Article Summary
Introduction
Previous scholarship has studied polarization in terms of ideology, specifically, how strongly Democrats and Republicans disagree on policy issues. However, over the last several decades, the U.S. has seen increasing dislike of politically dissimilar others and determination to defeat them - even by subverting democracy. And, this increasing affective polarization has happened independent of any ideological polarization. To explain why, this paper proposes a new frame for thinking about polarization in the U.S., which they call political sectarianism.
Analytical Approach
N/A This is primarily a review article of existing empirical work.
Main Findings
This article advances the concept of political sectarianism (analogous to religious sectarianism in that it is premised on strong faith in the moral superiority of one’s own group, though differing in that it is secular and directly focused on political institutions). Political sectarianism consists of three core ingredients: othering (seeing outpartisans as fundamentally different from oneself), aversion (disliking and distrusting outpartisans), and moralization (viewing outpartisans as morally inferior).
The authors identify three main drivers of political sectarianism. First, political parties have become more differentiated from each other, both ideologically and demographically. Ideological sorting means that more liberals are now Democrats and more conservatives are now Republican, rather than there being a balance of liberals and conservatives in each party. Demographic sorting means that the parties are similarly grouped by race, class, gender, rural/urban, sexual orientation, and other social cleavages. Second, media and social media present news through a partisan lens, amplifying political sectarianism. Third, politicians have polarized, both ideologically and rhetorically.
There are a number of consequences to political sectarianism. It increases social distancing between Democrats and Republicans as ordinary citizens identify more with their party label and dislike those who identify with the opposing party. It undermines democratic governance, as feeling that the other party is morally bankrupt leads citizens and elites to accept bending or breaking the rules in order to keep their opponents out of power. For similar reasons, it decreases governmental competence by removing incentives for bipartisan cooperation.
Finally, the authors offer three potential routes to potentially mitigating political sectarianism. First, they highlight interventions to correct misperceptions of the other party (including beliefs about its demographic composition and about outpartisans’ level of hostility towards one’s own party). Second, they suggest altering the ways social media platforms work, though they caution against increasing exposure to outpartisans’ posts without other guide rails to promote civility. Third, they suggest creating incentives to reign in elite polarization, including campaign finance reform and reducing gerrymandering.
Implications
This introduces an important new frame for thinking about partisanship. The analogy to religious sectarianism is especially useful, as it highlights the importance of moral certitude to political polarization. It synthesizes a large amount of previous research across varying disciplines, and provides novel insights on how best to fight polarization.
Questions left unanswered
One conceptual point that would have benefited from additional specification is how partisan sectarianism differs from previous conceptions of affective polarization (or social polarization). For example, affective polarization is rooted in social identity theory, which states that belonging to a group changes the way you think about ingroup and outgroup members. Is political sectarianism as described here rooted in intergroup process, moral convictions, or both?
Methods and Analysis
Was the study and its analyses pre-registered?: Study was conducted before 2015
Did the study rely on proxy variables to measure polarization?: N/A
Were standard p-value thresholds used (p<.05 or 95% Confidence Intervals that don’t overlap zero)?: NA
- Largest p-value presented as significant: NA
Were correlational results interpreted with causal language?: NA
Limitations / Weaknesses
N/A
Open Data & Analyses
Does the article make the replication data publicly available?: NA
Does the article make the replication analysis scripts publicly available?: NA
Article Citation
Finkel, E. J., Bail, C. A., Cikara, M., Ditto, P. H., Iyengar, S., Klar, S., … & Druckman, J. N. (2020). Political sectarianism in America. Science, 370(6516), 533-536.
Bibtex
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@article{finkel2020political,
title={Political sectarianism in America},
author={Finkel, Eli J and Bail, Christopher A and Cikara, Mina and Ditto, Peter H and Iyengar, Shanto and Klar, Samara and Mason, Lilliana and McGrath, Mary C and Nyhan, Brendan and Rand, David G and others},
journal={Science},
volume={370},
number={6516},
pages={533--536},
year={2020},
publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science}
}