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Polarization, fragmentation and competition in Western democracies.
Abstract
Polarisation is the best single explanatory variable for stable versus unstable, functioning versus non-functioning, successful versus immobile, and easy versus difficulty democracy. The most significant form is usually the left-right variety, largely because the spatial imagery subsumes under its ordering the issues that acquire political salience. -after Authors
... Primero, las malas perspectivas electorales, entendidas como previsiones de decadencia electoral y/o de falta de votos para conseguir el objetivo principal del partido en las siguientes elecciones (gobernar en solitario, formar parte de una coalición, ser decisivo en la formación de gobierno, liderar la oposición, etc.). Segundo, una elevada superposición ideológica, considerada como el solapamiento entre dos o más partidos, que los hace competir por los mismos electores en la escala ideológica (Sani y Sartori, 1983). Tercero, una elevada presión ambiental, comprendida como elementos del sistema político -opinión pública, medios de comunicación y otros actores políticos-con una actitud desfavorable hacia un partido que le empujan a rectificar determinados comportamientos (Verge, 2007;Ferland, 2020). ...
... En la cultura organizativa del PSOE había apertura hacia las primarias como incentivo a la participación, pero se decidió implantar, primero, las primarias en la selección de candidatos y, más adelante, también en la del líder: «El argumento básico era que todo a la vez no puede ser, mejor vayamos 11 El cálculo del índice de superposición ideológica (Sani y Sartori, 1983) entre PSOE y Podemos nos da un resultado de 0,77 (muy elevada), calculada a partir de la pregunta 33a (recuerdo de voto), cruzada por la autoubicación ideológica del votante en el mismo estudio. Tómese como referencia la superposición entre PSOE y PP en las elecciones generales de 2011, que era tan solo 0,38 (media), calculada a partir de la pregunta 40 (autoubicación ideológica del votante), cruzada por el recuerdo de voto en el estudio postelectoral 2920 del CIS. ...
... Además, en el PP se han contemplado las primarias como una posible fuente de conflicto, tal y como reconoció el entrevistado: «No compartimos la idea de las primarias en el sentido de una competición interna para ver quién debe ser el candidato».17 El cálculo del índice de superposición ideológica(Sani y Sartori, 1983) entre Partido Popular y Ciudadanos nos da un resultado de 0,54 (elevada), calculada a partir de la pregunta 35 (autoubicación ideológica del votante), cruzada por recuerdo de voto, en el mismo estudio. La superposición entre estos dos partidos subiría hasta 0,62 (muy elevada) en las elecciones del año siguiente, según han calculadoGarrido et al. (2022: 8). ...
En este artículo abordamos las posibles explicaciones a los cambios en los modelos de procesos de selección de líder de los partidos políticos españoles, que se concentran en un breve periodo de cuatro años, entre los veranos de 2014 y de 2018. Desde un enfoque histórico-empírico, analizamos el comportamiento de los cuatro principales partidos del sistema para ese periodo, considerando que estos incorporan innovaciones organizativas para mejorar su rendimiento electoral. La crisis competitiva se propone como causa de la introducción de las primarias en los cuatro casos, aunque menos grave en el de Ciudadanos. Esta se identifica observando los altos niveles de superposición ideológica de las dos parejas de partidos (PSOE-Podemos y PP-Ciudadanos) y el posible impacto de otros tres factores. La información recabada sobre los cuatro partidos se complementa con entrevistas a dirigentes destacados de los partidos durante el periodo de estudio. Finalmente, se considera plausible el efecto contagio en los casos de Ciudadanos y PP, una vez que los otros dos grandes partidos ya han celebrado primarias.
... El grado de la fragmentación (entre el bipartidismo y el pluripartidismo, más o menos, extremo) y la intensidad de la polarización (entre la competición centrípeta y la segmentación centrífuga y antisistema), así como sus características y su dinámica recíproca, es lo que ha planteado problemas de gobernabilidad, estabilidad y rendimiento a nuestras democracias (Sani y Sartori, 1983) desde hace tiempo, convirtiéndose en una preocupación académica y un objeto de estudio de primer orden en el ámbito de la ciencia política occidental. Estamos asistiendo a la reaparición de viejos fantasmas políticos de tipo etnocéntrico y autoritario, cargados de xenofobia y populismo, que precipitan en movimientos de introversión agresiva caracterizados por la búsqueda de un chivo expiatorio y por el predominio de las emociones sobre la razón (Arias, 2016). ...
... Como nos advirtieron G. Sani y G. Sartori (1983), la polarización es claramente peligrosa para una democracia desde el momento en que pervierte la dinámica competitiva entre adversarios políticos que buscan convencer para vencer, cuando la convierten en una batalla continua entre enemigos a los que destruir, fracturando la sociedad en grupos o bandos irreconciliables y vetando cualquier posibilidad de entendimiento o acuerdo entre bloques bipolares. De este modo, el carácter y la esencia centrípeta de la competición y de la gobernanza democráticas se transforman en una dinámica centrífuga condicionada e impuesta por los polos extremos de cada bloque político, al tiempo que se trituran las actitudes y los actores políticos centristas o moderados, como estamos viendo en todas nuestras democracias, casi sin excepción. ...
Este artículo realiza una introducción al estado de la cuestión de la polarización política. Se enmarca en la sección Debate de la Revista CENTRA de Ciencias Sociales, dedicada a contrastar los distintos enfoques sobre su definición, sus dimensiones, su medición y las evidencias empíricas sobre su impacto y evolución en España, en una perspectiva comparada. La polarización política, sea cual sea su variante (ideológica, afectiva, cotidiana, etc.) o inspiración y campo de batalla dialéctico (ideológico, identitario, valorativo…), es la confrontación entre élites y/o ciudadanos alineados en bloques irreconciliables. Se comienza con una delimitación conceptual y las evidencias de su relevancia sociopolítica, distinguiendo su presencia entre las élites y la ciudadanía para resaltar su componente emocional, así como sus posibles causas y efectos. Su carácter multidimensional y la medición dan paso, precisamente, a los tres artículos referidos, respectivamente, a la medición y evaluación de la polarización ideológica, la identitaria y lallamadaGAL/TAN.
