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ABSTRACT
“Pernicious polarization” – the division of society into mutually distrustful Us versus Them camps in which political identity becomes a social identity – fosters autocratization by incentivizing citizens and political actors alike to endorse non-democratic action. An exploratory analysis of new V-Dem data on polarization indeed shows the negative relationship between the level of political polarization and liberal democracy ratings. How can pernicious polarization be avoided or reversed once present? By drawing on an endogenous explanation of polarization, where the decisions and actions of both opposition actors and incumbents contribute to its evolution, we focus on the question of what democratic opposition actors can do to stop or reverse pernicious polarization. Based on insights from examples across the world and deductive theory-building, along with illustrative cases, we offer a typology of potential opposition goals, strategies and tools, and then analyse how these may affect polarization and in turn democratic quality at early and late stages. We identify goals as either generative or preservative, and we argue that “active-depolarizing” and “transformative-repolarizing” strategies are more promising than “passive-depolarizing” and “reciprocal polarizing” strategies to improve a country's resilience to autocratizing pressures. The specific tools employed to pursue these goals and strategies are also crucial, though the effectiveness of available institutional accountability and mobilizational tools will change as the process of polarization advances. The emerging literatıres on opposition strategies to democratize electoral autocracies and to improve the resilience of democracies should incorporate their impact on polarization as a critical intervening variable.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the comments of the guest editors and two anonymous reviewers, and research assistance from Juan Gómez, Ozlem Tuncel Gurlek, Nimendra Mawalagedara at GSU and Ecem Ersözlü and Fazıl Alp Akış at Koç University. Research by Jennifer McCoy was supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies, Central European University, Budapest.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For an insightful discussion of the concept, see Lührmann and Lindberg, “A Third Wave of Autocratization.”
2 McCoy and Somer, “Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization”; McCoy, Rahman, and Somer, “Polarization and Global Crisis.”
3 Svolik, “Polarization versus Democracy”; Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die; McCoy and Somer, “Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization.”
4 See, for example, Yarwood, “The Power of Protest”; Gamboa, “Opposition at the Margins”; Ginsburg and Huq, “Democracy's Near Misses”; Kuisz and Wigura, “The Pushback against Populism”; Laebens and Lührmann, “What Stops Democratic Erosion?”
5 For example, Bunce and Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators”; Chenoweth and Lewis, “Unpacking Nonviolent Campaigns” Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown”; Teorell and Wahman, “Institutional Stepping Stones”; Esen and Gumuscu, “Killing Competitive Authoritarianism”; Gorokhovskaia, “What It Takes to Win”; Ufen, “Opposition in Transition”; Wuthrich and Ingleby, “The Pushback against Populism.”
6 See Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, and Bates et al. Analytic Narratives for employing empirical cases this way.
7 McCoy and Somer, “Special Issue on Polarized Polities.”
8 Coppedge et al. Varieties of Democracy Project.
9 Ibid, 211.
10 Iyengar and Westwood, “Fear and Loathing”; Iyengar et al., “Consequences of Affective Polarization.”
11 to capture polarization both longitudinally and cross-sectionally, including states from the Global South, and can be commended for featuring large numbers of cross-checking and complementary questions. It correlates in a statistically significant manner – at the α = 0.05 level – with previously used measures of “range of consultation” and “respect counterarguments” from V-Dem – ρ = −0.339 and −0.267 respectively.
12 McCoy, Rahman, and Somer, “Global Crisis of Democracy”; McCoy and Somer, “Pernicious Polarization.”
13 Future research will examine the impact of polarization during different periods, specifically post 1975 and 1994, to illuminate any differential effects.
14 Kmenta, “Elements of Econometrics.”
15 Samuel P. Huntington. The Third Wave.
16 Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival; Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule.
17 States with fewer than 30 observation years are excluded to ensure proper functioning of country-specific error calculations. States excluded are Bahrain, Barbados, Bosnia & Herzegovina, France, Honduras, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mozambique, Nepal, New Zealand, Oman, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Somaliland, Switzerland, Syria, Timor-Leste, and Turkmenistan.
18 Critical value for these analyses is α = 0.05.
19 This is analogous to Croissant's (2019) characterization of periods of democratic backsliding. We also used an alternative coding scheme dropping the requirement of 2 or more years of increased polarization. The results were not substantively different. However, a single year increase of polarization of at least 0.1 may be due to extraordinary events and otherwise is not within the scope of our conceptualization of rapid polarization. The results of this analysis are available upon request.
