Related papers: Divide and Diverge
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…
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…
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…
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…
Politics around the world exhibits increasing polarization, demonstrated in part by rigid voting configurations in institutions like legislatures or courts. A crux of polarization is separation along a unidimensional ideological axis, but…
Classical spatial models predict platform convergence, yet empirical polarization persists. This paper proposes a non-electoral mechanism: lobbying as a monopsonistic market for legislative support. Here, extreme benefactors must pay more…
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…
The Hotelling-Downs model considers parties changing policy to maximise their vote-share. Where policy position lies on a left-right axis, it describes a tendency for political parties to move towards centrist platforms. This is in contrast…
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…
The controversies around the 2020 US presidential elections certainly casts serious concerns on the efficiency of the current voting system in representing the people's will. Is the naive Plurality voting suitable in an extremely polarized…
Research on the causes of political polarization points towards multiple drivers of the problem, from social and psychological to economic and technological. However, political institutions stand out, because -- while capable of…
Recent empirical findings suggest that societies have become more polarized in various countries. That is, the median voter of today represents a smaller fraction of society compared to two decades ago and yet, the mechanisms underlying…
The median voter theorem has long been the default model of voter behavior and candidate choice. While contemporary work on the distribution of political opinion has emphasized polarization and an increasing gap between the "left" and the…
The flourishing of fake news is favored by recommendation algorithms of online social networks which, based on previous users activity, provide content adapted to their preferences and so create filter bubbles. We introduce an analytically…
Political polarization, fueled by public discourse and echo chambers, threatens the foundation of democratic elections. However, traditional one-dimensional opinion models -- assuming ``support for one party equals opposition to another''…
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…
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…
The simplified hypothesis that an election is polarized as an explanation of recent electoral outcomes worldwide is centered on perceptions of voting patterns rather than ideological data from the electorate. While the literature focuses on…
Independent voters play an increasingly decisive role in contemporary elections, yet their collective behavior remains poorly understood. This paper investigates how a minority of voters with greater flexibility in their political…
This paper introduces a definition of ideological polarization of an electorate around a particular central point. By being flexible about the location or width of the center, this measure enables the researcher to analyze polarization…