... Aunque se ha aceptado que cierto grado de polarización es saludable, ya que sería el resultado de un sistema que ha sido capaz de integrar todas las opciones políticas, la preocupación por la polarización comienza cuando las diferencias entre las opciones políticas son demasiado grandes, ya que puede tener efectos negativos sobre la gobernabilidad y finalmente, la estabilidad de la democracia. No es casualidad que Sani & Sartori (1983) consideren que la polarización es la variable con más valor explicativo cuando hablamos de democracias estables o inestables, ya que junto con la fragmentación, explica la dirección de la competencia electoral y la viabilidad de coaliciones parlamentarias o de gobierno. La vida política de una comunidad, según Sartori (1976) se torna inestable cuando las interacciones entre los partidos tienden a debilitar el centro y dar lugar a posiciones extremas, generando dinámicas centrífugas. ...
... Una revisión sobre el concepto, sus causas y su operacionalización Cuando hablamos de polarización hay que hacer un esfuerzo de conceptualización, ya que en la literatura encontramos diferentes tipos de polarización, cada uno de ellos con orígenes diferentes y consecuencias distintas sobre los sistemas democráticos (Torcal, 2023). En términos generales, la polarización se entiende como "el ámbito general del espectro ideológico de cualquier comunidad política dada" (Sani & Sartori, 1983). Sin embargo, en la literatura más reciente hay al menos tres procesos políticos que los politólogos denominan polarización: la polarización ideológica, la polarización política y la polarización afectiva 1 . ...
Hay algo desconcertante en la importancia que ha adquirido en estos tiempos el fenómeno de la polarización política. Hasta antes de la crisis económica de 2008, todo parecía indicar que las ideologías eran cada vez más débiles y menos influyentes en los ciudadanos. Sin embargo, la gran crisis económica global y la crisis de representación política parecen haber cambiado la tendencia. En el nuevo escenario que se ha configurado, las diferencias entre las opciones políticas son más importantes que nunca: los partidos nuevos se quieren distinguir de los viejos partidos; los partidos en la oposición se desmarcan de los que están en el gobierno; los partidos de derechas y de izquierdas enfatizan sus diferencias ideológicas, etc. Esta diferenciación entre las opciones políticas es esencial en la política contemporánea. La competición electoral implica que las distintas opciones políticas estén claramente diferenciadas y que, además, sean percibidas por los electores. Entonces, ¿por qué gran parte de a literatura en Ciencia Política afirma que la polarización amenaza a las democracias?
... Across Western European democracies, the left-right is still the predominant way for voters, politicians, commentators and scholars alike to describe political affiliations and changes. Following the original conceptualization by Anthony Downs (1957: 132), research in this field usually assumes that the left-right dimension simply represents a weighted average of all the specific positions political actors take on a range of issues (see also Inglehart and Klingemann 1976;Sani and Sartori 1983). This is also how the left-right dimension is operationalized in the widely used Manifesto Project (MARPOR) data set (Budge and McDonald 2012). ...
... In this article we have argued that portfolio allocation influences the perception of voters in important ways. We follow previous arguments that the left-right dimension can be seen as a super-issue that consists of multiple policy issues and subdimensions (Downs 1957;Inglehart and Klingemann 1976;Sani and Sartori 1983), but we add to the existing research by suggesting that the individual weight of the multiple issues varies depending on the portfolios that the parties obtained during coalition negotiations. More specifically, we argue that certain issues will be more relevant for the perceived position of a party if the party was successful in obtaining the relevant portfolio. ...
Recent research suggests that party leaders can strategically impact the perceived left–right position of their parties by changing their selective emphasis on certain issues. We suggest that a party's ideological image can also be altered by the portfolio allocation of the coalition government in which the party participates. By controlling a portfolio, the party will have a more direct influence on the related issue and will frequently communicate the party's issue position publicly, thereby cultivating a perception of strong emphasis on the related issue. We run a cross-national party-level analysis showing that portfolio allocation matters with regard to the importance of the subdimensions for the general left–right dimension. In particular, the influence of sociocultural stances depends on the share of sociocultural portfolios. In addition, we show that the mechanism does not apply at the beginning of a government's tenure, but only after a year or longer in office.
... To determine whether party members have the tendency to assert in-group distinctiveness or out-group favouritism, in this study we turn to ideological placement on a left-right scale. Left-right positioning is an aggregate dimension that summarise party positions on a different number of issues (Sani and Sartori 1983). In-group distinctiveness should be observed as an increase in the ideological distance between the minor and major political parties. ...
... To determine whether party members have the tendency to assert in-group distinctiveness or out-group favouritism, in this study we turn to ideological placement on a left-right scale. Left-right positioning is an aggregate dimension that summarise party positions on a different number of issues (Sani and Sartori 1983). Ingroup distinctiveness was considered to be an increase in the ideological distance between the minor and major political parties. ...
In multiparty systems, maintaining a distinct and positive partisan
identity may be more difficult for those who identify with minor parties, because
such parties lack the rich history of success that could reinforce a positive social
standing in the political realm. Yet, we know little about the unique nature of minor
partisan identities because partisanship tends to be most prominent in singlemember
plurality systems that tend toward two dominant parties, such as the
United States. Canada provides a fascinating case of a single-member plurality
electoral system that has consistently led to a multiparty system, ideal for studying
minor party identity.We use large datasets of public opinion data, collected in 2019
and 2021 in Canada, to test a Lasso regression, a machine learning technique, to
identify the factors that are the most important to predict whether partisans of
minor political parties will seek in-group distinctiveness, meaning that they seek a
different and positive political identity from the major political parties they are in
competition with, or take part in out-group favouritism, meaning that they seek to
become closer major political parties. We find that party rating is the most
important predictor. The more partisans of the minor party rate their own party favourably, the more they take part in distinctiveness. We also find that the more
minor party partisans perceive the major party as favourable, the more favouritism
they will show towards the major party.
... Overlapping and clientelist practices Sani and Giovanni (1983) came up with the first empirical measurement of overlapping. They based their work on Downs' analysis of ideological spaces (1985). ...
