Abstract: We measure trends in affective polarization in nine OECD countries over the past four decades. The US experienced the largest increase in polarization over this period. Three countries experienced a smaller increase in polarization. Five countries experienced a decrease in polarization. These findings are most consistent with explanations of polarization based on changes (e.g., changing party composition, growing racial divisions, the emergence of partisan cable news) that are more distinctive to the US, and less consistent with explanations based on changes (e.g., the emergence of the internet, rising economic inequality) that are more universal.
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4.2 Evaluation of Potential Explanations
Figure 3 plots average trends in each explanatory variable separately for the groups of countries
with rising or falling affective polarization. Appendix Figure 6 plots the individual series for each of the explanatory variables that we consider.
Internet and broadband penetration increased in all countries over the sample period, yet affective polarization did not. This is inconsistent with implication (i). Moreover, internet penetration appears to have risen faster in countries with falling polarization. This is inconsistent with implication (ii). The fact that in many countries polarization rose faster in the post-2000 period than the pre-2000 period is consistent with a role for digital media, but digital media cannot account for the rapid growth in affective polarization in the US and Canada during the 1990s. (See also Boxell et al. 2017.)
Income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, increased in all sample countries except Switzerland, for which we have limited data. This is inconsistent with implication (i). Moreover, the data do not exhibit evidence of implication (ii).
Openness to trade, as measured by the trade share of GDP, likewise increased fairly broadly over the sample period, with no clear evidence of a faster increase in those countries with increasing affective polarization.
All countries experienced an increase in the foreign-born share of the population over the period for which we have data, and differences in the rate of growth do not appear to align with differences in the trends in affective polarization.
In our view, the data do not support the hypothesis that these factors played an important role in the rise in affective polarization in the US in the sense of equations (1) and (2).
Other explanations are more consistent with our data. The period we study saw important changes in the composition of the political parties in the US. Among both political elites and voters, party identification became increasingly aligned with both political ideology and social identities such as race and religion (McCarty et al. 2008; Abramowitz and Saunders 2008; Levendusky 2009; Fiorina 2016, 2017; Mason and Wronski 2018; Valentino and Zhirkov 2017).6 Many scholars have identified such “party sorting” among voters as a key potential cause of affective polarization, with sorting leading those from opposite parties to differ more on average in both ideology and identity (Iyengar et al. 2019; Mason 2016, 2018; Fiorina and Abrams 2008; Webster and Abramowitz 2017). The underlying drivers of party sorting are not fully understood, and sorting could be a consequence as well as a cause of affective polarization (Lelkes 2018). However, many drivers emphasized in the literature, such as the realignment of the parties in the South following the civil rights era, are distinctive to the US and originate at least in part in the strategic choices of political elites rather than the shifting views of voters themselves (Fiorina and Abrams 2008, p. 581; Levendusky 2009, 2010; Lupu 2015; Banda and Cluverius 2018).7
Consistent with the view that changing party composition is distinctive to the US, Rehm and Reilly (2010) find that, according to expert ratings of party positions, elites in the US have polarized faster than those in the eight other OECD countries we consider. Some of these countries (e.g., Canada) have experienced smaller increases in polarization among political elites, and some (e.g., Australia, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the UK) have experienced declines in elite polarization. Consistent with the hypothesized mechanism, Canada has also experienced growing partisan differences in issue positions among voters (Kevins and Soroka 2018), whereas Britain and Germany have experienced overall declines (Adams et al. 2012a; Munzert and Bauer 2013). Fiorina’s (2017, Chapter 8) review of this and related evidence likewise concludes that the US has experienced faster growth in elite polarization and party differences in issue positions among voters than countries in Western Europe.
Increased party sorting by race has also been highlighted as a potentially important driver of affective polarization (see, e.g., Valentino and Zhirkov 2017; Abramowitz 2018; Mason and Wronski 2018; Westwood and Peterson 2019). Such sorting may in turn be driven by the growth in the non white share of the population. With the caveat that it is difficult to define and compare racial composition across countries and time periods (see Appendix A.6), it is noteworthy that the increase in the non-white share has been twice as large in countries with rising affective polarization as in those with falling affective polarization (see Figure 3).
The rise of 24-hour partisan cable news provides another potential explanation. Partisan cable networks emerged during the period we study and arguably played a much larger role in the US than elsewhere, though this may be in part a consequence rather than a cause of growing affective polarization. The timing of the introduction of Fox News appears roughly consistent with the acceleration of the growth in affective polarization during the 1990s, as well as with the observation that older demographic groups both consume more partisan cable news and have polarized more quickly than younger demographic groups in the US (Boxell et al. 2017; Martin and Yurukoglu 2017). Interestingly, the five countries with a negative linear slope for affective polarization all devote more public funds per capita to public service broadcast media than three of the countries with a positive slope (Benson and Powers 2011, Table 1; see also Benson et al. 2017).
Check also Merkley, Eric, and Dominik Stecula. 2020. “Party Cues in the News: Democratic Elites, Republican Backlash and the Dynamics of Climate Skepticism.” British Journal of Political Science. Preprint January 25. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/01/supporters-of-republican-party-have.html
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