The Nature of Party Categories in Two‐Party and Multiparty Systems

Abstract

Categories are one of the primary ways by which people make sense of complex environments. For political environments, parties are especially useful categories. By simplifying political life, party categories enable people to make sense of politics. A fundamental characteristic of party categories is that they minimize perceived differences of members within a party (e.g., two Democrats) and maximize perceived differences between members of different parties (e.g., a Republican and a Democrat). In two-party systems, politicians in

The Making of Radical‐Right Voters: Persuasion and Contrast Effects in a Dynamic Political Context

“…I suggest that the mainstream center‐right party is considered the outgroup party, based on both theoretical and empirical reasons. Regarding the theoretical reason, research on categorical perception demonstrates that voters in multiparty systems differentiate parties that are supposed to be on the same side of the ideological divide (Nicholson et al, 2018). That is, if voters are choosing between two different parties on the left, they perceive the two left‐wing parties as dissimilar.…”

Friendship and romance across the U.S. political divide: Hindrance or help for outgroup political attitudes?

“…It is possible that in other electoral democracy systems with multiparty systems, cross‐political relationships might have weaker effects on intergroup attitudes. Interestingly, even in political contexts with multiparty systems, people tend to perceive greater differences even between parties on the same side of the political‐ideological spectrum (Nicholson et al., 2018). Thus, we believe that results are applicable to other countries and political groups, given the cross‐national research evidence of intergroup attitudes being negative and divisive among partisans (Westwood et al., 2018).…”

The (null) effects of happiness on affective polarization, conspiracy endorsement, and deep fake recognition: Evidence from five survey experiments in three countries

“…However, most other countries are multiparty systems, where partisan in-and out-groups are not structured around a dichotomy between opposing sides, strategic voting is common, and also partisan volatility is greater and the levels of partisan identification are lower than in the US (Bankert et al 2017;Dalton and Weldon 2007;Dalton 2014;Huddy et al 2018). There, affective polarization may be rooted in the broader ideological divide between the left and the right, which has traditionally split the electorates in Europe (e.g., Markowski 1997; see also Nicholson et al 2018), or around other contemporary conflicts.…”