... Ideological overlapping has been calculated with Sani and Giovanni's (1983) formula, using the PELA database of the attitudes and opinions of parliamentarians from seventeen countries in the region, encompassing legislatures spanning the years from 2009 to 2022. 5 In this survey, the ideological positioning of parties ranges from 1 (left) to 10 (right). Once these political parties' ideological positions (according to the parliamentarians themselves) were obtained, the ideological scale was divided into five segments 6 and the sum of the differences in absolute value between said segments calculated, taking into account different pairings of parties. ...
Clientelism is a widespread and persistent practice in Latin America with significant ramifications for political actors and systems. This paper analyses its impact upon ideological overlapping, which is one of the aspects of ideological competition that has received disparate levels of attention depending on the region of study. The hypothesis examined is that clientelism reduces the ideological differentiation of political parties because, firstly, a clientelist environment makes it difficult for political actors to use left/right categories, thereby contributing to a reduction in parties’ ideological identities. Secondly, the use of clientelist practices by parties fosters ideological overlapping with other parties, given the lack of incentives for them to differentiate themselves ideologically from one another. To test this relationship, a multilevel regression analysis was performed of 86 Latin American parties since 2009.
... However, studies have delivered inconsistent results so far. Having discarded the long-established idea of a unidimensional structure of issues characterised by the left/right dichotomy (Sani and Sartori, 1983;Bartolini and Mair, 1990), scholars have started to discuss the content of a two-dimensional space, coming up with different interpretations of the second dimension of conflict (Hix and Lord, 1997;Kitschelt, 1994;Hooghe et al., 2002;Kriesi et al., 2006Kriesi et al., , 2008. Some other findings have suggested that the political space can be modelled by three rather than by two dimensions (Warwick, 2002;Aarts and Thomassen, 2008;Bakker et al., 2012). ...
... Scholars have debated both the dimensionality and contents of political spaces in Europe. The traditional approach has interpreted issue competition as a one-dimensional space organised around the labels of left and right, alongside other classical 'cleavages' (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967;Sani and Sartori, 1983;Bartolini and Mair, 1990). Since the post-materialist revolution (late 1970s), the existence of a second dimension has been hypothesised. ...
This article investigates how mass issue attitudes are structured and constrained across different levels of political sophistication. To do so, it replicates the analysis of Lupton et al. (J Politics 77(2):368–380, 2015) in the European context, relying on the 2014 and 2019 European Election Studies (EES). First, it tests seven models of issue dimensionality on each European country by means of CFA. Then, it investigates whether connections among issue dimensions become stronger at increasing levels of sophistication. Finally, it checks correlations between factors and ideology. Results show that voters’ issue dimensionality considerably changes between the two EES waves, switching from a heterogeneous configuration in 2014 to a predominant GAL/TAN model in 2019. Analyses find evidence that sophisticated voters constrain their attitudes to one single underlying dimension only in some cases. Therefore, the constraining role of sophistication cannot be generalized to all European countries. Yet, the link between issue dimensions and ideological orientations appears strong across (almost) all countries, showing that issue attitudes, especially for highly sophisticated voters, are rooted in ideology.
... Political polarisation refers to the deepening ideological and programmatic divides between different political parties, making their positions increasingly irreconcilable (Sani and Sartori 1983). This growing divide leads to greater social fragmentation and poses a significant threat to democracy's resilience: "In healthy democracies, opposing sides are seen as political adversaries to compete against and at times to negotiate with. ...
The New Communication Ecosystem begins with a reflection on McLuhan’s visionary insights into the omnipresence of media in everyday life, as formulated six decades ago in Understanding Media (1964), and extends these ideas to the present day. Alongside an observation of how the digital dimension and its characteristics have reinforced this phenomenon through the integration of previous media logics, this section explores the hybridisation processes that facilitate the coexistence of old and new media and the role of audiences within this context.
As highlighted in the opening chapter, these various transformations have given rise to a changing and confusing communication ecosystem, which involves a redefinition of the centrality of media and its traditional role, in favour of a growing prominence of social networks. Throughout its pages, different perspectives are explored within a complex scenario, where the ability to select, the fragmentation of audiences, and generational factors hold significant weight. From the paradox of a media landscape where the role of traditional media is declining and losing centrality, this section discusses its effective role in the mediation process.
... Political polarisation refers to the deepening ideological and programmatic divides between different political parties, making their positions increasingly irreconcilable (Sani and Sartori 1983). This growing divide leads to greater social fragmentation and poses a significant threat to democracy's resilience: "In healthy democracies, opposing sides are seen as political adversaries to compete against and at times to negotiate with. ...
... Whether this space materializes is a different matter altogether. Sani and Sartori (1983) draw a distinction between dimensions of identification and the space of competition (see also Freire 2006). The latter is the empirically identifiable space in which political parties operate. ...
Ideological polarization between political parties is essential for meaningful electoral competition, but at its extreme can strain democratic functioning. Despite a widespread recognition that multiple divides structure contemporary party polarization in Europe, its prevailing conceptualization and measurement remain one-dimensional. To resolve this tension, we introduce a novel, multidimensional approach to party polarization. Our main focus is on whether different ideological divides reinforce or crosscut each other. We calculate the effective dimensionality of a policy space using the correlation matrix of parties’ positions, which accounts for how the dimensions interrelate. Using both artificial data and positional estimates from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (1999–2019), we highlight the advantages of our approach and demonstrate that it is better able to capture the relationship between party polarization and mass partisanship. This study has important theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications for our understanding of polarization and democratic representation in a changing political landscape.
... distancia ideológica entre partidos. En su formulación clásica, la polarización se mide de acuerdo con el eje izquierda-derecha) (Sani & Sartori, 1983). Con respecto al criterio numérico, Sartori distingue entre: a) sistemas unipartidistas, que pueden ser de partido único, de partido hegemónico o de partido predominante; b) sistemas bipartidistas, cuando dos partidos acceden al poder, dando paso al bipartidismo (o bipartidismo moderado, cuando existe un tercer partido poco relevante), y; c) sistemas multipartidistas, que son aquellos que cuentan con más de tres partidos, y que se distinguen entre sistemas de pluralismo limitado (hasta cinco partidos), extremo (más de cinco) y atomizado (sistemas altamente fragmentados). ...
