United We Stand, Divided We Rule: How Polarization Erodes Democracy

• In Event: Panel I on Democratic Backsliding/Erosion

Abstract

In the last decade, we witnessed a plethora of examples around the world showing that polarization hurts democracy. It led to the collapse of electoral democracies in Turkey and Venezuela, deteriorated the representative institutions and civil liberties in Hungary, and even affected entrenched regimes such as the United States and the United Kingdom. However, few scholars explore the causal links between polarization and democratic erosion. Moreover, most studies use diversity measures that fail to reflect the contemporary polarization, i.e., when the society is divided into two large hostile camps. In this paper we bridge the gap. Theoretically, we demonstrate that one channel through which polarization erodes democracy is by increasing government intimidation of voters. This is for two reasons. First, polarization increases animosity between ‘enemy camps’, making voters more willing to accept illiberal democratic measures, such as voter intimidation, against the opposition. Second, polarization lowers coordination costs for political leaders who now in order to win need to intimidate only a small part of opposition voters. We hypothesize that, ceteris paribus, in democracies socio-political polarization should increase government intimidation of voters. Empirically, we create our own measure of socio-political polarization based on Esteban and Ray’s well-known measure of polarization, and test our hypothesis on panel data using V-Dem dataset. In addition to the regression analysis, we offer anecdotal evidence from Turkey (2005-2012), Hungary, and the United States.

Authors

• Ekim Arbatli, Higher School of Economics

• Dina Rosenberg, National Research University - Higher School of Economics