Does Affective Polarization Undermine Democratic Norms or Accountability? Maybe Not

Scholars warn that affective polarization undermines democratic norms and accountability. They speculate that if citizens were less affectively polarized, they would be less likely to endorse norm violations, overlook copartisan politicians’ shortcomings, oppose compromise, adopt their party's...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican journal of political science Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 808 - 828
Main Authors Broockman, David E., Kalla, Joshua L., Westwood, Sean J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2023
Subjects
Accountability
Change agents
Citizens
Economic conditions
Experiments
Norms
Polarization
Violations
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Summary:Scholars warn that affective polarization undermines democratic norms and accountability. They speculate that if citizens were less affectively polarized, they would be less likely to endorse norm violations, overlook copartisan politicians’ shortcomings, oppose compromise, adopt their party's views, or misperceive economic conditions. We advance reasons to doubt that affective polarization influences political choices. We support this argument with five experiments that manipulate citizens’ affective polarization with multiple approaches. We then trace the downstream consequences of manipulating citizens’ affective polarization, such as their reactions to information about their actual representatives in Congress. In our experiments (total N = 12,341), we “rewind” the equivalent of three decades of change in affective polarization but find no evidence that these changes influence many political outcomes, only general questions about interpersonal attitudes. Our results suggest caution when assuming that reducing affective polarization would meaningfully bolster democratic norms or accountability.
Bibliography:This research was approved by the institutional review boards at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Yale University; and Dartmouth College. Broockman acknowledges the Civic Health Project for support.
ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.1111/ajps.12719