Civil Society and De-Polarization During Crises

Are individuals more likely to work with those who hold different political viewpoints than their own during crises? If so, how may this shape affective (de)polarization? I show that during crises individuals are more willing to put aside political differences to provide aid than during more settled times. I find that civil society-led crisis response increases contact between individuals who may disagree politically, while also instilling a greater sense of internal political efficacy and empathy. Together, I illustrate how these mechanisms reduce affective polarization. To do so, I draw on evidence from a hallmark case of post-communist democratization and subsequent democratic backsliding: Law and Justice's Poland (Bernhard 2021). Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) controlled the Polish Sejm from 2015-2023. Under the PiS government, Poland’s backsliding was powered by high levels of issue (Cinar and Nalepa 2022) and affective (Górska 2019, Tworzecki 2019) polarization. The country’s democratic decline and polarization mirrored that of other hallmark cases of democratic backsliding, such as Turkey, Hungary, and Venezuela (Greskovits 2020, Laebens & Öztürk 2021; McCoy & Somer 2019, 2021). This polarization was exacerbated by PiS policies attacking opposition civil society and offering legal and status support to pro-regime CSOs (Ślarzyński 2022, Korolczuk 2023). Yet, unlike these other cases, in 2023 Poland’s PiS government was voted out of office. I contend that civil society and its ability to shape affective depolarization played a substantial role in this seed change. To test my theory, I utilize data from nine months of interviews in Poland and a two-wave original panel survey with an embedded, pre-registered conjoint experiment. The first survey examines individual’s willingness to work across political divides during an ongoing crisis: the influx of refugees into Poland following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The second wave was fielded in the aftermath of Poland’s first constitutionally defined “natural disaster,” cyclone Boris. Running the same experiment in both waves, I find that crisis fueled depolarization occurred in both instances. However, this depolarization effect is strongest after Boris— a more recent and sudden, and thereby potentially more ‘urgent’—crisis. I use my interviews and descriptive survey data to probe the mechanisms underpinning this relationship. I find that crisis aid increased individuals’ empathy toward outgroups and sense of political efficacy. Altogether, I show that crises increase individuals’ willingness to work with organizations and individuals who hold different political values to their own, and that this affects important political behaviors such as vote choice. This paper serves as a backbone of a broader dissertation book project probing the longevity and durability of civil society-fueled depolarization. While the literature on depolarization evaluates interventions seeking to bridge individuals across different political perspectives (eg, see Baron et al 2021), my study examines individuals embedded within their preexisting associational networks. In doing so, I help us understand where and how affective de-polarization may arise naturally within a divided society.