El artículo propone un modelo teórico de la secuencia crisis económica-crisis política-cambio político en contextos democráticos, y se aplica empíricamente. El modelo es fruto de una teorización ecléctica que combina diferentes elementos teóricos en un compuesto complejo. La estrategia de investigación está fundamentada en un estudio de caso típico, orientado a testar la teoría. Para el análisis, se selecciona el caso de Valencia, donde se identifica el fenómeno que se quiere explicar. Se escoge como método analítico el seguimiento de procesos. El análisis demuestra cómo la crisis económica derivada de la recesión, junto a otros factores endógenos al propio sistema político valenciano, se convirtió en una crisis política, y cómo esta condujo a un cambio político en 2015 que se substanció en una transformación del sistema de partidos y en un cambio gubernamental. Se evalúa el alcance temporal de la etapa que inauguró el cambio político de 2015, y se fija su fin tras los comicios autonómicos de 2023.
... Polarization is a relatively old topic in political science (Gerring 1998;Sani and Sartori 1983;Sartori 1976), but the interest in it has recently revived due to a massive wave of studies stemming particularly from the United States, where this phenomenon has indisputably become more relevant given the ideological radicalization affecting citizens, societal groups, and parties (Heltzel and Laurin 2020;Neal 2020;Putnam 2020). Therefore, polarization has become one of the most studied topics in contemporary political research and encompasses several realms, such as public opinion (Boxell, Gentzkow, and Shapiro 2022;Reiljan et al. 2024; but see Lelkes 2016), party systems (Dalton 2021), elites and institutions (Hetherington 2009;Hill and Tausanovitch 2015). ...
Unlike other key party system properties (e.g. fragmentation, volatility), polarization lacks a publicly available cross-national and longitudinal dataset that can be used as an established source among the scientific community. This article aims to fill this gap by introducing a novel publicly available dataset of party system ideological polarization in Western European party systems. The dataset relies on multiple expert surveys and provides measures of party system ideological polarization for each parliamentary election and legislature in 20 Western European countries since 1945. The article also presents party system polarization’s comparative longitudinal trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties. It finds that party system ideological polarization is on the rise in Western Europe, mainly due to a progressive shift in the electoral support from ideologically moderate mainstream parties to more extreme challenger parties. Moreover, in recent years, high party system polarization has recurred in highly fragmented and volatile contexts, thus creating a detrimental context for the working of democracy.
... Esta definición es lo que la literatura más reciente ha denominado: polarización ideológica. Un país se considera ideológicamente polarizado si sus élites o sus ciudadanos tienen posiciones radicales a los extremos del espectro ideológico (Sartori, 1983). La literatura más reciente -particularmente en Estados Unidos-se ha enfocado en el conflicto grupal. ...
... A wider 'gap' would imply more polarization and a narrower gap would imply less polarization. This notion of polarization as the bimodality of public opinion is present in the seminal works on polarization (Sartori, 1976;Sani & Sartori, 1983) and nowadays has been labeled ideological or issue-based polarization. Iyengar and colleagues (2012) in the US observed that, quite independently of ideological or policybased disagreements, Democrats and Republicans increasingly manifested dislike towards the opposing party. ...
This PhD dissertation aims to contribute theoretically and empirically to the study of political polarization, with a special focus on its affective expression: affective polarization (AP). Theoretically, the thesis provides a novel dialogue between collective action studies, the intergroup relations literature and the affective polarization literature, resulting in different theoretical insights that are important when trying to grasp affective polarization dynamics in context, and when thinking about depolarization interventions. Empirically, taking Spain as a case study, and adopting a mixed-methods approach, this dissertation provides extensive descriptive -cross-sectional and longitudinal- evidence on the evolution of political polarization indicators and their relationships over a period of more than a decade (2010-2023), to subsequently explore some of the long-term and short-term causes of AP in the multidimensional Spanish political system. In this sense, one of the empirical chapters of this PhD dissertation uses panel data to analyze the relationship between perceived ideological polarization on the two main axes of political competition in Spain (the left-right and territorial dimensions) and AP. The chapter reveals that this relationship is conditioned by individuals' self-reported ideology, meaning that perceptions of polarization on the territorial axis are clearly more positively related to AP levels among right-wing individuals in comparison to left-wing individuals, whereas perceptions of polarization on the left-right axis are somewhat more related to AP among left-wing individuals. The analyses also reveal that the relationship between perceived territorial polarization and AP varies with time, in relation to the salience of the territorial conflict dimension. This chapter underlines the importance of multidimensionality and of individuals' values, in this case their ideology, when studying affective polarization. This PhD dissertation also contributes to the literature on the short-term causes of affective (de)polarization, by means of another chapter that examines, also using panel data, if and how the COVID-19 conjuncture fostered affective polarization dynamics. The findings indicate that, at an individual level, there were participants that increased their levels of AP during the pandemic. In a different vein, we found that aggregate levels of AP decreased when de-escalation policies, which ended the strict lockdowns and were highly popular, consensual and designed by the government in collaboration with health experts, were implemented. Another chapter of the PhD dissertation, analyzing language and interaction in focus group data, digs deep into how political polarization manifests itself within lay citizens' talk and interactions, thereby providing insights into how polarized and even prejudiced accounts of political adversaries are collectively constructed from a rhetorical position of reasonableness. This chapter shows that the intragroup context is a setting in which very polarized versions of the others are reproduced and kept alive, and thereby constitute contexts in which these representations might also be challenged. Taken together, the chapters of this PhD dissertation help to broaden the scope of political polarization and depolarization studies and to fill some important gaps left by previous literature.
