The poles in polarization: Social categorization and affective polarization in multiparty systems

Abstract

A challenge in adapting the concept of affective polarization to multiparty systems has been to determine who is polarized against whom. I propose a strategy to uncover the different ways in which people construe the political field – that is, how they categorize the party landscape in terms of “us” and “them” from commonly-used survey data. Using 2023 panel data from Germany, a multiparty democracy, I show that people are polarized in opposing camps along three different divides: between Left and Right, between Mainstream and Rightwing Populists, and between Center and Extreme. To understand what people are polarized over, I explore the issue differences that underpin each of the divides. Lastly, I examine the associations between affective polarization and democratic attitudes across camps and find considerable variation in those associations. This variation suggests that perhaps not all affective polarization should be seen as equally problematic.