Political Polarization - Detailseite

With growing partisan hostilities in the US and radical right parties on the rise across Europe, political polarization has attracted considerable scientific interest. In this seminar, we will try to understand the forces shaping political polarization and evaluate the consequences for governance, party competition and political behavior.

In the course of this seminar, we will engage with quantitative research that addresses the questions of why parties polarize and whether voters' ideological preferences respond to or predate these shifts. We will disentangle the complicated relationship between policy preferences and partisanship, analyze why partisans distrust and avoid one another and investigate the extent to which this invites hostile attitudes and behaviors. We will further explore the role of the media in these processes, study the consequences for governance of as well as potential remedies.

After completing the course, students will be equipped with the theoretical knowledge to follow their own research agendas for analyzing the causes and consequences of political polarization. 

Requirements:

Students’ willingness to engage with quantitative research is necessary. 

• McCarty 2019: Polarization. What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., and Westwood, S. J. (2019). The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1):129–146.  
• Bischof and Wagner: Do Voters Polarize When Radical Right Parties Enter Parliament? American Journal of Political Science
• Wagner, M. (2021). Affective polarization in multiparty systems. Electoral Studies, 69:102199.

Apart from weekly participation in and preparation (readings) for the seminar, students will be expected to give a presentation in one of the sessions and to write a research proposal and submit a final term paper.