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For years, political scholars and pundits have claimed that primary elections are exacerbating polarization and with the 2022 midterm elections approaching this year has been no different. With many extremist candidates on both sides of the aisle, it certainly feels like this claim should be true, but does the political science back that up?

To find an answer we turn to Harvard political scientist James Snyder and his 2010 paper "Primary Elections and Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Congress". The findings are surprising and may have some key insights for how we should think about primary elections in the U.S.

Two experiments examined the group polarization hypothesis. In Experiment I group discussion polarized the evaluations of six hypothetical faculty members, three described positively and three negatively. 'Good' faculty were rated and paid even more favorably after group interaction and contrariwise for 'bad' faculty. Experiment II separated subjects into groups which were conservative or liberal in attitudes regarding women. Subsequent discussion of statements regarding the role of women yielded an increase in the attitude gap between the conservative and liberal communities.

This study examines how selective exposure and interpersonal political disagreement influence political polarization. Using data sets from two countries, the United States and South Korea, this study investigates the association between individuals' selective exposure and attitude polarization and proposes that disagreement in political discussion networks can be a potential moderating variable attenuating the association between selective exposure and polarization. Results across the two nations confirm that individuals' selective likeminded media use is associated with greater polarized attitudes. Findings further show that encountering dissimilar opinions through interpersonal discussion networks generally weakens the association between selective exposure and political polarization, despite some evidence indicating that disagreement leads to more polarized attitudes rather than attenuating polarization. The implications of the findings are discussed.

AbstractPolitics is increasingly a major source of social division, and party identities are theorized to be major drives of political hostility. However, parties often contain factions who are deeply hostile towards one another. Currently, we do not know whether hostility between factions within parties can be as intense as hostility between parties. In this article we compare, for the major parties in Britain (Ns = 522; 568) and the United States (N = 443), the affect that partisans feel towards factions within their own party and factions in rival parties. We find that within‐party affective polarization effects are large on average (d = 0.8) and sometimes very large (d > 1.2), that they are usually smaller than between‐party effects but can equal or exceed them, and, in several cases, factions prefer an out‐party faction over their in‐party rivals. These findings demonstrate that strong affective polarization can emerge between groups who share party identities, highlighting the importance of factions in political psychology and raising questions about the effect of party identities on affective polarization.

Affective polarization, the phenomenon of liberals and conservatives treating each other as disliked outgroups, is increasingly intense (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015; Pew, 2016). In the present research, I used the construct of psychological essentialism (Medin & Ortony, 1989) to help understand this intergroup phenomenon. Specifically, I measured political essentialism, or the belief that political ideologies are strongly determined, informative, discrete and/or immutable, and tested the relationship between these beliefs and affective polarization. I approached this question with both correlational and experimental methods. In a correlational study, political essentialism overall is found to covary positively with affective polarization and social avoidance of political outgroups. Essentialism is found to be most predictive when treated as a collection of distinct lay beliefs, rather than a unitary construct. Informativeness and discreteness beliefs correspond strongly and positively with affective polarization, while biological basis beliefs and social deterministic beliefs have weak effects in the opposite direction. In the experimental study, manipulating essentialism beliefs had no effect on affective polarization or desire for social distance. Potential reasons for the discrepant results are explored. In sum, this research supports the hypothesis that political essentialism is associated with affective polarization, but does not provide evidence that essentialism plays a causal role in this relationship.

