Authors Meet Critics: "The Power of Partisanship"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Americans today seem further apart on issues ranging from policy relevant issues like foreign affairs and the minimum wage to nonpolitical issues like their choice of takeout. Which way does the causal arrow run? Are people better at choosing their parties based on policies? Is this a natural product of more access to information, the educating of the American public? Or is this polarization a product of the increased professionalization of the political parties, their messaging, the siloing of social media networks, the partisan leanings of the news media, and fundamentally partisanship itself? Authors Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz and Joshua J. Dyck, in their new book The Power of Partisanship (Oxford University Press: 2023), utilize a series of original surveys and survey experiments to argue that partisan identity has caused a rift in the American public that extends well beyond the normal boxing ring of politics and that partisanship now serves only as a perceptual screen and not as a convenient and effective shortcut to “correct” political decision making. The book argues that partisan polarization blocks people from learning from each other, their neighborhoods, and even makes them blind to their own personal economic hardship. Each of these arguments is grounded in classic social science theories including intergroup contact, prospect theory, contextual effects, and classic economic price responsiveness. Ultimately, the authors argue, partisanship makes partisans unable to respond to information not gained through partisan channels and raises questions for how political scientists treat strong partisans, how we measure political knowledge, and for how we understand social science theories of human decision making and behavior.

This “authors meet critics” panel will discuss the theory, findings and implications of The Power of Partisanship and engage in a discussion of the new and ongoing research in the field on negative partisanship, political polarization, and the consequences for democracy and the American public.

Sub Unit

• Division 37: Public Opinion

Chair

• Seth E. Masket University of Denver

Presenters

• Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz University of Maryland

• Joshua J. Dyck University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Chryl Laird University of Maryland College Park

• Markus Prior Princeton University

• Jonathan M. Ladd Georgetown University

• Rachel Porter University of Notre Dame

• Hans Noel Georgetown University