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Polarization is increasing worldwide. When broken down by region, V-Dem data suggest
that every region except Oceania has seen polarization levels rise since 2005. Africa has had the smallest increase during this period, although it has long had high levels of polarization. Rising polarization in Europe is being driven by deepening political divisi...
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Background
In 2021, WHO Member States endorsed a global target of a 40-percentage-point increase in effective refractive error coverage (eREC; with a 6/12 visual acuity threshold) by 2030. This study models global and regional estimates of eREC as a baseline for the WHO initiative.
Methods
The Vision Loss Expert Group analysed data from 565 448 pa...
Background:
Currently, reported COVID-19 deaths are inadequate to assess the impact of the pandemic on global excess mortality. All-cause excess mortality is a WHO-recommended index for assessing the death burden of COVID-19. However, the global excess mortality assessed by this index remains unclear. We aimed to assess the global excess mortality...
Citations
... Social divisions pose an additional risk since they obstruct the collective efforts required to address pressing global challenges. A recent empirical study covering the past 120 years found no case of a liberal society recovering from pernicious levels of polarization through liberal democratic means (McCoy et al., 2022). The challenges generating today's polarization crosscut one another and cascade across global, regional, and local governance systems. ...
... One feature concerns the social challenges that reliably correlate with partisan shifts in the electorate (Jost, 2017). A second involves the politicians who leverage these shifts for political gain by mobilizing supporters around divisive platforms (McCoy et al., 2022). And a third consists of worsening perceptions of politics as an 'us-versus-them' struggle between Mi ael kle opposing binaries of right and left, globalist and national, religious and secular, urban and rural, traditional and progressive, and participatory versus representative democratic models (McCoy et al., 2018: 20). ...
... The second and third features are associated with pernicious polarization (McCoy et al., 2022). Like affective polarization, pernicious polarization occurs when people construct new identities based on their affinity with or hostility toward a political party (Wagner, 2021). ...
... While Giovanni Sartori (1976) initially introduced the concept, a passionate debate has since taken place, particularly in the United States, examining polarization among both voters and elites, and its underlying causes. The escalation of polarization is now widely recognized as a significant challenge for democracies, prompting a recent shift in focus from polarization to depolarization in several studies McCoy et al. 2022). ...
Political polarization represents one of the main worries concerning
the health of contemporary democracy. In this article, we review
the debate on political polarization linking its main causes to the
electoral campaign process during the 2022 Italian general election.
Specifically, we examine the communication strategies employed
by the leaders of the victorious right-wing coalition on Facebook
and Twitter, focusing on their use of partisanship, divisive issues,
attacks on opponents and incivility, while also assessing the
engagement of their followers. Our findings confirm the prominent
role of divisive issues and partisanship, but reveal a notable decline in attack-related messages and incivility.
... Social divisions pose an additional risk since they obstruct the collective efforts required to address pressing global challenges. A recent empirical study covering the past 120 years found no case of a liberal society recovering from pernicious levels of polarization through liberal democratic means (McCoy et al., 2022). The challenges generating today's polarization crosscut one another and cascade across global, regional, and local governance systems. ...
... One feature concerns the social challenges that reliably correlate with partisan shifts in the electorate (Jost, 2017). A second involves the politicians who leverage these shifts for political gain by mobilizing supporters around divisive platforms (McCoy et al., 2022). And a third consists of worsening perceptions of politics as an 'us-versus-them' struggle between Mi ael kle opposing binaries of right and left, globalist and national, religious and secular, urban and rural, traditional and progressive, and participatory versus representative democratic models (McCoy et al., 2018: 20). ...
... The second and third features are associated with pernicious polarization (McCoy et al., 2022). Like affective polarization, pernicious polarization occurs when people construct new identities based on their affinity with or hostility toward a political party (Wagner, 2021). ...
Disaster is a topic that connects social sciences, medicine,
ethics, geophysics, as well as other sciences and disciplines. However, besides the benefits of preventing and mitigating disaster’s
effects, this wide range of various sciences also contributes with
their various methodologies and accounts. One of the most intriguing issues arises from the epistemological and ethical differences in defining basic concepts in disaster studies. Disasters can
be natural or the result of an inadvertent or intentional human act.