In dieser Dissertation verwende ich agentenbasierte Modelle, um Licht auf die Ursachen, Auswirkungen und Interdependenzen von Innovationen, ökonomischer Ungleichheit und Polarisierung in Politik und Ökonomie zu werfen. Im ersten Teil replizieren Timon Scheuer und ich das bekannte Keynes+Schumpeter Modell und erweitern es um heterogene Arbeit. Mit Hilfe dieses Modells entwickeln wir eine schumpeterianische Perspektive auf "Skill-biased technological change" und untersuchen die Emergenz von Lohnungleichheiten. Unsere Analyse deutet darauf hin, dass Maßnahmen zur Lohnsteigerung von niedrigqualifizierten Arbeitskräften nur dann langfristigen Erfolg haben können, wenn sie mit Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen kombiniert werden. Im zweiten Teil vereine ich die sogenannten Schumpeter Mark I und Mark II Modelle in einem neuartigen makroökonomischen agentenbasierten Modell. Dieses ist in der Lage, zahlreiche empirische stilisierten Fakten zur Entwicklung kapitalistischer Ökonomien zu reproduzieren. Abhängig von den Parametern erlebt die Modellökonomie entweder eine Kuznets-Kurve oder, wie von Piketty gezeigt, eine Zunahme an Ungleichheit in entwickelten Ökonomien und damit verknüpfte Fakten. Extensive Simulationen zeigen die Effekte von Änderungen des unternehmerischen Handelns und firmeninterner F&E auf Wachstum, Marktkonzentration und Ungleichheit. Im letzten Kapitel entwickle ich ein simples Modell zur Ko-Evolution von Ökonomie, Politik und "Opinion Dynamics" zur Analyse der politischen Ökonomie der Ungleichheit. Das Modell zeigt, dass selbst eine kleine Minderheit die öffentliche Meinung zu ihren Gunsten beeinflussen kann, wenn sie besser über ihre Interessen informiert ist. Dieser Effekt wird drastisch verstärkt, wenn die Minderheit finanzielle Ressourcen einsetzen kann, um Desinformation zu streuen. Innerhalb dieses Modells kann eine Reduktion von ökonomischer Ungleichheit gleichzeitig die ökonomische Effizienz steigern und politische Polarisierung verringern. ; In this doctoral dissertation, I use agent-based models to shed light on the causes, consequences and interrelation between innovations, economic inequality and polarization in politics and the economy. In the first paper, Timon Scheuer and I replicate the well-known Keynes + Schumpeter model and extend it by incorporating heterogeneous labor. We use this model to develop a Schumpeterian perspective on skill-biased technological change and to study the emergence of wage inequality. Our analysis suggests that policies aimed at strengthening the economic position of low-skilled workers must be accompanied by upskilling programs in order to be effective in the long-run. In the second paper, I combine the so-called Schumpeter Mark I and Mark II models to create a novel macroeconomic agent-based model featuring endogenous growth in the number of industries and in productivity. My model is able to reproduce a large array of stylized facts of the development of capitalist economies. Depending on the parameters, the model economy experiences either a Kuznets curve or an increase in inequality in mature economies as emphasized by Piketty, coupled with recent stylized facts on "declining business dynamism". Using extensive policy simulations, I evaluate the impact of changes in the entrepreneurial activity and firm-level R&D on growth, market concentration and inequality. In the final paper, I develop a simple co-evolutionary model of economy, political decision making and opinion dynamics models to study the political economy of inequality. My analysis suggests that even a tiny minority is able to influence public opinion to its favor (and to the detriment of the rest of the population), if it has more access to information about its true interests. This effect is drastically increased, if the minority can use economic resources to sow disinformation. Within this framework, decreasing economic inequality can improve overall efficiency and decrease political polarization. ; Arbeit an der Bibliothek noch nicht eingelangt - Daten nicht geprüft ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung des Verfassers/der Verfasserin ; Dissertation Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz 2021

Although there has been considerable attention to the question ofhow muchpolarization there is in the mass electorate, there has been much less attention paid to themechanismthat causes polarization. I provide evidence demonstrating the occurrence of individual-level conversion—individual Democrats and Republicans becoming more liberal and conservative. Although over the short term most of the observed changes are quite small and cannot be distinguished from measurement error, over time and many respondents, these movements aggregate to generate polarization. Small individual-level preference shifts provide an important foundation for aggregate polarization.

