To better understand the various paths by which societies might overcome or reduce political divisions, this working paper examines perniciously polarized countries that have successfully depolarized, at least for a time.
Reducing Pernicious Polarization: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Depolarization carnegieendowment.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from carnegieendowment.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
RA Fatigue Fighters healthcentral.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from healthcentral.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Pedro Bordalo, Marco Tabellini, David Yang 20 January 2021
Our beliefs about one another’s political attitudes tend to be substantially mis-calibrated. This column analyses the factors shaping voters’ ideas about the political attitudes of other voters among the US electorate. Starting from the premise that individuals are not equally interested in all issues, it finds that when issue salience changes, beliefs about political groups can shift dramatically even when the underlying fundamentals remain the same. Meanwhile, the removal of a perceived external threat can induce citizens to perceive one another as further apart on domestic issues, undermining a country’s social cohesion.