Asymmetric Polarization: Ideological Stigma in Post-authoritarianism

• In Event: Causal Impact of Autocracy on Contemporary Attitudes and Behavior

Abstract

Affective polarization—in-group favouritism, causing partisans to dislike and distrust voters of the other party (Iyengar et al. 2012)—has featured as one of the important threats of contemporary democracies. Conventional wisdom in this literature assumes that the outgroup bias generated by affective polarization is symmetric across different groups of partisans. We relax this assumption suggesting that some parties have an ideological advantage over others. Prior research suggests that the ideological side of the left-right spectrum in new democracies associated with the old regime is stigmatized (Dinas and Northmore-Ball 2020). In a set of novel survey experiments run in Spain, Greece, and Romania, we bring this idea into the study of affective polarization to examine whether priming of the past dictatorship activates norms that stigmatize the dictator’s side of the left-right spectrum thus producing asymmetries in affective polarization. We also examine whether stigmatization of the dictator’s side of the ideological spectrum is exacerbated under conditions where respondents sense public scrutiny.

Authors

• K Northmore-Ball, Queen Mary University of London

• Elias Dinas, European University Institute

• Haoyu Zhai, NYU Abu Dhabi