal impact of political polarization. Here I offer reasons to believe that even when they are correct and prima facie merely descriptive, many of these claims have the highly negative side effect of increasing political polarization. This is because of the interplay of two factors that have so far been neglected in the work on political polarization, namely that (1) people tend to conform to descriptive norms (i.e., norms capturing [perceptions of] what others commonly do, think, or feel), and that (2) claims about political polarization often convey such norms. Many of these claims thus incline people to behave, cognize, and be affectively disposed in ways that contribute to social division. But there is a silver lining. People's tendency to conform to descriptive norms also provides the basis for developing new, experimentally testable strategies for counteracting political polarization. I outline three. ; peerReviewed ; publishedVersion

All three of the books under review— Science and Social Science by Malcolm Williams, Rethinking Science by Jan Faye, and Open the Social Sciences by the members of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (Immanuel Wallerstein, chair)—argue for a broadly naturalist approach in which the social sciences are seen as of a piece with the natural sciences. Fortunately, all three do so in a discriminating way that avoids simple options and that appreciates the important ways the social-scientific disciplines require their own approach. Open the Social Sciences in particular also contains detailed and wise advice as to how the contemporary social sciences should proceed if they want to fulfill their ambition to explain human social behavior in a scientific way.

The cultural cognition thesis posits that individuals rely extensively on cultural meanings in forming perceptions of risk. The logic of the cultural cognition thesis suggests that a two-channel science communication strategy, combining information content ("Channel 1") with cultural meanings ("Channel 2"), could promote open-minded assessment of information across diverse communities. We test this kind of communication strategy in a two-nation (United States, n = 1,500; England, n = 1,500) study, in which scientific information content on climate change was held constant while the cultural meaning of that information was experimentally manipulated. We found that cultural polarization over the validity of climate change science is offset by making citizens aware of the potential contribution of geoengineering as a supplement to restriction of CO2emissions. We also tested the hypothesis, derived from a competing model of science communication, that exposure to information on geoengineering would lead citizens to discount climate change risks generally. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found that subjects exposed to information about geoengineering were slightly more concerned about climate change risks than those assigned to a control condition.

AbstractPolarization makes it difficult to form positive relationships across existing groups. Decreasing polarization may improve political discourse around the world. Polarization can be modeled on a social network as structural balance, where the network is composed of groups with positive links between all individuals in the group and negative links with all others. Previous work shows that incorporating attributes of individuals usually makes structural balance, and hence polarization, harder to achieve. That work examines only a limited number and types of attributes. We present a generalized model and a simulation framework to analyze the effect of any type of attribute, including analytically as long as an expected value can be written for the type of attribute. As attributes, we consider people's (approximately) immutable characteristics (e.g., race, wealth) and such opinions that change more slowly than relationships (e.g., political preferences). We detail and analyze five classes of attributes, recapitulating the results of previous work in this framework and extending it. While it is easier to prevent than to destabilize polarization, we find that usually the most effective at both are continuous attributes, followed by ordered attributes and, finally, binary attributes. The effectiveness of unordered attributes varies depending on the magnitude of negative impact of having differing attributes but is smaller than of continuous ones. Testing the framework on network structures containing communities revealed that destroying polarization may require introducing local tensions. This model could be used by policymakers, among others, to prevent and design effective interventions to counteract polarization.

The social movement that shook Colombia between April and May 2021 is unprecedented for its breadth and for the violence of the repression that accompanied it. Commentators see a rebellion of the "youth" there. Nevertheless, the term covers very different realities. The article emphasizes above all the double context in which it takes place. On the one hand, an intense political polarization provoked by the rejec­ tion of the Havana Agreements: the tensions that arise from there accentuate the ongoing institutional weakening; on the other, an equally intense social polarization, which certainly comes from afar, but which explodes with the pandemic. and with the demobilization of the FARC. The author argues that both this violence and the recent armed conflict have been guarantees for maintaining the social status quo for the benefit of the elites—if only because they favor the disorganization of the popular classes. From a certain moment on, the inability of the State to be present over a large part of the territory and the growth of the drug economy translate into a proliferation of nuclei of violence. Instead of offering the opportunity to reinforce the national symbolism, the Agreements ultimately engender new frag­ mentations. ; El movimiento social que sacudió a Colombia entre abril y mayo de 2021 es inédito por su amplitud, al igual que por la violencia de la represión que lo acompañó. Los comentaristas ven allí una rebelión de la " juventud". Sin embargo, el término recubre evidentemente realidades muy diferentes. El artículo pone el acento sobre todo en el doble contexto en el cual tiene lugar. Por un lado, la intensa polarización polí­ tica suscitada por el rechazo de los Acuerdos de La Habana: las tensiones que de allí provienen acentúan el debilitamiento institucional en marcha. Por otro lado, la no menos intensa polarización social, que viene de lejos, ciertamente, pero que explota con la pandemia… y con la desmovilización de las FARC. El autor sostiene que tanto la violencia como el conflicto armado reciente han sido garantías para el mantenimiento del statu quo social en provecho de las élites, así solo sea porque favorecen la desorganización de las clases populares. La incapacidad del Estado de hacer acto de presencia sobre una gran parte del territorio y el crecimiento de la economía de la droga se traducen a partir de cierto momento en la proliferación de los núcleos de violencia. En lugar de ofrecer la ocasión para un reforzamiento de la simbólica nacional, los Acuerdos engendran finalmente nuevas fragmentaciones.

Extreme polarization can undermine democracy by making compromise impossible and transforming politics into a zero-sum game. "Ideological polarization"—the extent to which political views are widely dispersed—is already strong among elites, but less so among the general public [N. McCarty, Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know, 2019, pp. 50–68]. Strong mutual distrust and hostility between Democrats and Republicans in the United States, combined with the elites' already strong ideological polarization, could lead to increasing ideological polarization among the public. The paper addresses two questions: 1) Is there a level of ideological polarization above which polarization feeds upon itself to become a runaway process? 2) If so, what policy interventions could prevent such dangerous positive feedback loops? To explore these questions, we present an agent-based model of ideological polarization that differentiates between the tendency for two actors to interact ("exposure") and how they respond when interactions occur, positing that interaction between similar actors reduces their difference, while interaction between dissimilar actors increases their difference. Our analysis explores the effects on polarization of different levels of tolerance to other views, responsiveness to other views, exposure to dissimilar actors, multiple ideological dimensions, economic self-interest, and external shocks. The results suggest strategies for preventing, or at least slowing, the development of extreme polarization.