Party Competition and Cooperation Shape Affective Polarization: Evidence from Natural and Survey Experiments in Israel

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110242
Author(s):  
Lotem Bassan-Nygate ◽  
Chagai M. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Competition And Cooperation ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
Do So

Does electoral competition increase affective polarization? Can inter-party cooperation depolarize voters? Addressing these questions is challenging since both competition and cooperation are endogenous to political attitudes. Building on social identity theory and leveraging a natural experiment unfolding over seven Israeli election studies, we demonstrate that the enhanced salience of electoral competition increases affective polarization. We then consider whether inter-party cooperation can depolarize the electorate. To do so, we further build on theories of coalition ambivalence and party brands and leverage the ambiguity around coalition building following elections of Israel’s 22nd Knesset, to implement a survey experiment where we credibly shape respondents’ perceptions regarding the likelihood that a unity government will form. We find that priming party cooperation in the form of a unity government promotes tolerance across partisan lines. Our studies contribute to the affective polarization literature by identifying institutional causes and remedies of polarization in a comparative context.

What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Intended Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

Parties on the Left, Parties on the Right: Electoral Competition and Citizenship Policy Change in Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
John Graeber
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Spatial Competition ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Left Party ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right ◽  
Restrictive Policy

Abstract In recent decades, citizenship policies in Europe have changed significantly: some governments have introduced restrictive new requirements for citizenship, while others have made citizenship more accessible. What explains this variation? Despite a burgeoning literature on both comparative citizenship and spatial competition among parties, scholarship on this question remains in its infancy and primarily focused on the influence of the far right. Expanding on this growing research, this article argues that citizenship policy change results from electoral competition on both sides of the political spectrum, in conjunction with governments’ ideological orientation. Using new data on citizenship policies across sixteen European countries from 1975 to 2014, the author demonstrates that left-of-center governments facing increasing levels of left party competition are associated with more accessible policy changes, while increasing levels of party competition from the far right yield more restrictive policy changes under not only right-of-center governments, but also centrist and left-of-center governments as well.

Between National Polarization and Local Ideology: The Impact of Partisan Competition on State Medicaid Expansion Decisions

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod
Keyword(s):  
Proportional Hazards ◽  
Proportional Hazards Model ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Cox Proportional Hazards ◽  
Cox Proportional Hazards Model ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Medicaid Expansion ◽  
Hazards Model ◽  
Partisan Competition ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant states the authority to reject Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act without penalty threatened the implementation of this polarized health policy. While many Republican-controlled states followed their national allies and rejected Medicaid expansion, others engaged in bipartisan implementation. Why were some Republican states willing to reject the national partisan agenda and cooperate with Democrats in Washington? I focus on the role of electoral competition within states. I conclude that although electoral competition has been shown to encourage partisan polarization within the states, the combination of intergovernmental implementation and Medicaid expansion’s association with public welfare reverses this dynamic. I employ a Cox proportional-hazards model to examine the impact of state partisan ideology and competition on the likelihood of state Medicaid expansion. I find that strong inter-party competition mitigates the impact of more extreme partisan ideologies, encouraging potentially bipartisan negotiation with the federal administration.

Calling Mogadishu: How Reminders of Anarchy Bias Survey Participation

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 81-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine K. Denny ◽  
Jesse Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Telephone Survey ◽  
Background Level ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Survey Participation ◽  
Vulnerable Subjects

AbstractHow does the fear of anarchy affect telephone survey behaviors? A survey experiment administered to a sample of Mogadishu residents—validated with a natural experiment—is used to assess this question. Randomly assigned reminders of anarchic violence conditioned differential effects on survey participation depending on subjects’ background level of security and welfare. Vulnerable subjects were more likely than non-vulnerable subjects to refuse to provide sensitive survey information after reminders of anarchy.

Economic Vulnerability, Self-Interest, and Individual Trade Preferences

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Guisinger
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Standard Models ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Trade Preferences ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
Trade Partners ◽  
Do So

Chapter 4 provides an original explanation both for why women and minorities are more likely to express protectionist sentiments and for why those protectionist sentiments are not reflected in their voting. The chapter provides an extension of standard models of individual economic well-being to consider trade’s effect not only on wages but also on employment volatility, which is increased by openness to foreign trade. The chapter offers analysis of original survey data from 2006 and 2010 and three decades of American National Election Studies to confirm the previously observed gender gap and newly identified racial gap in trade preferences. The chapter then presents two experimental surveys testing alternative causal mechanisms for the divides. Both experiments vary the type of information provided to respondents about trade partners and potential benefits of trade. In both cases, experiments show stability in women and non-whites preferences for trade and variability in white men’s preferences. Next, the chapter reinvestigates the salience of trade by gender and racial groupings and shows low salience among women and non-whites. The chapter concludes with a description of who might benefit from women and minorities stable preferences and why so few organizations seek to do so.