... Para responder estas preguntas, en este artículo analizamos las posiciones de los votantes en relación con los temas más importantes de la agenda política colombiana: acuerdo de paz, política redistributiva (impuestos y ayudas sociales), gestión gubernamental durante la pandemia por COVID y temas de género. En línea con los clásicos aportes de Sartori (Sani y Sartori 1983;Sartori 1966), utilizamos una definición de polarización en un sentido ideológico. Para precisar sus componentes, nos basamos en el trabajo seminal de DiMaggio, Evans y Bryson (1996), para quienes la categoría tiene cuatro dimensiones: tendencia a la bimodalidad (es decir, al agrupamiento de las opiniones en dos categorías), alta dispersión (lo que indica que estas dos categorías se encuentran muy distantes entre sí), alta consistencia (los posicionamientos de las personas en los diferentes temas tienden a estar alineados en cada agenda y entre agendas) y consolidación (la correspondencia de estas categorías con variables sociales y con el voto). ...
Objetivo/contexto:
Uno de los efectos de la guerra interna en Colombia fue obstaculizar la expresión del conflicto social y de las organizaciones que movilizan a los sectores populares. El plebiscito por el acuerdo de paz que intentaba terminar con dicha guerra fue una coyuntura de polarización política canalizada por la vía electoral. El desplazamiento de la centralidad de la cuestión de la guerra interna a partir de la firma del acuerdo abrió la posibilidad de expresión del conflicto social. Sin embargo, en un país con débiles organizaciones sociales y políticas que ordenen este conflicto, este se expresa: 1) sin encuadres alineados políticamente; 2) como descontento generalizado con las élites y sentimiento de “cancha inclinada”. Por tanto, la polarización política luego de la coyuntura del plebiscito es baja. Desarrollamos este argumento a partir del análisis de las posiciones de los votantes en relación con los temas más importantes de la agenda política: acuerdo de paz, agenda redistributiva (impuestos y ayudas sociales) y gestión gubernamental durante la pandemia por COVID, y agenda de género.
Metodología:
El artículo se basa en dieciséis grupos focales realizados entre septiembre y noviembre de 2021 en tres regiones de Colombia (Bogotá, Antioquia y el Caribe), en los que participaron votantes de las dos opciones electorales principales de 2018, con equilibrio de género, con variación ocupacional, y entre clases medias y clases bajas.
Conclusión:
Los datos muestran que no existe polarización política entre los ciudadanos. En cambio, se observa un alto nivel de descontento con las élites políticas y económicas.
Originalidad:
El artículo ofrece una mirada alternativa a la percepción que tienen muchos colombianos de que viven en una sociedad polarizada y contribuye a la comprensión de los apoyos electorales a una fuerza “antisistema” en la elección presidencial de 2022.
... Three sources of data are particularly common: (1) general election surveys in which respondents subjectively place the various political parties (e.g. Sani and Sartori 1983), (2) content analysis of the programmatic statements (typically the platforms or 'manifestos') of the political parties themselves (Budge, Robertson and Hearl 1987;Laver and Budge 1992), and (3) so-called 'expert judgements' obtained through small-scale surveys of academic and other experts, in which the respondents are asked to use standard instruments such as a ten-point scale (Castles and Mair 1984;Huber and Inglehart 1995;Laver and Hunt 1992). ...
Coalition Governments in Western Europe is the most comprehensive empirical analysis to date of coalition politics. Based on a large cross-national data collection, covering the entire post-war period from 1945 to 1999, it is the first systematic study of the institutions of governance and conflict resolution in coalition governments. The book is also an unparalleled source of information on cabinet formation, membership, termination, and electoral performance of coalition parties. The volume also analyses the institutional frameworks in which coalition politics takes place in the individual countries and discusses which constraints for government formation, coalition governance, and coalition termination result from them. The information has been collected in standardized form by first rate country experts, and is presented in the form of standard tables.
... The classical comparative politics literature used to point out that polarization had negative consequences for the proper functioning of democracy (Linz, 1978;Sani and Sartori, 1983). With the triumph of the catch-all parties in the second half of the XX century, the worry around the potential damaging effect of polarization vanished itself (Kirchheimer, 1966;Katz and Mair, 1995). ...
Previous literature has distinguished two types of polarization: ideological and affective. However, little is known on how the interconnection of these two polarizations (which we call overlapping polarization) varies depending on the political context. Is affective polarization always associated with ideological polarization? What is the role of the institutional framework (i.e., democratic age and popular election of the head of state) and the party system (i.e., elite polarization and number of parties) in determining how wide this overlap is? This article examines the contextual determinants of overlapping polarization by using information from the four first CSES waves. According to our analyses, the individual-level positive effect of ideological polarization on affective polarization is stronger when the party system is ideologically polarized and in older democracies, and is weaker in presidential democracies and when the number of parties is higher.
... 5 Some indices of polarisation simply capture the left-right ideological distance between the two largest (Ware 1996) or leftmost and rightmost (Abedi 2002) parties. Others (Sani and Sartori 1983) take the absolute difference between the mean location divided by the theoretical maximum of the scale. The most frequently used measures weight ideological distances on the basis of the percentage of votes (Dalton 2008) or seats (Hazan 1997) of the respective parties. ...
... four or five effective number of parties? 15 percent in the Pedersen's index or higher?), but also which index should we used: for example, Sani and Sartori's (1983) ideological distance, Dalton's (2008) index of polarization, Powell's (1982) percentage of votes for anti-systemic 22 parties? For more qualitative approaches, characterized by considering that 'party system change occurs when a party system is transformed from one class or type […] into another' (Mair, 1997, p. 51), the most important issue is to identify what classification/typology should be used. ...
Like with Haute Couture, in political science there are also fashions. In the 1990s party system change was the flavour of the day, and Peter Mair its uttermost pontiff. The popularity of the topic fadde away with the new century, especially after the 2008 Great Recession made buzzwords like populism and democratic backsliding, among others, more fashionable. Departing from Mair’s, 2001 book chapter on the topic, and using Mair’s conceptual and methodological tools, this paper revisits the sister concepts of party system freezing and party system change, showing to what extent fears about never-ending change and party system collapse are really true. While cleavage structures have changed, electorates are in disarray, and parties are in constant turmoil, party system change in Western Europe is still the exception (e.g. Ireland), rather than the rule.
