Political sectarianism in America
By Eli J. Finkel, C. Bail, Mina Cikara, Peter H. Ditto, Shanto Iyengar, Samara Klar, Lilliana Mason, Mary C. McGrath, Brendan Nyhan, David G. Rand and 5 more. Science, 2020
669 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion, and moralization poses a threat to democracy Political polarization, a concern in many countries, is especially acrimonious in the United States (see the first box). For decades, scholars have studied polarization as an ideological matter—how strongly Democrats and Republicans diverge vis-à-vis political ideals and policy goals. Such competition among groups in the marketplace of ideas is a hallmark of a healthy democracy. But more recently, researchers have identified a second type of polarization, one focusing less on triumphs of ideas than on dominating the abhorrent supporters of the opposing party (1). This literature has produced a proliferation of insights and constructs but few interdisciplinary efforts to integrate them. We offer such an integration, pinpointing the superordinate construct of political sectarianism and identifying its three core ingredients: othering, aversion, and moralization. We then consider the causes of political sectarianism and its consequences for U.S. society—especially the threat it poses to democracy. Finally, we propose interventions for minimizing its most corrosive aspects.
Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e8162f91d011ea49670b8191a54e65022b330c0
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Citations in the corpus
- Political Psychology in the Digital (mis)Information age: A Model of News Belief and Sharing (2020, background): “Political polarization refers to the divergence of political attitudes and beliefs towards ideological extremes, although a more pernicious form of polarization focuses less on the triumphs of ingroup party members than on dominating opposing party members (Finkel et al., 2020).”