Affective Polarization and Democratic Resilience

Abstract

Democratic backsliding is often discussed as an elite-driven process, yet citizens’ emotions toward political opponents play an important role too. After all, these shape what citizens are willing to tolerate, defend, or contest. The papers in this panel examine how affective polarization conditions core democratic outcomes (ranging from vigilance against norm violations and support for accountability institutions to protest engagement and electoral behavior) across different regime contexts and levels of democratic vulnerability. A shared focus is on the mechanisms that link partisan animus to democratic (in)tolerance, and on whether reducing polarization can strengthen democratic attitudes when democracy itself is under strain. These studies shed light on the important question of when affective polarization functions as a general risk for democracy and when its effects depend on context, threat perceptions, and the arenas in which political conflict is expressed.

Title	Details
The Effect of Affective Polarization on Accountability	View Paper Details
Affective Polarization and Political Protest: Exploring the General Association and Context-Specific Differences	View Paper Details
Conditional Democrats: Partisanship and Support for Violations of Democratic Norms When Democracy is Under Threat	View Paper Details
“Polarization Versus Democracy“: Informing the Hungarian Electorate to Reduce Affective Polarization and Foster Democratic Attitudes	View Paper Details
Affective Polarization and Electoral Behavior in Comparative Perspective	View Paper Details