Causes and effects of partisan polarisation in European democracies

Polarisation is an often used, but many times poorly defined concept of public opinion and voting behaviour researchers. Moreover, its causes and effects are highly debated. Many scholars claim that it is useful for maintaining political interest of voters; others argue that its opposite is true, it contributes strongly to voters’ disenchantment and to the decline of participation. Similarly, there is no consensus about its effect on the stability of the political system and on governments’ performance. Scholars with a “polarisation optimistic” attitude argue that polarisation has a stabilizing effect on the political system, because it mitigates the effect of less successful governmental programs, campaigns, or political scandals on voters’ party preferences. Others, instead, fault polarisation for destabilizing the political system, across the alternation of two poles with two markedly different sets of policies. Its effect on the quality of democracy is also unclear and debated. Some political scientists point out that polarisation makes easier to be responsive for politicians, across harmonizing policy preferences of voters of the same political camp. Others argue that it may reduce governmental accountability, because a deep division between the political camps simplifies political debates to an us-or-them question, which does not motivate governments to a better performance. This paper investigates the causes and effects of partisan polarisation in the European countries. It offers a methodological innovation for measuring partisanship in a comparative perspective, by comparing the political evaluations of the winning and losing political camps in all countries. Its aim is to answer the following questions: which are the most polarized countries in contemporary Europe, and what are the main factors related to partisan polarization. The research uses European Social Survey data supplemented with country level data. The main results are that heightened partisan polarisation is present in the majority of East-Central European and Southern European countries, and polarisation seems a thing to be worried about. Empirical results show that polarisation is generally related to lower levels of political participation, disenchantment with politicians and parties, instability, higher levels of corruption and lower economic and political performance of the system.