Who Dislikes Whom? Affective Polarization between Pairs of Parties in Western Democracies

Abstract

While dislike of opposing parties, that is, affective polarization, is a defining feature of contemporary politics, research on this topic largely centers on the United States. We introduce an approach that analyzes affective polarization between pairs of parties, bridging the US two-party system and multiparty systems in other democracies. Analyzing survey data from twenty Western democracies since the mid-1990s, first, we show that partisans' dislike of out-parties is linked to elite policy disagreements on economic issues and, increasingly over time, also to cultural issues. Secondly, we argue and empirically demonstrate that governing coalition partners in parliamentary democracies display much warmer feelings toward each other than we would expect based on elite policy (dis)agreements. Third, we show that radical right parties are disliked much more intensely than we would expect based on policy disputes and coalition arrangements. These findings highlight the policy-based and institutional underpinnings of affective polarization.

Populism and the affective partisan space in nine European publics: Evidence from a cross-national survey

“…While the populist cleavage appears increasingly salient across Europe, we know little about how it structures citizens' affect toward political parties. Empirical studies find that radical right populist parties are disliked far more intensely than can be explained by their policy positions on the Left-Right scale (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018), even when accounting for these parties' extreme positions on cultural issues pertaining to immigration and national identity (Harteveld, 2021;Gidron et al, 2022). Such findings validate populist partisans' sense that they are outsiders with low social status Hall, 2017, 2020).…”

“…Concerns over citizens' dislike, distrust, and contempt toward partisan opponents, i.e., affective polarization, have intensified in recent years. While the canonical affective polarization studies pertain to the American public (Lelkes and Westwood, 2017;Iyengar et al, 2019), a growing comparative literature extends this perspective outside the United States (see, e.g., Reiljan, 2020;Boxell et al, 2020;Gidron et al, , 2022Harteveld, 2021;Wagner, 2021;Adams et al, 2022;Horne et al, 2022).…”

“…Established, mainstream parties often accuse populist radical right parties of promoting anger and division (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018). Indeed, studies find that populist radical right parties provoke far stronger dislike from political opponents than can be explained by policy considerations alone (Harteveld, 2021;Harteveld et al, 2021;Gidron et al, 2022), suggesting that populists' anti-system viewpoints and rhetoric provoke hostility independently of their policy stances. Yet studies linking affective polarization and populism focus exclusively on populist radical right parties, defined dichotomously, and thus do not address the effects of leftist populist parties, nor of variations in different parties' degrees of populism.…”

Partisan Affect in Times of Fractionalization: Visualizing Who Likes Whom in Germany, 1977 to 2020

“…Supporters of AfD also dislike the other parties, but the feelings AfD voters send are much warmer than the feelings they receive. That intense dislike of right-wing parties, often more than the policy distance would imply, also shows in other countries and is what Gidron et al (forthcoming) call “radical right exceptionalism.”…”

“…Liking toward different out-parties is mainly a function of their ideological distance: as Figure 1 shows, people tend to have warmer feelings for “neighboring” parties than those that are ideologically further away (cf. Gidron et al forthcoming; Harteveld 2021). Remarkably, all other partisans hold very negative feelings toward the radical right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).…”