Issue Based Affective Polarisation in a Multiparty Polity

This paper aims to extend the application of the concept of affective polarization to political contexts which differ significantly from the U.S. bipartisan politics. As affective polarization, which traditionally assumes that Democrats increasingly dislike Republicans and vice versa, is by default rooted in partisanship, its current applicability is relatively limited. Still, increased politically determined societal tensions occur across different countries and political systems. This paper presents an experimental study conducted on a representative sample of Czech citizens, testing the potential power of attitudes about asylum policy and immigration to affectively polarize citizens. Using conventional measures of affective polarization the study examines the potential of opposed issue positions to polarize people compared to political party cues. Bringing research on affective polarization into a system with low levels of party identification and unstable party system poses an opportunity to test the occurrence of affective polarization, manifested in a negative evaluation of and prejudice against one’s opinion opponents, as a universal phenomenon. The paper contributes to a discussion on the ways polarization occurs outside the specificities of the U.S. political system, and it also helps us understand the most recent political development in a rather under-studied region of Central and Eastern Europe from the perspective of political psychology.