... Furthermore, antiimmigration attitudes do not suffice to define populism; populism's core element (people-centrism and anti-elitism) is, thus, completely ignored. A question to ask then is: What is populist about these populist attitudes that this scholarship seeks to analyse? 5. Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction is often met with suspicion: first, due to the legal theorist's association with the Nazi regime, and second, because the idea of political polarisation is often understood as unhealthy for democracy (Sani and Sartori, 1983). This paper sides with post-structuralist theorists who maintain (1) the other is not necessarily an enemy to be physically destroyed, but an adversary whose ideas are under scrutiny; (2) exclusion and antagonism are constitutive of all societies, and certain degrees of polarisation may increase levels of participation in democracies (Mouffe, 2000;Ranciere et al., 2001). ...
Donald Trump's style is often described as provocative and his administration as catastrophic. Despite this, his popularity remained high throughout his term in office, and in the 2020 US elections, he received 10 million votes more than in 2016. This paper investigates the paradox of political identification through a discursive, performative and stylistic framework. It argues that policy outcomes and rhetorical consistency do not suffice in understanding identification. Rather, transgression-which is typical of populist performativity-plays a pivotal role in interpellating affective collective subjectivities. This article investigates the case of Donald Trump, from his emergence in 2015 until the 2021 Capitol insurgence. It employs discourse and visual analysis to study Trump's rhetoric and performativity, integrating this with in-depth interviews and ethnographic research to examine the ways his style resonated with his supporters. It concludes that charismatic performativity and transgression play a crucial role in political identification regardless of the quality of institutional performance.
... As K nutsen argues (1999: 233), left-right semantics are able to incorporate many conflicts simultaneously along a single line, such as, among others, the secular vs. religious dimension, materialism vs. post-materialism, predominance of the individual vs. the role of the state and equality vs. the preservation of hierarchical order (K nutsen 1999;Inghehart and Klingemann, 1976: 258). According to Sani and Sartori (1983), the leftright scale encompasses orientations and attitudes on inequality, change, the Cold War divide, religion, hierarchy, order and business. Hooghe, Marks and Wilson (2002) show that there is a strong relationship between the conventional left/right scale and the so-called "GAL-TAN dimension", which "overshadows the left-right dimension", an argument supported by Kriesi (2010). ...
La ubicación en la escala izquierda-derecha es una de las formas más extendidas que utilizan los ciudadanos para expresar sus posiciones políticas en las democracias occidentales. Existe una gran cantidad de literatura que explica los factores en los que se basa la posición en dicha escala, principalmente, la estructura social, los valores y el partidismo. Este artículo se centra en las posiciones de los ciudadanos en la escala izquierda-derecha en el contexto español utilizando las oleadas de 2008 y 2017 de la Encuesta Europea de Valores (EVS) para presentar un modelo explicativo completo para las posiciones izquierda-derecha, que incluye, a nuestro entender, el espectro más amplio de la dimensión de valores examinadas hasta la fecha, concluyendo que el partidismo es el factor más importante que explica el autoposicionamiento en la escala.
Under the title of Challenges in a Hostile Scenario, this chapter addresses the socio-political conditions in which communication occurs, delving into the perverse synergies between three major threats facing Western democracies: polarisation, disinformation, and the rise of populism. This section combines the theoretical and empirical approach to the three concepts on which it pivots, based on a bibliographic review and a survey that takes the pulse and delves into the perception of citizens.
The first part of the chapter focuses on the dynamics of populism and polarisation, considering socio-political trends in the international context and how they manifest within the Spanish context. Through the survey, both dimensions have been tested, based on the positioning of citizens in response to a series of statements. These responses allow us to observe both social fractures and support for certain populist attitudes concerning representatives of various powers, including the political class, financial sectors, the media, and international organisations. The responses of 1200 individuals, representative of Spanish society, also allow us to identify the main fault lines around significant social issues such as national identity, gender equality, immigration, climate change, and housing.
The second part of the chapter focuses on disinformation, offering a detailed analysis of this phenomenon within the Spanish context. Based on public responses, an overview is provided of how citizens perceive the problem of disinformation, the sources they attribute to the origin of false content, how they act when such content is detected, and what measures receive public support in combating it. The results provide a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon and potential solutions to address it.
Ideological polarization is a crucial aspect of party systems that varies over time and between party systems. Experts have tended to highlight its negative effect. This article proposes an alternative view, focusing on a possible positive effect, by relating polarization to the existence of differentiated ideological options that would increase the inclusiveness of the party system as a whole and make a positive contribution to satisfaction with democracy. With polarization data calculated from the positions of the parliamentary elites of sixteen party systems, the analysis addresses the relationship between polarization and the quality of democracy. The result suggests the relevance of this relationship and the need to reconsider the mechanical interpretation of the negative effects of polarization.
In the past two decades, radical right parties gained ground, becoming relevant political actors in several European countries. This article presents an intriguing study on their voting preferences in Western Europe. It analyses whether and to what extent the effect of the distance between individual and party positions on the European Union, immigration and the Left–Right positioning has changed over time (between 2009 and 2019). This is examined by combining data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and the European Election Studies. The results suggest that the distance between Left–Right self-positioning and party position has become more important in explaining voting for radical right parties over time.
This article outlines a framework for studying practices of boundary-making as pivotal to the various ways in which “rights” become objects of contention and sources of narrativization in contemporary constitutional democracies. Firstly, we reconsider the dynamics of boundary-making that underline polarization by drawing on the notion of “moral economy”. This concept is well-suited for making sense of how social groups draw lines of demarcation through the appropriation, circulation, and confrontation of values and emotions. However, we argue that the concept must be enriched by acknowledging the generative role of narratives. Hence, we introduce the notion of “narrative boundaries” for comprehending how moral economies are produced by storytelling practices. Based on this, we explore the paradoxical moral economy of constitutional struggles. While the discourse of rights pursues modes of inclusion, the struggles over their demarcation often result in narratives that build fences that reinforce the division between almost irreconcilable normative worlds.
