Suchergebnisse

I'll start by answering a question in a comment on my last post:  where can you get these data?  One way is to download the data from the American National Election Studies data center and then analyze them using a statistics program; the other is to analyze them online from the SDA (Survey Documentation and Analysis) site.  I use both, but usually SDA--it's faster for simple analyses.  The ANES survey has thermometers for the parties, the presidential candidates, and liberals and conservatives.  A few years ago, I showed the correlation between ratings of the Democratic and Republican parties.  Here's the figure updated to include 2020:There was a substantial drop between 2000 and 2004, and no consistent change since then.  That's kind of surprising, since the general perception is that polarization has increased substantially in the last 10-15 years.  From 1964 to 1982, the ANES asked about ratings of Democrats and Republicans.  The correlations:The first time it was asked was after the Johnson-Goldwater race, when there was large ideological gap between the parties.  But even if you leave that aside, polarization declined (since a negative correlation indicates polarization, an upward slope is a decline in polarization) from the 1960s to the 1970s.  There are also thermometers for the presidential candidates starting in 1972:In contrast to the questions on the parties, this shows a substantial recent increase in polarization.  The correlation between ratings of Trump and Biden in 2020 was -.787, which is remarkably high for individual-level data (the correlation between ratings of the parties in 2020 was -.48).  Questions on liberals and conservative in 1964:There isn't much trend through 2008, then a big increase in polarization in 2012, with smaller increases in 2016 and 2020. What I find most striking in these figures is that polarization was probably lower, and certainly not higher, in 2016 than in 2012.  The substantial increase between 2000 and 2004 is also noteworthy.  

So Cosma Shalizi and I have an article (messy pre-print) coming out Real Soon in Communications of the ACM on democracy, polarization and social media. And Nate Matias, who I'm friends with, has forceful objections. I've promised him a response – which is below – but am doing it as a blogpost, since I think […]

We often say on this podcast that the American electorate is not polarized but the elites are, and that this polarization causes policy gridlock. But what if it's the other way around? Is it possible that gridlock in government is actually causing polarization and a turn toward extremist candidates?

That's the assertion of a paper called "From Gridlock to Polarization" by Barton Lee, the Chair of Political Economy and eDemocracy at ETH Zurich. Lee uses a large-scale online experiment to show how voters become more willing to vote for extremist candidates. It leads to some fascinating implications for how we should think about the consequences of ineffective government.

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.

We often talk about the rise of affective polarization in the United States, but rarely are the trends we observe domestically placed in an international context. What about Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Japan? What are the trends in global affective polarization, and can those trends teach us anything about what's driving the increase in the US?

On this episode, we speak with Stanford political scientist Matthew Gentzkow about his first of its kind paper doing a cross-country analysis of the trends in affective polarization. The findings are fascinating and give us some insights into what drives affective polarization generally.

Paper: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01160/109262/Cross-Country-Trends-in-Affective-Polarization?redirectedFrom=fulltext

When we talk about polarization on this podcast it's almost always in the context of congress or the presidency. But are state legislatures polarizing as well? And, if they are, what can that tell us about the state of our democracy?

In a new paper, Princeton political scientist Nolan McCarty shows that not only are state legislatures polarizing, but they're polarizing faster and more intensely than congress.

Increased polarization in America has meant more political homogeneity across our digital, social, and civic spaces. But what about our workplaces, where so many Americans spend a bulk of their time?

Associate Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, Elisabeth Kempf, has new data and research out looking at political alignment within corporate executive teams, and whether or how much it has increased over time. We sit down with Elisabeth to understand the factors which could be influencing this trend, legal structures that may or may not protect against discrimination based on political views, executive departures that may be politically motivated, and why we might care about political diversity in the workplace at all.

Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3784969

The multiple dimensions of political polarization have become familiar to most informed Americans. One dimension that has become increasingly evident is geography. More Americans are living in communities where the great majority of residents share their politics. People are not staying in or moving to places according to local party registration rates so much as […]

We often think of polarization as a single policy spectrum with Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right. But what if this entire framework is wrong, and this error itself is worsening the divides in our country?

