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Partisan Affect and Elite Polarization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2018

DANIEL DIERMEIER  and
CHRISTOPHER LI
DANIEL DIERMEIER*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
CHRISTOPHER LI*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
*Daniel Diermeier, Harris School of Public Policy and Office of the Provost, The University of Chicago, 5801 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, CIFAR Program on Institutions, Organizations, and Growth, ddiermeier@uchicago.edu.
†Christopher Li, Cowles Foundation, Yale University, christopher.li@yale.edu.
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Abstract

We examine the interaction between partisan affect and elite polarization in a behavioral voting model. Voting is determined by affect rather than rational choice. Parties are office-motivated; they choose policies to win elections. We show that parties bias their policies toward their partisans if voters exhibit ingroup responsiveness, i.e., they respond more strongly to their own party’s policy deviations than to policy deviations by the other party. Our results suggest that affective polarization is a driver of the growing elite polarization in American politics. Importantly, this observation does not assume any shifts in the voters’ bliss points and is therefore orthogonal to the controversy over whether the American electorate has become more polarized in ideology.

Type
Letter
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 113 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 277 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

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Footnotes

We thank the editors, three anonymous reviewers, and participants at various conferences for their helpful suggestions.

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