The aftermath of the great recession has been typified by a rise in populism, with both sides of the political aisle seemingly becoming ever more polarized. While this is a phenomenon seen around the world, new research from Brown University suggests it’s been more pronounced in the United States.
The paper describes the long-term trends in ‘affective polarization’, which the researchers describe as when we feel more negatively towards opposing parties than we do positively towards our own. It’s a phenomenon that has increased dramatically in the US, and more so than in the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden.
“A lot of analysis on polarization is focused on the U.S., so we thought it could be interesting to put the U.S. in context and see whether it is part of a global trend or whether it looks more exceptional,” the researchers say. “We found that the trend in the U.S. is indeed exceptional.”
Polarized view
The researchers harvested four decades worth of public opinion surveys conducted across the nine countries mentioned above, with feelings towards other parties rated on a scale of 0 (for none) to 100 in terms of negativity.
The data revealed that in 1978, the average American rated their own political party 27 points higher than their opponents, but by 2016 this had soared to a 45.9 point gap.
This was far from uniform across the countries, as while polarization had increased in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland, it had actually decreased in Norway, Germany, Australia, Sweden and the UK.
The authors argue that this increased polarization in the US is largely because the two main parties have increasingly aligned themselves with particular ideologies, races and religious identities.
“There’s evidence that within the U.S., the two major political parties have become more homogeneous in certain ways, including ideologically and socially,” they say. “So when you identify with a certain party and you’re looking across the aisle, the people you’re looking at are more different from you than they were a few decades ago.”
Round the clock news
The authors also cite the influence of 24-hour news stations, that often take a partisan standpoint. They believe that countries that have seen polarization decline tend to provide more public funding to public broadcasters than is seen in the US.
What is perhaps not so influential is the rise of the internet, as all of the nine countries have seen similar levels of internet adoption. The researchers believe their findings into the diminished role of the internet mirror those of previous studies that arrived at a similar conclusion.
They believe that this enhanced understanding of the factors underpinning political polarization could act as the first step in tackling the phenomenon and help politicians better bridge the divides within the country.
“There are good reasons to think that when people in different political camps cease to respect each other, it’s harder to make political compromises and create good public policy,” they conclude. “There’s also some evidence that a person’s political identity can influence their behavior — what they buy, where they live, who they hire. If we can understand what’s driving partisan divides, we may be able to take steps to reduce them.”
