Opponents, not enemies: disentangling the relationship between polarization and democracy in Europe

Abstract

Contradicting claims exist about the extent to which identity-based ideological polarization is eroding or improving democracy. We address this ambiguity by disentangling different forms of polarization (i.e., elite, partisan, societal) and their relationship with different aspects of democracy (i.e., quality, diffuse support, specific support). Based on the agonistic pluralism theory, we argue that democracy benefits from political conflict between mutually respected opponents, while societal conflict between moralized enemies undermines it. We test these hypotheses by means of multivariate multiple regression modelling of repeated cross-sectional data and macro-level information on 24 European countries (1999-2017). Largely in line with the expectations, we find that partisan polarization is associated with better democratic quality, while societal polarization relates to lower quality and less institutional trust. This is partly due to elite polarization, which turns out to be a strong predictor of worsening democratic quality. Additional analyses show that the exploitation of affective polarization plays an important part in this. Diffuse democratic support remains largely unaffected by ideological polarization but decreases when affective polarization prevails. We conclude by stressing the need for clearly defined approaches in research on polarization and democracy, as focusing on different forms and aspects can lead to very different conclusions.