The left–right scale is widely assumed to be a common space, a joint yardstick that facilitates political communication. Aggregate voter perceptions of party positions on the left–right scale are widely used by scholars, a.o. to test models of voting behaviour, assess voter-elite congruence, or study party system change. Remarkably, while these models hinge on the longstanding assumption that voters have a joint understanding of the ordering of political parties on the left–right scale, this assumption has not been put to a systematic test. This paper introduces formal and a probabilistic tests of the formal demands of a common space: individual transitivity and collective transitivity. Cross-national analyses of election survey data (36 countries in the CSES) and longitudinal analyses in Germany (1983–2021), Great Britain (1997–2019), and the Netherlands (1981–2021) test whether the left–right dimension meets these demands. The outcomes are sobering. They cast serious doubt on the interpretation of the left–right scale as a common scale among voters, except under specific circumstances. We discuss the far-reaching implications of these findings.
Son muy escasos en nuestro país los estudios sobre cultura e identidad políticas, y la mayoría de los existentes han sido publicados fuera de nuestras fronteras. Por ser uno de los campos más fructíferos de la ciencia y la sociología políticas contemporáneas, parece pertinente la apertura de esta línea de investigación para una mejor comprensión del proceso de consolidación democrática y, particularmente, del pluralismo polarizado vasco. A partir de una metodología muestral se estudian las características de la segmentación política, por un lado, y los soportes de violencia política, por otro.
En estas páginas se presenta un programa informático que estará a disposición de los usuarios en la página web del CIS a partir del próximo 1 de octubre. Con el programa INDELEC pueden calcularse los más importantes índices de desproporcionalidad de los sistemas electorales, así como los más comunes para conocer las dimensiones de los sistemas de partidos: fragmentación, número de partidos, concentración, competitividad, polarización, volatilidad, voto regional y voto dual. En este artículo, y a modo de ejemplo, se aplica el programa INDELEC a los resultados agregados de las elecciones al Congreso de los Diputados celebradas en España desde 1977. En una monografía que, con el título Análisis electoral, verá la luz en el mes de septiembre en la colección Cuadernos Metodológicos del CIS, se analiza detenidamente cada indicador, apuntando sus ventajas e inconvenientes, y se aplican a las sucesivas convocatorias de los diversos tipos de elecciones celebradas en nuestro país desde la reinstauración de la democracia y en distinto nivel de agregación y desagregación. Dibujamos, de esta forma, un mapa con las principales características de los diversos sistemas y subsistemas (estatales y autonómicos) de partidos habidos en España desde 1977.
En las siguientes páginas se estudian las principales características de los sistemas y subsistemasde partidos surgidos de la última convocatoria electoral de carácter autonómico. Se analizanlos datos que en cada Comunidad Autónoma alcanzan la fragmentación, el número de partidos,la concentración, la competitividad, la polarización y la volatilidad, y se comparan con los valoresque estas dimensiones alcanzan en otras Comunidades Autónomas, así como con los registradosen anteriores convocatorias. En la conclusión se señalan los distintos sistemas y subsistemas,modelo general y excéntricos, que pueden distinguirse en atención a las respectivas característicasde las pautas de la competición partidista y electoral en estas plurales arenas electorales.
In this article, we argue that party-system polarization and subjective perceptions of ideological party differences are conceptually and empirically distinct phenomena that affect electoral participation differently. Looking at 84 elections worldwide, we show that party-system polarization, and the sharp conflicts associated with it, depresses turnout because many citizens are put off by extreme party positions and unrewarding polemics. By contrast, the individual perception of differences between parties increases turnout because more citizens can find a party that is close to their own position and identify others as being further away. These opposite effects are possible because party-system polarization leads only some individuals to perceive differences between parties but leads others to avoid the emotionalized political arena. Moreover, individuals' ability to recognize differences between parties is not necessarily a consequence of party-system polarization. The contradictory findings in previous research are due to a conceptual and empirical blurring of these two essentially different aspects.
This book examines deliberative democracy and its practical forms and applications in local government public policy. Author Joanna Podgórska-Rykała explores the topic of democracy, leaning in particular on the origins of its representative variant. Analyzing the elite dimension of the concept of representation, she considers what historical and political events have influenced the contemporary shape of democracy and its understanding. How were democratic ideals shaped, and why are we currently experiencing a democratic recession? Why is the debate that should be integral to the functioning of collegiate bodies disappearing? Why aren't decisions based on evidence, and why don't decision-makers take into account expert opinions and stakeholder positions? Drawing on empirical research - interviews with city-level decision-makers - the author considers whether and how deliberative innovation can support the renewal of decision-making in representative institutions.
Deliberative Democracy, Public Policy, and Local Government will be of enormous interest to doctoral students and researchers as well as to practitioners of local government administration, civic leaders, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and people interested in public affairs. It can also be used as an important supplement in courses on public administration, political science, international relations, law, economics, and related studies at both the undergraduate and the graduate level.
The extent to which political parties change their policy positions and the emphasis they give to different topics is crucial for the representativeness and responsiveness of contemporary political systems. This article aims to clarify the role of intraparty democracy in explaining the amount of such change. Previous research has shown that a stronger empowerment of members decreases programmatic change. This hypothesis is tested here more broadly, looking at both position shifts and emphasis change, adopting a more comprehensive definition of intraparty democracy and unpacking the Left-Right scale into an economic and cultural subdimension. It is further argued that the effect of intraparty democracy is moderated by the relative salience of the economic vs. cultural subdimensions of political competition. The empirical analysis of 47 parties in 10 countries between 1995 and 2019 confirms that more internally democratic parties change less, while evidence concerning the moderating effect of relative salience is more mixed.
Since the works of Downs and Black on spatial models of competition between political actors, political scientists have invented various methods for estimating policy positions using different sources of information. This article conceptualizes the variety of methods for estimating policy positions as a multi-layer structure of policy positions, and proposes that this concept could be used as a framework to analyze the consistency and change of representation through the political process. Based on this framework, this article examines the relationship between political parties and the inconsistency of legislator's behavior. I then used three measures to estimate the policy positions of Japanese legislators on the constitutional revision issue from three sources; an elite survey, campaign pledge, and Diet Record. Moreover, I analyze the distance between the three policy positions. The result demonstrates that the extent of inconsistency in legislator's behavior differs from political parties. In particular, it is possible that each party's electoral strategy restricts the content of their member's campaign pledges.
