People today seem to be more politically divided than ever, both in what they believe and how they feel about people with different beliefs. This can seem like a uniquely U.S. phenomenon, with its sharp divide between Democrats and Republicans, but it’s not. People in countries around the world also struggle with polarization.
A new review paper in Nature Communications on political polarization worldwide addresses some of its causes and consequences. The researchers argue combatting polarization begins with expanding research beyond the U.S. context, where it’s been most prominent. Doing so could help avoid responding to polarization in ways that make it worse.
“We can’t assume that people outside the U.S. face the same problems that can be addressed with the same solutions,” said Magdalena Wojcieszak, a co-author on the paper and a professor of communication in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. “Without contextually appropriate evidence, even the best-intended interventions risk further eroding democratic institutions.”
Two types of political polarization
The paper studies two distinct types of polarization: ideological polarization and affective polarization.
Ideological polarization is the gap between people who hold mainly liberal or mainly conservative political beliefs. In the U.S., the Democratic and Republican parties embody these beliefs. In other countries, different political parties fill these roles.
Affective polarization has to do with how people feel about others who hold different political beliefs — more affective polarization means more animosity toward people with opposing views. Research on U.S. politics has suggested that the level of affective polarization has grown over the last decade.
One feature of polarization many countries share is that partisanship, meaning how loyal people are to their chosen political parties, is closely related to a person’s social identity. However, this relationship also makes it challenging to tease apart a person’s social identity from how they choose their political beliefs. A person’s social circle might influence their beliefs, but their beliefs might also determine who is part of their social circle.
Other factors may also drive polarization, including the internet and social media, income inequality, religious difference and a two-party political system. In many cases, uncovering causes for polarization in one country might not be relevant in another. For example, the U.S. has a two-party political system that makes it easy to choose one side or the other. Brazil has a multi-party system that helps create very different feelings of belonging.
Limiting political polarization and expanding global research
Wojcieszak and her colleagues argue that it’s critical to take seriously how the internet and social media affect polarization, and how content generated by AI may exacerbate it. This technology-driven potential to increase social division amplifies the need for research beyond the U.S. political system.
Research that compares political polarization across multiple countries could avoid overly general analyses of local challenges. This is especially true when applying ideas about polarization from highly developed democracies to low-income countries or authoritarian states.
Data access is another challenge, the researchers argue. Since 2023, they write, major social media companies, such as Meta and Reddit, have cut academic researchers’ access to data. Without this data, research cannot identify some of the most potent channels through which polarization takes place: the social media posts people see in their feeds every day.
More collaboration across academia is also essential to reaching a consensus about what truly drives polarization and what might reduce it.
“We must work together collaboratively and across disciplines so we can disentangle the many factors that drive different types of polarization,” said Wojcieszak.
Additional authors include lead author Max Falkenberg, corresponding authors Andrea Baronchelli and Walter Quattrociocchi, and co-authors Matteo Cinelli, Alessandro Galeazzi, Christopher A. Bail, Rosa M. Benito, Axel Bruns, Anatoliy Gruzd, David Lazer, Jae Kook Lee, Jennifer McCoy, Kikuko Nagayoshi, David G Rand, Antonio Scala, Alexandra A. Siegel, Sander van der Linden, Onur Varol, Ingmar Weber and Fabiana Zollo.
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