United in success, fragmented in failure: The moderating effect of perceived government performance on affective polarization between coalition partners

Abstract

Coalition governments are said to make voters of coalition parties feel more warmly towards supporters of their coalition partners and, hence, reduce affective polarization. However, even countries frequently governed by coalitions commonly experience high levels of affective polarization. We argue that for coalitions to reduce affective polarization, they must be perceived as successful. In coalitions that are perceived as unsuccessful, voters will not develop an overarching coalition identity. Such coalitions fail to change whom voters consider as their in-group, therefore not mitigating affective polarization. We test this argument using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data. We find that the positive effects of coalition membership reported in previous work are exclusively driven by voters who are satisfied with the coalition's performance. Coalitions have no depolarizing effect among voters dissatisfied with their governing performance. These results question whether democratic institutions themselves can mitigate affective polarization and instead demonstrate the responsibility of elites to make inter-party cooperation work.