Plurality Maximization vs Vote Maximization: A Spatial Analysis with Variable Participation

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 772-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvin J. Hinich ◽  
Peter C. Ordeshook
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Representation Systems

Spatial models of party competition constitute a recent and incrementally developing literature which seeks to explore the relationships between citizens' decisions and candidates' strategies. Despite the mathematical and deductive rigor of this approach, it is only now that political scientists can begin to see the incorporation of those considerations which less formal analyses identify as salient, and perhaps crucial, features of election contests.One such consideration concerns the candidates' objectives. Specifically, spatial analysis often confuses the distinction between candidates who maximize votes and candidates who maximize plurality. Downs and Garvey, for example, assume explicitly that candidates maximize votes, though plurality maximization is clearly the assumption which Garvey actually employs, while Downs frequently assumes that vote maximization, plurality maximization, and the goal of winning are equivalent. Downs, nevertheless, attempts to disentangle these objectives, observing that plurality maximization is the appropriate objective for candidates in a single-member district, while vote maximization is appropriate in proportional representation systems with many parties. All subsequent spatial analysis research, however, assumes either implicitly or explicitly that candidates maximize plurality. If Downs is correct, therefore, this research may not be relevant for a general understanding of electoral competition in diverse constitutional or historical circumstances. The question then is whether those strategies that maximize votes differ from those strategies that maximize plurality.

Structure and Behaviour: Extending Duverger's Law to the Japanese Case

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven R. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
District Level ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Japanese Case ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Stable Equilibria ◽  
Duverger's Law

Japan uses simple plurality elections with multi-member districts to elect its lower house. This system tends to produce competition among n + 1 candidates per district. This ‘law of simple plurality elections’ is a structural generalization akin to Duverger's Law. Evidence from Japan also indicates that the causal mechanism behind this ‘law’ is not strategic voting, although strategic voting occurs, but elite coalition building. It is further argued that the connection between structure and behaviour is learning and not rationality. Equilibria are reached slowly through trial and error processes. Once reached, the equilibrium is unstable because parties and candidates try to change it. Even without rational actors and stable equilibria, however, this structural generalization accurately describes the dynamics of electoral competition at the district level in Japan.

scholarly journals CENTRIST’S CURSE? AN ELECTORAL COMPETITION MODEL WITH CREDIBILITY CONSTRAINTS

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (05) ◽  
pp. 1550055
Author(s):  
SELIM JÜRGEN ERGUN
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Competition Model ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Run Off ◽  
Wide Range

I analyze a model of electoral competition in which candidates’ need of credibility restricts their policy choice to a subset of the policy space, their ideology set. I focus on three party competition where candidates care about winning and their share of votes. I show that centrist parties are highly disadvantaged compared to leftist and rightist ones losing the election under a wide range of parameters. I also show that centrist parties’ winning opportunities increase under a run-off system.

scholarly journals The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi

2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL N. POSNER
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Political Coalition ◽  
Large Groups

This paper explores the conditions under which cultural cleavages become politically salient. It does so by taking advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the division of the Chewa and Tumbuka peoples by the border between Zambia and Malawi. I document that, while the objective cultural differences between Chewas and Tumbukas on both sides of the border are identical, the political salience of the division between these communities is altogether different. I argue that this difference stems from the different sizes of the Chewa and Tumbuka communities in each country relative to each country's national political arena. In Malawi, Chewas and Tumbukas are each large groups vis-à-vis the country as a whole and, thus, serve as viable bases for political coalition-building. In Zambia, Chewas and Tumbukas are small relative to the country as a whole and, thus, not useful to mobilize as bases of political support. The analysis suggests that the political salience of a cultural cleavage depends not on the nature of the cleavage itself (since it is identical in both countries) but on the sizes of the groups it defines and whether or not they will be useful vehicles for political competition.

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