The Political Theory of Polarization

Abstract

The polarization of political attitudes, beliefs, and party systems has become an important object of research in political sociology and comparative politics in recent years and is also discussed with growing concern among the general public. The presidency of Donald Trump and its aftermath, the bitterly contested British Brexit decision, and also the fierce disputes over Covid restrictions and vaccination policies both on social media and on the streets of many European countries are often seen as symptoms of a growing affective and/or ideological distance between political groups in Western democracies. In light of these developments, many observers see political polarization as a threat to social cohesion and democratic legitimacy that needs to be countered. This gloomy view is contrasted by other views that suggest that polarized politics can also have positive effects on social progress and democratic representation by rendering latent political conflicts more visible and increasing the contrast between political choices. Given the public attention and the important role of polarization processes in empirical political research, it is surprising that the political-theoretical discussion of the phenomenon is only just beginning. This involves conceptual questions of defining polarization and distinguishing between different types of polarization, normative ques-tions of evaluating and responding appropriately to (different types of) polarization, and historical approaches that attempt to classify the current discourse in terms of the history of ideas. For ex-ample, it seems particularly worth questioning whether different types of polarization like "issue polarization", "affective polarization" or "belief polarization" have a common conceptual core, how the assessment of polarization processes vary between different approaches to democratic theory and which strategies of dealing with polarization tendencies can be discerned from earlier polariza-tion crises. This panel gathers contributions that examine these and related issues from across the breadth of political theory.

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