Just one year into his six-year mandate, President Hugo Chávez Frías faced systematic opposition to his government from a powerful anti-Chávez movement. The aim of the opposition was to force a change of administration, through constitutional or unconstitutional means. The authoritative position assumed by the opposition is remarkable, not least because Chávez was a democratically elected head of state who had won a landslide vote on a platform of radical change. The strength of the opposition was additionally surprising because the groups that dominated the antigovernment forces were weak and discredited when Chávez took office. This article argues that opposition parties in Venezuela have experienced an artificial rebirth, which can be explained through an analysis of the regime change that took place in 1998. This catalyzed an intense polarization between pro- and antigovernment groups that precluded the consolidation of moderate 'transition' forces that had sought to liberalize Venezuela's pacted democracy in the 1990s. Although promising a rupture from the status quo, Chavismo was characterized by continuity with an established political culture of exclusion. This led moderates and conservatives to forge an unlikely opposition alliance.Desde el primer año de su mandato, el Presidente Hugo Chávez Frías enfrentó la oposición sistemática de un poderoso movimiento antichavista. El objetivo de este movimiento era forzar un cambio de administración a través de medios constitucionales o inconstitucionales. Merece atención la posición autoritaria adoptada por la oposición no solo debido a que Chávez fue electo democráticamente sino por que su ascenso a jefe de estado había estado respaldao por una avalancha de votos a favor de una plataforma de cambios radicales. También llama la atención la fortaleza mostrada por la oposición teniendo en cuenta que los grupos que predominaban en dicha oposición estaban bastante debilitados y desacreditados al tiempo de la toma de posesión de Chávez. En este artículo se argumenta que el resurgimiento artificial de los partidos de oposición puede ser explicado a través de un análisis del cambio de regimen que tuvo lugar en 1998. Esto catalizó una intensa polarización entre los grupos pro y antigubernamentales que impidió la consolidación de aquellas fuerzas moderadas de transición que aspiraban a liberalizar el sistema democrático pactado en la década de los 90. A pesar de sus promesas de ruputura con el status quo, el Chavismo dio continuidad a la cultura establecida de exclusión. Esto condujo a que los moderados y los conservadores forjaran una alianza de oposición bastante improbable bajo otras condiciones.

Using new data on roll-call voting of US state legislators and public opinion in their districts, we explain how ideological polarization of voters within districts can lead to legislative polarization. In so-called "moderate" districts that switch hands between parties, legislative behavior is shaped by the fact that voters are often quite heterogeneous: the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans within these districts is often greater than the distance between liberal cities and conservative rural areas. We root this intuition in a formal model that associates intradistrict ideological heterogeneity with uncertainty about the ideological location of the median voter. We then demonstrate that among districts with similar median voter ideologies, the difference in legislative behavior between Democratic and Republican state legislators is greater in more ideologically heterogeneous districts. Our findings suggest that accounting for the subtleties of political geography can help explain the coexistence of polarized legislators and a mass public that appears to contain many moderates.

In the Madisonian Constitution, fragmented and overlapping institutions of authority are supposed to manage democracy's innate rivalry, channeling competition to serve the public interest. This system of safeguards makes democracy more robust: capable of withstanding and, if need be, adapting to challenges posed by a changing problem environment. In this essay, I suggest why affective polarization poses a special threat to democratic robustness. While most scholars hypothesize that polarization's dangers are that it leads to bimodality and extremism, I highlight a third hypothesized effect: Polarization reduces interest and information diversity in the political system. To be effective, democracy's safeguards rely upon interest diversity, but Madison took that diversity for granted. Unique among democracy's safeguards, federalism builds in a repository for diversity; its structure enables differences between national- and state-expressed interests, even within the same party. This diversity can be democracy hindering, as the United States' history with racially discriminatory politics painfully makes clear, but it can also serve as a reservoir of interest and information dispersion that could protect democracy by restoring the possibility that cross-cutting cleavages emerge.