Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Spanking or Time Out: A Clash of Worldviews?
- 2 Putting Polarization in Perspective
- 3 Authoritarianism and Nonauthoritarianism: Concepts and Measures
- 4 A Historical Account of the Roots of Worldview Evolution
- 5 Authoritarianism's Structuring of Contemporary Issues
- 6 Threat and Authoritarianism: Polarization or Convergence
- 7 Evidence of Worldview Evolution
- 8 Immigration: A Reinforcing Cleavage that Now Constrains the Republican Party (GOP)
- 9 What the 2008 Democratic Nomination Struggle Reveals about Party Polarization
- 10 A New View of Polarization
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - A New View of Polarization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Spanking or Time Out: A Clash of Worldviews?
- 2 Putting Polarization in Perspective
- 3 Authoritarianism and Nonauthoritarianism: Concepts and Measures
- 4 A Historical Account of the Roots of Worldview Evolution
- 5 Authoritarianism's Structuring of Contemporary Issues
- 6 Threat and Authoritarianism: Polarization or Convergence
- 7 Evidence of Worldview Evolution
- 8 Immigration: A Reinforcing Cleavage that Now Constrains the Republican Party (GOP)
- 9 What the 2008 Democratic Nomination Struggle Reveals about Party Polarization
- 10 A New View of Polarization
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Over the last generation, the major parties in Washington and, to a lesser extent, parties in the electorate have become more distinct from each other. The changes at the elite level have had a profound effect on changes at the mass level (Hetherington 2001; Levendusky forthcoming), just as most theories of public opinion would suggest (e.g., Key 1966; Zaller 1992). The clear signal now provided by the two parties in government is allowing more Americans to reflect the ideological and issue preferences of their party.
To many, the increasingly distinct nature of parties has caused the American political system to become polarized. The term polarization in a strict definitional sense captures what has been going on among political elites. Conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans have largely become a thing of the past (Rohde 1991), a process advanced significantly by the 2006 congressional elections. Although ordinary Americans profess to dislike the polarization in Washington, the political system is rigged such that it is nearly impossible to remove its most polar elements. Ideologically less moderate members tend to run in the safest of districts. To the extent that competition occurs in such districts, it is most likely to come in primary elections, which feature an ideologically extreme sample of voters from a district (Fiorina 2006). In that sense, elections themselves seem to be contributing to the polarization at the elite level.
Of course, even in this polarized time, some members of Congress are more moderate than others.
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- Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics , pp. 190 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009