Such events kill or injure a significant number of people, or disrupt
life in a society. Though not always unpredictable, they come with
an unexpected impact and shock . However, to revise
the concept or a part of it, it would be necessary to return and remind readers of the first reactions to and social concerns over the
global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which caused COVID-19 and
the Coronavirus Pandemic. Considering the general perspective
on disaster as an event that is opposed to normal time or everyday
life, opens the space for revising concepts due to the generalization of what is meant by normality. Some social group’s everyday
life could be comprehended as catastrophic with less chance to
improve in a shorter time, e.g., those who are homeless, people
with vulnerable jobs, discriminated and marginal groups, etc. Disaster also questions the legitimacy of a political system, due to poor
preparation plans, or using the disaster to transform short-term
paternalism into an authoritarian grip on people’s everyday lives
... In the face of the societal damage driven by polarization, scholars have been turning their attention to various theoretical and practical depolarization approaches, exploring tools at various scales, from local to country-wide (33; 34; 35; 36; 37). Although research on depolarization is not of recent vintage (for example, 12; 13), McCoy et al. (5) observe that with a few exceptions (14; 15; 16) there are no corresponding definitions, measures and models for depolarization. ...
This article belongs in the emerging area of research seeking ways to depolarize societies in the short run (around events such elections) as well as in a sustainable fashion. We approach the depolarization process with a model of three homophilic groups (US Democrats, Republicans and Independents interacting in the context of upcoming federal elections). We expand a previous polarization model, which assumed that each individual interacts with all other individuals in its group with mean-field interactions. We add a depolarization field which is analogous to the Blume-Capel model’s crystal field. There are currently numerous depolarization efforts around the world, some of which act in ways similar to this depolarization field. We find that for low values of the depolarization field, the system continues to be polarized. When the depolarization field is increased, the polarization decreases.
... In the face of the societal damage driven by polarization, scholars have been turning their attention to various theoretical and practical depolarization approaches, exploring tools at various scales, from local to country-wide (33; 34; 35; 36; 37). Although research on depolarization is not of recent vintage (for example, 12; 13), McCoy et al. (5) observe that with a few exceptions (14; 15; 16) there are no corresponding definitions, measures and models for depolarization. ...
This article belongs in the emerging area of research seeking ways to depolarize societies in the short run (around events such elections) as well as in a sustainable fashion. We approach the depolarization process with a model of three homophilic groups (US Democrats, Republicans and Independents interacting in the context of upcoming federal elections). We expand a previous polarization model, which assumed that each individual interacts with all other individuals in its group with mean-field interactions. We add a depolarization field which is analogous to the Blume-Capel model’s crystal field. There are currently numerous depolarization efforts around the world, some of which act in ways similar to this depolarization field. We find that for low values of the depolarization field, the system continues to be polarized. When the depolarization field increases, the polarization decreases.
... Scholars found evidence that partisans in the Trump era "view[ed] supporters of the opposing party not as opponents but as enemies:bad actors who want to inflict harm to the nation and who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals"(Abramowitz, 2021, p. 349). Mistrust of opposing partisans reached new heights, and many citizens reported perceiving the stakes of losing to the other as enormous(Nilsen, 2018;Galston, 2020).Given widespread opinion among scholars and policy makers regarding the pernicious nature of affective polarization(Mason, 2018;Somer and McCoy, 2019; Aikin and Talisse, 2020;Finkel et al., 2020), much research has been dedicated not only to understanding the nature and impact of affective polarization, but also to potential mechanisms of depolarization, though there is much debate concerning appropriate and effective methods of doing so (McCoy and Somer, 2019;Levendusky and Stecula, 2021;Schirch, 2021;Burgess et al., 2022;McCoy et al., 2022). ...
This thesis proposes that Johan Galtung's theory of positive and negative peace will gain relevance and applicability in contexts of non-armed societal conflicts like the Trump-era culture wars when the theory is adapted to take into account not only dynamics such as violence, but also felt threat. In this project, I reviewed the academic literature on culture war and sociopolitical polarization in the United States, as well as the literature on Galtung's theory. I then adapted positive and negative peace theory to take into account conflict dynamics rising from felt threat, which I argue makes Galtung's theory more applicable to conflicts where violence is invisible, contested or difficult to ascertain. I tested this version of Galtung's theory through 20 exploratory, qualitative interviews with American liberal and conservative partisans. These interviews resulted in a typology of various a) visions of positive and negative peace in the Trump-era culture wars, b) strategies partisans use to achieve them and c) preferences for specific types of peace. These results are discussed regarding their relevance to the field and their contribution to the academic literature.