20 Full results of this analysis are presented in Appendix B, Tables 4, 5, and 6, and Figure 3.
21 Mean value here refers to the mean political polarization value for all observations excluding closed autocracies. Descriptive statistics for all variables are located in the appendix. For reference, the Severe category includes periods such as Chile from 1975–1984, Hungary from 2015–2019, and Turkey from 2013–2019, among others (561 country-year observations).
22 This denotes the inclusion of an interaction term between political polarization and the period indicator. Significant results indicate a statistically significant difference in the impact of polarization on democratic quality between periods.
23 We use “Incumbent” to refer to either the individual holding office or the party or administration in office throughout the text.
24 Laebens and Luhrmann, “What Stops Democratic Erosion?”; Gamboa, “Opposition at the Margins”; Slater, “Democratic Careening.”
25 McCoy and Somer, “Pernicious Polarization”; Gamboa , “Opposition at the Margins.”
26 Media and civil society, Laebens and Lührmann, “What Stops Democratic Erosion?”
27 See Mietzner, “Sources of Resistance,” for a discussion of Indonesian civil society divided and weakened by polarization and an illiberal incumbent.
28 See Pantoulas and McCoy, “An Unstable Equilibrium,” for a discussion of the Venezuela opposition divisions in the face of the Maduro-controlled electoral institutions in Venezuela.
29 McCoy and Somer, “Pernicious Polarization.”
30 Slater and Arugay, “Polarizing Figures.”
31 Somer, “Moderate Islam and Secularist Opposition”; Somer, “Turkey: The Slippery Slope.”
32 Wuthrich and Ingleby, “Pushback against Populism,” 32–3.
33 McCoy and Diez, International Mediation in Venezuela.
34 Khadiagala, “Ethnic Polarization in Kenya”; Lebas and Munemo, “Elite Conflict, Compromise and Enduring Authoritarianism.”
36 Brumberg and Sale, “Tunisia's Endless Transition.”
37 Grewal and Hamid, “The Dark Side of Consensus.”
38 Gamboa, “Opposition at the Margins.”
39 Gorokhovskaia, “What It Takes to Win”; McAdam and Tarrow, “Ballots and Barricades”.
40 See William Galston's discussion of the weaknesses of liberalism that include an overemphasis on individualism at the expense of belonging and tribal communities, the burdens of personal responsibility that can give rise to desire for savior-leaders, and incrementalism and stability over visionary change in “The Enduring Vulnerability of Liberal Democracy”.
41 Ginsburg and Huq, “Near Misses”; Laebens and Luhrmann, “What Stops Democratic Erosion.”
42 Croissant, “Beating Backsliding?”
43 Somer, “Slippery Slope”; Sözen, “Competition in a Populist Authoritarian Regimee.”
44 Esen and Sebnem, “Killing Competitive Authoritarianism Softly.”
45 Wuthrich and Ingleby, “Pushback Against Populism,” 25.
46 Partisi, “Book of Radical Love,” 35.
47 Ashdown, “A Motorcycle-Riding Leftist.”
48 Selçuk and Hekimci, “Rise of the Democracy – Authoritarianism Cleavage.”
49 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/opposition-parties-candidate-wins-budapest-mayoral-race; https://www.euronews.com/2019/11/04/the-new-mayor-of-budapest-gergerly-karacsony-talks-about-the-changes-in-hungary-s-politica
50 This might have contributed to the recent policies of South Korean government after successfully impeaching the previous president and winning elections. Shin, “South Korea's Democratic Decay.”
51 Fish and Abrams, “The Polarization Paradox”; Galston, “Enduring Vulnerability.”
52 Bandeira et al., “Disinformation in Democracies.”
53 Xiao, “How to Defeat a Populist”.
54 For example, Erdogan prohibited the new Istanbul mayor from raising funds to fight the Covid-19 pandemic in Spring of 2020.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Murat Somer
Murat Somer is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Koç University in Istanbul. http://mysite.ku.edu.tr/musomer/.
Jennifer L. McCoy
Jennifer L. McCoy is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. She is co-editor with Murat Somer of Polarized Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy (2019), and Polarization and Democracy: A Janus-faced Relationship with Pernicious Consequences (2018). @jlynnmccoy
Russell E. Luke
Russell E. Luke is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University.