This is what Michigan State University political scientist Matt Grossman argues in his article: "Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats: The Asymmetry of American Party Politics". He says that what really divides us isn't differing policy views but different views of the purpose of government itself. And, perhaps offers us a way out of our current polarization spiral.

Grossman is also the host of another fantastic podcast "The Science of Politics", which we highly recommend you give a listen!

We're constantly told that America is too divided. That we no long just oppose members of the opposite party, but actually hate them. That something is broken in American life.

We take these issues to one of the leading scholars in the world on polarization, Dr. Shanto Iyengar from Stanford University. And we focus on one of his papers, which argues that affective polarization really has gotten as bad as the experts say, and we discuss what we can do about it.

Paper: https://tinyurl.com/hrywxrl

The New York Times and the Atlantic report on how the movement to curb exclusionary zoning and build more housing has managed to cut across ideological lines.

One theme on our show is trying to make sense of why elites appear to be so polarized when the larger public is more moderate. We almost always study these trends in the U.S. but could we look to another country for insight? A country like the UK perhaps?

In her paper "Has The British Public Depolarized Along with Political Elites?" University of Oxford political scientist Jane Green measures the differences between elite and public polarization during the eighties and nineties when the parties actually depolarized. Did elite depolarization lead to public depolarization, and what lessons do this data hold for the US?

The discussion aimed to mitigate deepening media polarization in support of voters' informed decision-making in Georgia and V4 states

BOOK PREORDER:CLICK - Taylor & Francis - Routledge



1st Edition

First Published 2023

eBook Published 27 July 2023

Pub. Location New York

Imprint Routledge

Pages 144

eBook ISBN9781003394242

Subjects Politics &
International Relations

ABSTRACT

In this book, Josep M. Colomer argues,
against much conventional wisdom, that political polarization is embedded in
the constitutional design.

The book puts forth that sustained
conflict and institutional gridlock are not mainly questions of character,
personalities, or determined by socioeconomic or cultural inequalities. They
are, above all, the result of the formula of separation of powers between the
Presidency and Congress, which, together with a system of only two parties,
fosters adversarial politics and polarization... Colomer contends that in the
past, bipartisan cooperation and domestic peace flourished only under a foreign
existential threat, such as during the Cold War. Once such a threat vanished,
unsettled issues and new social concerns have broadened the public agenda and
triggered again animosity and conflict.

Constitutional Polarization offers innovative and relevant
insights in political science to a broad readership without technical or
academic jargon. It will be of high interest to those readers attentive to
current affairs, as well as to public officers, journalists, pundits, and those
in the study of political science, where it can also become a staple for
courses in American Politics.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Introduction:
It's the Institutions!  

 

1- A Tamed Democracy  

1.
Democracy Was Only for Small Countries 

2.
From Empire to Federation 

3.
Montesquieu Did Not Speak English  

 

II- An Elected King with the Name of President  

4.
The Archaic Presidential Election 

5.
Biased Filters and Checks 

6.
The Presidentialist Temptation  

 

III- Two Parties with Narrow Agendas  

7.
The Framers Did Not Like Factions 

8.
The Unforeseen Emergence of Only Two Parties 

9.
Shifting Majorities and Accordion Agendas  

 

IV- Either Internal Anger or External Fear  

10.
Anarchy and Civil War 

11.
Cold-War Fear and Cooperation 

12.
The Ongoing Turmoil 

 

V- A Future in Hope 

 

 =====



 

CLICK: Penguin Random House - Debate



SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT







Paperback EUR 19.95

23 Marzo 2023 | 224 Paginas | 6 x 9 | ISBN 9788419399427Paperback | $19.95
Published by Debate
Jul 18, 2023 | 224 Pages | 6 x 9 | ISBN 9788419399427

 ===

Also available at:Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books A Million|Bookshop.org|Hudson Booksellers  IndieBound|Powell'sTarget|Walmart

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For much of the 20th century Congressional candidates' qualities were one of the most important factors in voters’ decisions about who they sent to Congress. In a new book, Jamie Carson, Joel Sievert, and Ryan D. Williamson track the nationalization of US elections in recent decades. They write that the correlation between presidential and congressional … Continued