... A factor that has largely been ignored in the socioeconomic segregation literature is political preferences, and we believe this is particularly salient for any contemporary study of residential segregation by educational status. The United States exhibits extraordinarily high levels of political polarization [30], which is perhaps no better encapsulated than by the violent insurrection that roiled the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 in an attempt to disrupt the symbolic transfer of power from one administration to the next. In recent decades, scholars have noticed an increase in the geographic separation of people of different political parties [18,19,21,23]. ...
... If political preferences are related to educational attainment, this begs the question of whether political preferences in the aggregate could be associated with educational segregation. This was found to be the case in Turkey, which is even more politically polarized than the U.S. [15,30]. Across Turkish provinces, the percentage voting for the liberal political party, which is the political out-group in the society, was positively associated with greater levels of educational segregation across all measures of educational residential segregation [15]. ...
While there is much research on income segregation, we know less about the factors that contribute to the uneven distribution of households across neighborhoods by educational attainment. Although globalization is thought to influence segregation, its association with socioeconomic segregation is debated. Using data from the 2016-2020 American Community Survey, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and the MIT Election Data + Science Lab, we investigate the correlates of educational segregation within large core-based statistical areas in the United States, focusing on globalization, income inequality, and political preferences in the 2016 presidential election. Multivariate results reveal that globalization and income inequality are the most significant correlates of educational segregation. Political preferences are only significantly associated with residential dissimilarity between those with a master’s degree or higher and those with some college. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding residential inequality on the basis of education in metropolitan America.
A shared belief in democracy is the core of EU-Taiwan cooperation, which both sides have capitalized on in their common fight against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). Awareness that Beijing and Moscow support one another to undermine democracy has brought Europe and Taiwan closer and created an opportunity for Taiwan to contribute to Europe’s counter-disinformation efforts. Europeans opened up to learning from Taiwan, and FIMI cooperation has become central to shaping the new reality in EU-Taiwan cooperation. The Russia-China strategic convergence in the information space explains why the future of Taiwan matters beyond China, and why the future of Ukraine matters beyond Europe. As a response to Chinese interference attempts and decades of intimidation, Taiwan has embraced democracy as a defence mechanism. Taiwan’s handling of Chinese interference can inspire Europe, both in better understanding CCP tactics and in its response to the tactics. In 2024, Taiwan successfully elected Lai Ching-te as their next president. Yet, Taiwan is not immune to hybrid threats either. Russia and China have learnt from each other to leverage disinformation. Europe and Taiwan must learn more from one another on countering disinformation in ways most suitable to their needs.
The man who has spent the past three decades doing more than anyone to deny Indonesians the right to elect their leaders has now been elected Indonesia's leader. Riding the coattails and benefiting from the brazen interventions of Joko Widodo, the wildly popular outgoing president, Prabowo Subianto has completed his quarter-century-long political rehabilitation from Indonesia's most notorious human-rights abuser to the world's third-largest democracy's commander-in-chief. The murky circumstances of Prabowo's electoral landslide, combined with the likely prospect that he will rule effectively unopposed, seem certain to accelerate recent processes of democratic erosion in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
Political scientists have expressed concern about the current state of democracy in the United States, which is widely regarded as a pioneer in the modern democratic world. This study focuses on three institutional practices and systems—gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and Misinformation/hate speech—that are deemed detrimental to democracy/undemocratic and in need of reform. While Gen Zers (born between 1997-2012) are projected to become a significant voting bloc in future elections, there is limited research on their political opinions. To gauge the attitudes and preferences of Gen Zers regarding American democracy and potential institutional/practice reforms, a survey of 215 participants was conducted. The findings indicate that the majority of Gen Zers express concern about the state of democracy and are open to the idea of reform, although they do not strongly support any specific reform. Respondents displayed significant support for reforming gerrymandering, while opinions on reforming the Electoral College and addressing Misinformation/hate speech were divided along partisan lines. A subsequent focus group highlighted the participants' emphasis on the importance of civic engagement and media literacy education in high schools, as well as the need for more comprehensive local and federal curricular mandates.
