Related papers: Preventing Extreme Polarization of Political Attit…
I study an election between two ideologically polarized parties that are both office- and policy-motivated. The parties compete by proposing policies on a single issue. The analysis uncovers a non-monotonic relationship between ideological…
This paper provides a novel summary measure of ideological polarization in the American public based on the joint distribution of survey responses. Intuitively, polarization is maximized when views are concentrated at opposing extremes with…
Understanding the social conditions that tend to increase or decrease polarization is important for many reasons. We study a network-structured agent-based model of opinion dynamics, extending a model previously introduced by Flache and…
The form of political polarization where citizens develop strongly negative attitudes towards out-party policies and members has become increasingly prominent across many democracies. Economic hardship and social inequality, as well as…
Defying the median voter theorem, party polarization has spread globally, especially in the United States. As concerns grow over its risks to democracy, political science has probed its causes, revealing two paradoxes: while polarization…
Political polarization can be beneficial to competing political parties. I study how electoral competition itself generates incentives to polarize voters, even when parties are ex ante identical and motivated purely by political power,…
Opinion polarization is on the rise, causing concerns for the openness of public debates. Additionally, extreme opinions on different topics often show significant correlations. The dynamics leading to these polarized ideological opinions…
A multi-level model of opinion formation is presented which takes into account that attitudes on different issues are usually not independent. In the model, agents exchange beliefs regarding a series of facts. A cognitive structure of…
Polarization, defined as the emergence of sharply divided groups with opposing and often extreme views, is an increasingly prominent feature of modern societies. While many studies analyze this phenomenon in the context of single issues,…
Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of an essential hallmark of a vibrant…
While we typically focus on data visualization as a tool for facilitating cognitive tasks (e.g., learning facts, making decisions), we know relatively little about their second-order impacts on our opinions, attitudes, and values. For…
Social and political polarization is a significant source of conflict and poor governance in many societies. Thus, understanding its causes has become a priority of scholars across many disciplines. Here we demonstrate that shifts in…
Democracies employ elections at various scales to select officials at the corresponding levels of administration. The geographical distribution of political opinion, the policy issues delegated to each level, and the multilevel interactions…
This paper introduces a definition of ideological polarization of an electorate around a particular central point. The definition is flexible about the location or boundaries of the center. Using US survey data, the paper shows how this…
Politically divided societies are also often divided emotionally: people like and trust those with similar political views (in-group favoritism) while disliking and distrusting those with different views (out-group animosity). This…
When can an interest group exploit polarization between political parties to its advantage? Building upon Battaglini and Patacchini (2018), we study a model where an interest group credibly promises payments to legislators conditional on…
Affective polarization, or, inter-party hostility, is increasingly recognized as a pervasive issue in democracies worldwide, posing a threat to social cohesion. The digital media ecosystem, now widely accessible and ever-present, has often…
Discussions of political disagreement emphasize two patterns: polarization, where beliefs diverge toward opposite extremes on each issue dimension; and issue alignment, where individuals' views across issues become more internally…
The emergence of opinion polarization within human communities -- the phenomenon that individuals within a society tend to develop conflicting attitudes related to the greatest diversity of topics -- has been a focus of interest for…
Social polarization is a growing concern worldwide, as it strains social relations, erodes trust in institutions, and thus threatens democratic societies. Academic efforts to understand this phenomenon have traditionally approached it from…