As the primary means of political organisation, political parties remain vital to contemporary democracies, making it important to investigate their understanding of democracy. This study explores the themes with which five largest political parties in Turkey associate democracy. We studied tweets posted by official accounts of these parties’ headquarters and branches, as well as by other Twitter accounts that are institutionally linked to these parties. We found significant differences between the government bloc and the opposition bloc as well as between People Alliance and Nation Alliance in terms of the themes with which they associate democracy. The government bloc and People Alliance use themes such as national will and military coups while referring to democracy. The opposition bloc and Nation Alliance emphasise themes such as equality, freedom of the press, and justice. We conclude that parties’ and blocs’ different attitudes towards democracy are indicators of political polarisation in Turkey.
As the primary means of political organisation, political parties remain vital to contemporary democracies, making it important to investigate their understanding of democracy. This study explores the themes with which five largest political parties in Turkey associate democracy. We studied tweets posted by official accounts of these parties' headquarters and branches, as well as by other Twitter accounts that are institutionally linked to these parties. We found significant differences between the government bloc and the opposition bloc as well as between People Alliance and Nation Alliance in terms of the themes with which they associate democracy. The government bloc and People Alliance use themes such as national will and military coups while referring to democracy. The opposition bloc and Nation Alliance emphasise themes such as equality, freedom of the press, and justice. We conclude that parties' and blocs' different attitudes towards democracy are indicators of political polarisation in Turkey.
Dada la polarización creciente en la política argentina, el uso de la etiqueta izquierda-derecha vuelve a ser relevante. Este estudio examina la existencia de un electorado ideológico y la relación entre la ideología y el voto. Se recopiló una muestra nacional de 1005 entrevistados en octubre de 2019, a quienes se les pidió que se posicionaran en escalas Likert de 1 a 7, que representaban diferentes principios de política pública. El trabajo proporciona evidencia de la identificación de los electores en términos de izquierda-derecha, aunque con problemas de autointerpretación que dificultan inferir sus posiciones y preferencias. Para superar esto, se extraen las posiciones ideológicas latentes mediante el Análisis de Componentes Principales, identificando tres dimensiones: ideológica (izquierda-derecha), basada en libertades morales (progresista-conservador) y en cuestiones estéticas (alto-bajo). Finalmente, el estudio muestra la relación entre la posición ideológica de los electores y sus opciones de voto.
Ausgehend von der oft problematischen Anwendung und theoretischen Unterentwicklung des Parteienwettbewerbskonzepts wird die Verwendung des Konzepts in dieser Studie durch eine vergleichende Diskussion seiner umstrittenen Aspekte skizziert. Durch diese Diskussion wird Bartolinis mehrdimensionales Verständnis von Wettbewerb als der umfassendste Ansatz identifiziert, um die komplexe Natur der strategischen und taktischen Interaktionen von Parteien zu erfassen. Darüber hinaus konzentriert sich das Kapitel auf die Untersuchung der strukturellen Grenzen des Wettbewerbs im Vereinigten Königreich, die sich aus der Wechselwirkung zwischen der territorialen Verteilung der Wählerunterstützung und dem relativen Mehrheitswahlsystem ergeben. Dies gipfelt in der entscheidenden Diskussion, warum das Vereinigte Königreich theoretisch ein Gemeinwesen sein sollte, das einen geringen Grad an Territorialisierung bei der Wählerunterstützung und somit geringe strukturelle Beschränkungen aufweist, während empirisch zunehmend das Gegenteil der Fall ist.
This chapter offers an overview of the evolution of the Portuguese left (centre-left and radical left) since the democratic transition (1974–1982) until the present time. By analysing the centre-left and the radical left parties’ strategies and agenda from 25 April 1974 to the revolutionary period we present the genetic underpinnings of the existing governmental schism within the Portuguese left. In the first section of the chapter, we analyse the cleavage structures and the dimensions of policy competition in Portuguese society and in the Portuguese political system, to locate the different left-wing parties within them. In the second section, we analyse how the Great Recession contributed to overcoming the governmental schism among the Portuguese left. In the third and final section, we offer a sort of epilogue with up-to-date information, namely in terms of coalition politics on the left, considering current developments.
The hyper-election period of 2019–21 marked the climax of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule and with it the transformation of the Israeli party-system. While most commentators read the political situation as personalisation of the ‘Yes Bibi’/‘No Bibi’ polarisation, this article argues that ideological analysis is necessary to understand the dynamics of the four elections and their structural effects. It argues that the dominant issue on the left/right continuum over the past 50 years – the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – gave way to an internal cleavage between Israel’s nature as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’. Netanyahu’s trial only intensified the National Camp’s thesis of the Deep State, accusing the Left, the civil service and the judicial system of being ‘undemocratic’ and condescending of ‘the people’s will’ while the centre-left bloc defended the ‘Jewish and democratic’ Israel, accusing the Right of offering a ‘Halachic state’. Thus, while the Right emphasised the Jewish people, and Netanyahu’s natural partners were the religious and Haredi parties, the centre-left bloc focused on ‘Israel before all’ (to use the newly formed Blue-and-White party’s slogan). Ideological realignment is thus the key to understanding the changes in Israeli party-system.
During the last forty years, confidence in several institutions has broadly changed among Italian people. However, patterns of variations are highly dependent on the type of institution. Confidence in political-administrative institutions did not substantially vary; confidence in order institutions has substantially increased; instead, confidence in supernational institutions has dramatically collapsed, especially during the last decade. This work aims at providing an original interpretation of the variation of the three dimensions of confidence in institutions by highlighting the role of the political context in shaping those attitudes. In particular, we argue that variation in parties’ positions toward institutions could lead to a change in confidence in order and supernational institutions. By using longitudinal data coming from the Italian edition of the European Values Study (from 1981 to 2018), we offer indirect evidence to our argumentation by analysing trends of confidence in those institutions by political orientation, measured by the left-right scale.
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