Polarizing Polities: Toward a Comparative Theory of a Global Threat to Democracy

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

This roundtable will discuss the comparative dynamics of polarizing politics -- including those of a major and increasingly salient variant of polarizing politics, populism -- in different countries across the world. How do the common as well as differing dynamics of polarization shape the consequences for democracy and the nature of any remedial policies? The panel will pursue these goals based on two recent comparative volumes -- Polarizing Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy, Special Issue of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 681(1) (2019) and Polarization and Democracy: A Janus-Faced Relationship with Pernicious Consequences, Special Issue of American Behavioral Scientist 62 (1) (2018) –both co-edited by the organizers, J. McCoy and M. Somer. It will feature scholars who will reflect on the subject with reference to these two works as well as their own recent contributions and comparative perspectives. They will also address the important sub-question of how resilient the US democracy is vis-à-vis polarizing politics.

Recognizing that a long tradition of scholarship (Rustow 1970) viewed some degree of polarization as part and parcel of democracy and democratization, the aforementioned volumes distinguish between conventional definitions of polarization based on ideological and attitudinal difference between political actors, and one that they introduce and highlights polarization’s “pernicious” aspects. Growing distance per se often goes together with polarization and can sometimes become a basis of agonistic democracy, for example by helping parties institutionalize, clarifying choices for voters and facilitating transformative democratic politics. However, polarization becomes democracy-eroding the more its “pernicious” aspects are accentuated, that is when the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension where cross-cutting differences become instead reinforcing, and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of “Us” vs. “Them” (McCoy, Rahman and Somer 2018). Hence, polarization always carries the risk of harm to democracy by dividing societies between rigid “Us vs. Them” camps based on a single dimension of difference that overshadows all others.

McCoy and Somer, eds. (2019) comparatively examines eleven case studies of polarized polities, eight of them populist, across the world (Bangladesh, Greece, Hungary, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, United States, Venezuela, Zimbabwe). Hence, severe polarization can occur under very different social, political-institutional, economic and reginal contexts while producing similar dynamics and mechanisms of polarization and democratic erosion. The US already displays some of them; in fact, it is highly vulnerable to pernicious polarization in terms of the two factors the volume identifies as causally crucial: the political activation/reconstruction of a “formative rift” (social or political rifts that arise during the fundamental formation/reformation of nation-states, e.g. the race question in the US) and polarizations occurring with an institutionalized and mass- based party system. Thus, while enjoying many advantages of democratic resilience as reasons for optimism, the possibilities of democratic backsliding and erosion in the US cannot be ruled out.

While the common dynamics of polarization across the cases help us uncover how polarization undermines democracy, the different dynamics help us explain the emergence of varying consequences for democracy. These can approximate various typological categories such as gridlock and careening, autocratic rule under new elites, autocratic rule with the return of old elites, and some version of democratic compromise and reform.

Crucial to the regime outcomes are not only the political aims and tactics of the polarizing incumbent, but also the reactions of the opposition. Vulnerability to pernicious polarization-cum-democratic breakdown on one hand depends on how much incumbent elites with a transformative agenda employ polarizing politics based on politicizing pre-existing formative rifts and mobilizing institutionalized mass parties. On the other hand, it depends on how much opposition actors turn to judicial activism, popular protests and authoritarian interventions as opposed to successful programmatic and organizational renewal and electoral mobilization.

The roundtable will include an initial brief presentation by the organizers of their co-edited volume on Polarized Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy, followed by discussion from five preeminent scholars of populism, democracy, and regime change in American and Comparative Politics.

Presenters:
Jennifer McCoy, Georgia State University (Co-organizer)
Murat Somer, Koc University (Co-organizer)
Mark Beissinger, Princeton University
Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Stephan Haggard, University of San Diego
Frances Lee, University of Maryland
Ken Roberts, Cornell University

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Murat Somer Koç University

Presenters

• Jennifer McCoy Georgia State University

• Mark Beissinger Princeton University

• Larry Diamond Stanford University

• Stephan Haggard University of California, San Diego

• Frances E. Lee Princeton University

• Kenneth M. Roberts Cornell University