Patterns of Affective Polarization in the Democratic World: Comparing the Polarized Feelings Towards Parties and Leaders

Cross-national research on affective polarization has emerged over the last years and the results clearly indicate that polarization in feelings towards political parties is acutely present in many countries across the world (Reiljan 2020; Wagner 2020). At the same time, a growing body of literature has documented the personalization of modern politics, as party leaders have become increasingly central in political competition (Garzia 2014). However, very little is known about voters’ polarized feelings towards political leaders - i.e. „leader polarization“ (Bordignon 2020) - outside of the US context. Considering that affective polarization among mass public is often seen as an elite-driven phenomenon, this research gap undoubtedly merits closer attention. This paper aims at expanding our theoretical and empirical knowledge about the concept of party leader polarization and connecting it with the existing partisan affective polarization literature. In the United States, partisan feelings towards parties and the leading candidates of the parties are well aligned: Republicans like their own party and leaders/candidates, while disliking the Democratic party and their leaders/candidates, and vice versa (Webster & Abramowitz 2017). Although some exploratory analyses suggest that similar leader polarization may also be present in other countries (Barisione 2017; Garzia & Da Silva 2020), no broad cross-national comparative analysis has hitherto been conducted and we still lack some very basic knowledge about polarized opinions toward party leaders in the non-US context. In this paper, we address the following research questions: To what extent is leader polarization present outside of the United States? How strongly is leader polarization linked with party (affective) polarization? In which political and electoral systems is leader polarization higher/lower vis-a-vis to party polarization? To answer these questions, we map the levels and explore the dynamics of leader polarization across the democratic world, applying the indices that have hitherto been used to measure party level affective polarization on leader evaluations. Subsequently, we compare the intensity of affective polarization over leaders and parties, and determine the correlation between these two constructs. Finally, we explore the contextual factors that predict the ratio of leader/party affective polarization across countries and elections. We use all the available waves of the vast Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) dataset, which allows us to measure and directly compare affective polarization towards parties and party leaders in a broad number of countries over a timespan of more than 20 years, using the classic like-dislike scale. We believe that this study will significantly broaden the cross-national understanding of the structure and nature of affective polarization.