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6 - Keeping Your Enemies Close

Electoral Rules and Partisan Polarization

from Part II - Places

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2021

By
Jonathan Rodden
Edited by
Frances McCall Rosenbluth  and
Margaret Weir
Frances McCall Rosenbluth
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Margaret Weir
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
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Summary

This chapter takes issue with the dominant notion that political polarization can be understood as a process through which parties diverge on a single dimension of political conflict. Rather, I introduce the notion that affective political polarization intensifies when new issue dimensions are added. In a two-party system, the parties will appear to be moving further from the average voter, and further from one another, if they offer ever-more heterogeneous and incoherent bundles of platforms over time as new issues are politicized. In the United States, as a result, increasing hostility toward the out-party goes hand in hand with increased ambivalence about the in-party. Meanwhile, the parties become increasingly internally fractious. In a multiparty system, on the other hand, when new issues emerge, parties can position themselves throughout the multidimensional issue space. As a result, voters feel closer not only to their in-party but also to the average out-party. In this way, I suggest that multiparty systems can reduce overall levels of affective polarization.

Keywords

affective polarizationpartiescomparative politicsissue voting
Type
Chapter
Information
Who Gets What?
The New Politics of Insecurity
 , pp. 129 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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